<p>18:11&nbsp;<i>For the Son of Man came to save</i>- In the context, the point is that if&nbsp;<i>His</i>&nbsp;mission was to fellowship with and thereby save &quot;the lost&quot;, then it should be ours. His method of saving the lost was to have table fellowship with them in order to try to lead them to repentance and salvation. All that is true of Him is to be true of us- we have the same mission and should use the same methods. And refusing to open our closed circle to the little ones is going right against that method.</p>
<p><i>Those which were lost-&nbsp;</i>The Lord Himself was evidently very conscious of the inclusiveness of both male and female in His redemptive work. He came to save that [both male and female] which was lost (Mt. 18:11). He asked His people to follow Him in His cross carrying, and then told them to follow a<i>&nbsp;man&nbsp;</i>bearing a pitcher of water (doing woman&rsquo;s work)- probably a slave bearing water for the purification rites of Passover. In asking this He was requesting us to see in that man a symbol of Himself in His time of self-sacrifice. Yet the Lord saw Himself as a slave, a man doing woman&rsquo;s work, as the seed of the woman...surely the Lord had worked out in advance this wonderful blend of the genders in the figure He chose to represent Him. He spoke of leaving one&rsquo;s sister for His sake as being a sacrifice, whereas the contemporary culture would rarely have felt that way about a female relative. Jesus not only spoke to women publicly, but is even recorded as allowing a Gentile woman to change His mind (Mt. 15:22). This was unthinkable and shocking to contemporary society.</p>
<p>The sentence begins with &ldquo;For&hellip;&rdquo;, connecting the &ldquo;lost&rdquo; with the &ldquo;little ones&rdquo;. Following through the theme of this section, the lost, the little ones, the despised ones, will be won back and not stumbled by receiving them in table fellowship. This is the going out to seek the lost. The Lord&rsquo;s parables describe those He will save as the son who refused to go to work, but later went, sheepishly aware of his failure; the sheep that went away, i.e. those Christ came to save (Mt. 18:11) (a symbol of us all, Mt. 18:12 cp. Is. 53:6);&nbsp;the lost coin; the son who went away and sowed his wild oats, and then returned with his tail between his legs. Christ expects that we will fail, as grievously as those parables indicate. Yet we have somehow come to think that they refer either to our follies before baptism, or to those within our community who publicly disgrace themselves. Yet they describe&nbsp;<i>all</i>&nbsp;the faithful. But is there that sense of contrition in us, really? Aren't we more like the elder brother, or the son who said &quot;I go, Sir, but went not&quot; (Mt. 21:30)? &nbsp;</p>
