What Does Matthew 18:14 Mean?
So it is not the will of your Father in the heavens that one of these little ones should lose the way.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.THE KEY
The Father’s will turns on a single absence: not one of the little ones is to be lost.
THE MEANING
When you stand among the little ones, small, dependent, or easily overlooked, you are not outside your Father’s care. Your being lost is not the desire named here; your absence matters.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being vulnerable or overlooked makes your loss acceptable or unimportant to God.
THE ROOT
ἀπόληται
apolētai
GROWS FROM
ἀπόλλυμι (apollymi), from ἀπό (apo) + ὄλλυμι (ollymi)
To lose, destroy, or perish; in this compound, to be lost or brought to ruin.
“lose the way” in this verse is apolētai. The Greek verb translated “perish” also describes losing a sheep and losing nothing. English can make “perish” sound only like death, while the same word also carries the sense of being lost; the Father’s concern reaches the little one at risk of disappearing from the flock.
ALSO GROWS
apōleia: Loss, ruin, or destruction.
ἀπώλεια
This noun names the loss or ruin implied by “perish”, the little one’s loss is precisely what the Father does not desire.
apolōlos: Lost; one who has gone astray.
ἀπολωλός
Luke 15:6 uses this form for the sheep that was lost, showing that this word family includes being lost as well as perishing.
THE PATTERN
The one at risk of being lost remains within divine care and is sought, kept, or restored.
I will seek the one who lost the way, and bring back the driven away, and bind up the broken, and hold up the sick. But the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.What man among you, holding a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness and go after the one that has lost its way until he finds it?And this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me I should let none perish, but should raise it up again at the last day.THE THREAD
And this is the will of the Father who sent me, that of all he has given me I should let none perish, but should raise it up again at the last day.John uses the same verb family as Matthew’s “perish” for “lose nothing.” The parallel ties the Father’s will to keeping and raising the one at risk of being lost.
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