Christ protects the little ones. He loves the fresh believers, and stands with all his power against the proud among his followers who considered themselves, due to their close relationship with Christ, better and more righteous than the fresh believers.
Woe to the priests, elders, and preachers who become a stumbling block in the way of the beginners in spiritual life through their haughtiness, self-conceit, proud words, and excessive interest in their own families and themselves! Christ will seek the souls of the lost out of the hands of his servants. Woe to us if we spoke self-conceitedly about grace and sanctification, without recognizing that the millstone of God’s judgment would envelope our necks to drown us into the deep wrath of the Holy One!
Christ asks you to give up your live and thought completely to him. If you were proud and selfish, he calls you to join the school of his Spirit that you may kill your haughtiness, not through cutting your body, for he intends to sanctify your body and mind and not to destroy them. In the allegory of cutting off the unclean organs, and plucking out the evil eye, Christ shows you that the Holy Spirit does not accept a compromise, and does not play with your darling lust, shallow superficiality, hypersensitivity, or stony stubbornness. All such human characteristics have to be killed, crucified, and crushed in the fellowship of Christ. You can never obtain peace in yourself unless you are crucified with Christ, and raised faithfully in his resurrection.
The Son of God testifies the existence of hell, and tells us six times, in our reading, that the hell fire is not quenched. Woe to those who deny the existence of heaven and hell! They will be burned in the fire of their false repentance, because of their painful farness from God, howling and trembling with great crying. Their consciences will bite them, and they will be inflamed as a bleeding wound, for they will then recognize how Christ came to them, humbly and faithfully, and they did not receive him, but despised his words, disbelieved in him, and refused his salvation.
Dear brother, God intends to inflame you with the fire of his Holy Spirit that you may not be burned in hell. This is why the Lord calls you to become a light of the world and salt of the earth, not because you are useful in yourself, but because Christ is your salt and your light. In spite of your human godliness, you are nothing in yourself but a flame in hell. But Christ will make you a straight pillar in his temple if you give up your body, members, and gifts to him forever. Then he will teach you to become humble as he is. He will give you his purity and patience, and fill you with his peace that you may become changed in your insight, prefer the little ones to the big, seek those who are going astray, and keep away from the self-conceited.