The Saints Before the Cross

The claim is usually spoken in words like these:

“Daniel lived a holy life under the law and was greatly used. But even John the Baptist is less than the least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 11:11). The Old Testament saints are servants, and we are sons.”

There is something generous in this. It honors Daniel and does not call him a failure; it simply places him in an earlier room of the house, the servants’ quarters, while the believer today has been brought into the family. It also rests on a sentence Yeshua actually spoke, and that sentence should be read first.

What Yeshua Said About John

Matthew 11:11 Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist — yet the one who is least in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than he.

Two things are said here: no one born of women is greater than John, and yet the least in the kingdom is greater than he.

The claim treats this verse as a wall. On one side stand all who came up to John, the servants; on the other side is the kingdom, with the sons. John himself is left outside the wall, the greatest of the servants, but still a servant.

Yet the verse is about John, and its setting tells us who he is. Two verses earlier, Yeshua asks the crowd:

Matthew 11:9 But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and one greater than a prophet.

Luke records the same words, that “among those born of women no prophet is greater than John the Baptist” (Luke 7:28). At his birth his father had said that the child “will be called the prophet of the Most High” (Luke 1:76).

Matthew 11:11 does not place John outside the kingdom, for Yeshua Himself tells us where the prophets will be.

Who Sits at the Table

Picture a young man who has been told that the elders of his family were only hired help in the old days. Then he arrives at the family dinner and finds his great-grandfather seated at the head of the table.

That is the scene Yeshua paints:

Matthew 8:11 And I say to you that many will come from east and west and will recline at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens,

The nations do not come in and find the patriarchs waiting in the servants’ quarters. They come in and recline at table with them.

Luke adds the prophets to that company:

Luke 13:28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown out.

The verse places “all the prophets” in the kingdom of God. John, the prophet greater than any born of women, is among them, and so are the prophets who came before him, among them Daniel, whom Yeshua called “Daniel the prophet” (Matthew 24:15). The people who are “thrown out” in that verse are not the prophets. They are the ones who heard Yeshua teach and did not enter.

So whatever “least” and “greater” mean in Matthew 11:11, Yeshua’s own words rule out the reading that puts John and the prophets outside, as servants under a different arrangement.

Who Is “the Lesser One”?

What, then, does it mean that “the one who is least in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than he”? Begin with what the text makes plain.

The Greek word rendered “least” is mikroteros. It is not a superlative but a comparative: “the lesser one.” It is a different word from the “least” of Matthew 5:19, which is elachistos. John is the greatest among those born of women (Matthew 11:11); he was “filled with hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15); and he is in the kingdom of God with “all the prophets” (Luke 13:28). And Yeshua said these words while honoring John before the crowd, after John had sent his question from prison (Matthew 11:2-11).

That much is clear. But the text does not name “the lesser one.” Over two thousand years many explanations have been offered. Here are the best known, each with its difficulty stated plainly.

The least believer in the kingdom. Most of the classic Greek commentators read it this way: J. A. Bengel, H. A. W. Meyer, Henry Alford, A. B. Bruce, and A. T. Robertson. The standard Greek lexicon of Bauer and Danker (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, under mikros) also gives “the one of least importance in the kingdom.” The difficulty: if John is in the kingdom, the least believer in it cannot be greater than he. To hold this reading, Bengel (Gnomon of the New Testament, on Matthew 11:11) wrote that John “was not yet in the kingdom of heaven,” which does not agree with Yeshua’s word that all the prophets are in the kingdom (Luke 13:28).

The old age and the new, a difference of privilege. Robertson (Word Pictures in the New Testament, on Matthew 11:11) said that John is greater in character but the least in the kingdom surpasses him in privilege; Meyer (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, on Matthew 11:11) placed John in the “old theocracy.” Among modern commentators this is the most common reading. D. A. Carson (Matthew, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, on Matthew 11:11), R. T. France (The Gospel of Matthew, on Matthew 11:11), and Donald Hagner (Matthew 1–13, on Matthew 11:11) say the question is John’s place in the history of salvation, not his salvation; France adds that John is not finally shut out of the Messiah’s salvation. Carson says the least in the kingdom points to Yeshua more plainly than John, because that believer lives after the decisive events of revelation have taken place. The difficulty: if that privilege is the Spirit or the knowledge of the Messiah, it does not fit John, who was filled with the Spirit from the womb (Luke 1:15) and who said, “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). And if John is not shut out, the first question returns: how can the least in the kingdom be greater than one who is in it?

One born of God by faith. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Luke, Sermon 38) said that whoever receives faith is “no longer called the son of a woman” but is born of God. The difficulty: John would then be one not born of God, and Scripture says no such thing (Luke 1:15).

Greatness through humility. This reading explains the verse by Luke 9:48, where the same word mikroteros appears, and by Matthew 18:4, where the one who humbles himself is called the greatest in the kingdom. The difficulty: John is the very man who humbled himself, saying, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). By that measure John would be the greatest, and the saying would turn upside down.

Angels, or the saints who have gone before. Augustine (Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets, Book 2, chapter 5) offered angels as one option; Jerome (Commentary on Matthew, Book 2, on Matthew 11:11) read it of the saints already with the Lord. The difficulty: nothing in the context of Matthew 11 speaks of angels or of departed saints.

Anyone in the kingdom when it comes. W. D. Davies and Dale Allison (Matthew: A Shorter Commentary, on Matthew 11:11) read it as anyone in the coming kingdom set beside the greatest before it, and say that this does not exclude John. John P. Meier (A Marginal Jew, volume 2, pages 142–144) and I. Howard Marshall (The Gospel of Luke, on Luke 7:28) speak instead of the kingdom already breaking in through Yeshua. The difficulty: Carson asks of the future reading, will not John also be in the kingdom then? And Marshall himself says that this saying does not raise the question whether John is in the kingdom. So the reading leaves the comparison unexplained.

The servants of the kingdom. Herman Ridderbos (The Coming of the Kingdom, page 53) reads “the least” as the kingdom’s office bearers and servants, and places John in the time before the kingdom. The difficulty: John preached the same words as Yeshua, “metanoeite μετανοεῖτε met-an-o-eh'-o(Repent, spiritual domain), for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17), and he is in the kingdom with all the prophets (Luke 13:28).

The One who came after John, that is, Yeshua. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew, Homily 37) read “the lesser” as Yeshua, “lesser in age and in the opinion of the many”; Tertullian (Against Marcion, Book 4, chapter 18) and Augustine (Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets, Book 2, chapter 5) each offered it as one option, and, according to Meyer, Hilary, Luther, and Melanchthon read it so. In modern times Franz Dibelius (Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 11, 1910, pages 190–192) and Oscar Cullmann (The Christology of the New Testament, pages 24 and 32) took it up again, and Joseph Fitzmyer (Luke I–IX, on Luke 7:28) left the question open. This reading rests on the fact that the sentence is built like John’s own words, “the One coming after me is mightier than I” (Matthew 3:11). The difficulty: if “in the kingdom” goes with “the lesser one,” Yeshua becomes the lesser one in the kingdom. To avoid that, the phrase must go with “greater”: “the lesser one is, in the kingdom, greater than he.” Alford (The Greek Testament, on Matthew 11:11), Bengel, and Meyer rejected that reading on grounds of grammar and context, and so, in modern times, did Marshall, John P. Meier, and Darrell Bock (Luke 1:1–9:50, on Luke 7:28), chiefly because of the word order. And nowhere in the New Testament does mikroteros mean “the younger”; besides Matthew 11:11 and Luke 7:28 it is used of the mustard seed, “smaller than all the seeds” (Mark 4:31; compare Matthew 13:32), and of “the one who is least among all of you” (Luke 9:48).

The apostles, those who preach the good news. John Gill, Matthew Poole, and Albert Barnes read it this way in their commentaries on Matthew. The difficulty: the text does not say in what they are greater than John, and the problem of John being in the kingdom remains, as with the first reading.

Every explanation, then, has its difficulty. Human explanations cannot contain the whole of the word. What we hold to is what the text plainly says: John is the greatest among those born of women, he was filled with the Spirit, and he is not a servant standing outside the kingdom.

Daniel by Faith

The second half of the claim draws the line another way: Daniel under the law, we by faith. That distinction is not in Scripture either.

Hebrews 11 lists the men and women of the old covenant, and it describes them all with one phrase:

Hebrews 11:33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, worked dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness), obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,

The last words, “stopped the mouths of lions,” are about Daniel, and the first words are “who through faith.” Hebrews does not say that Daniel stopped the lions’ mouths by keeping the law, as opposed to faith; it says that he did it through faith. And Daniel was also, as the claim itself says, a man who kept the Torah. He would not defile himself with the king’s food (Daniel 1:8), and he prayed three times a day toward Jerusalem, “just as he had done before this” (YLV Daniel 6:11, Masoretic verse order). Faith and the commandments were not two eras in his life. They were one life.

Paul goes further back still:

Romans 4:3 For what does the graphe γραφή graf-ay'(written-scripture) say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as dikaiosyne(righteousness)."

Abraham was declared righteous by believing, and Paul brings in David as a second witness:

Romans 4:6-8 just as David also speaks of the blessedness of the person to whom God credits dikaiosyne(righteousness) apart from works: "Blessed are those whose anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah(Torah-lessness) have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered; blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will by no means credit."

What David speaks of as forgiven is anomia: “those whose anomia(Torah-lessness) have been forgiven.” David was not justified by keeping the Torah perfectly. He broke it, he was forgiven, and righteousness was credited to him “apart from works.” That is exactly how we are justified, not in a different way, an older way, or a servant’s way, but in the same way.

Paul also says that the good news itself is older than the claim allows:

Galatians 3:8 The graphe(written-scripture), foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith, proclaimed the good news beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the nations will be blessed in you."

The gospel was preached to Abraham. There never was an era of law that was later replaced by an era of faith; from the beginning, the righteous lived by faith.

Made Perfect Together

Hebrews ends its list of the faithful with this:

Hebrews 11:39-40 And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they should not be made perfect.

If the old saints were servants in one house and we were sons in another, the words “apart from us they should not be made perfect” would make no sense. Hebrews pictures not two classes but one company, made perfect together.

Sons in Deuteronomy

The claim says that we are sons and they were servants. But the name “sons of God” did not first appear in the New Testament. Here it is in the Torah:

Deuteronomy 14:1 You are sons to the LORD your God; you shall not cut yourselves, and you shall not make a baldness between your eyes for the dead.

Where this sentence stands matters. It is the first verse of the chapter where the food regulations begin, and the lines that follow in Deuteronomy 14 list what may and may not be eaten. God does not say, “You are servants, so here are your rules.” He says, “You are sons,” and then He tells His sons how to live, so that sonship and the commandments arrive in the same breath. Paul agrees when he lists what belongs to the Israelites: “the huiothesia(adoption, sonship) and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law)” (Romans 9:4). Sonship and the Torah stand side by side.

The line between old servants and new sons does not hold. Abraham sits at the table, John and all the prophets are in the kingdom, Daniel shut the lions’ mouths by faith, and God called His people sons in the very passage in which He gave them His food laws.

The Word That Was Cut Away

Just as every explanation of “the lesser one” has its difficulty, so does the claim the church has held for nearly two thousand years: “Believe in Yeshua, and you may eat anything.” This book has examined, one by one, the verses offered for it.

In Mark 7:19 there is no word “declared” in the Greek. In the Byzantine Majority Text (Robinson–Pierpont 2018), the reference text of the YLV, the participle katharizon καθαρίζον kath-ar-id'-zo, “purging,” is neuter (some other manuscripts have the masculine form); it describes what is eaten as it “goes out into the latrine, purging all the foods,” not Yeshua.

After his vision in Acts 10, Peter still said, “I have never eaten anything koinos κοινός koy-nos'(common, worldly) or akathartos ἀκάθαρτος ak-ath'-ar-tos(impure, unclean)” (Acts 10:14), and he himself explained that the vision was about people (Acts 10:28).

In Romans 14:14, “nothing is koinos in itself” speaks of what is common, not of what is akathartos(unclean).

“Eat anything that is sold in the meat market” (1 Corinthians 10:25) deals with food offered to idols, and it concerns only what Scripture already calls food.

1 Timothy 4:3-5 speaks of “foods which God has created,” food that “is sanctified by means of the logos λόγος log'-os(word) of God and prayer.” And God had already set apart the clean animals from the unclean before the flood of Noah (Genesis 7:2), before Sinai, and before Moses.

Yeshua said:

Matthew 5:19 Whoever then breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of the heavens; but whoever keeps and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of the heavens.

The apostle Peter exhorted believers with the very words that close Leviticus 11, the chapter that teaches what may and may not be eaten (Leviticus 11:44-45):

1 Peter 1:15-16 but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy."

And Isaiah, in his last chapter, placed this warning just before the promise of new heavens and a new earth:

Isaiah 66:17 Those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves toward the gardens, behind one in the midst, who eat the flesh (basar בָּשָׂר baw-sawr') of swine and the detestable thing and the mouse, together they shall come to an end, declares the LORD.

In that same chapter Isaiah promises new heavens and a new earth (Isaiah 66:22). To hold on to that promise while cutting away the word about those who eat swine’s flesh and the detestable thing, and to believe only what is left, cannot be called faith. And it is not Isaiah alone. Across Scripture, words that people do not want are removed, or their meaning is bent, and that is a grievous thing. It has gone on for nearly two thousand years.

Yet nowhere in the New Testament is there a single verse that says the food laws were abolished. The word stands as it was first given, and the answer has been one from the beginning: obey the Torah. Yet the line between the old saints and us is often drawn deeper still, through the very nature of the believer, as a mystery hidden from all those generations.