Think of His words, and you will see, first, that Jesus isolates each of us, setting us one by one apart: "despise not one;" He is come to save that one; "if one of them be gone astray;" "not His will that oneshould perish." He who counts our hairs much more counts us. Next, you will see that Jesus measures the worth of each human being by God's special and separate care of him. "Despise not one," for his angel is before the Father's face. "Despise not one," for the Son is come to save him. Thus, finally, Jesus having isolated each and weighed the worth of each of us, finds us in His Father's sight equal.
I. Notice, also, those two proofs which Jesus gives us of the rare price at which God prizes each soul of His. He singles out the two classes of men whom we set the least store by, and shows how His Father handles them. There are the little ones whom we despise, and there are the lost ones whom we both despise and dislike. The sin of despising the little ones of God falls mainly, perhaps, on the unconverted man, the sin of repelling lost ones mainly on the Church. But to the despised little ones God does honour, for their angels are such as always see His face; to the disliked lost ones God shows love, for to seek them He sends His Son.
II. Notice in what way it is that the teaching of Jesus has cut the roots from that self-valuing or self-praising which leads men, and has always led them, to undervalue and despise others. I may seek to sober man's conceit by showing man's littleness at his best, by reminding him how human greatness turns to dust, and how, in spite of wealth, or birth, or fame, or wisdom, men are but poor things while they live, and being dead are equal in their graves. This is the moralist's way; it is not Christ's. No word, scornful or sad, drops from His mouth to lower the dignity or to lessen the worth of the nature He had chosen to wear. He comes to put our self-esteem on its true footing. It is not what is peculiar to you or me which makes either of us precious to God; it is what is common to us all. God is no respecter of persons, but He respects men. We are greater than we thought, but it is a greatness in which we share alike. Because we are men, with a separate personality like God's, with a separate responsibility to God, with an immortal capacity for personal fellowship with God, therefore we are, each of us, creatures of uncountable value, on whom angels may deem it no indignity to wait, and for whom God's Son will not grudge to die.
J. Oswald Dykes, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 307; see also Sermons,p. 219.
Reference: Matthew 18:11. H. Bushnell, Christ and His Salvation,p. 57-