Matthew 11:12: Taking Back God's Lost Children Through Love

Introduction

On Sunday, September 20, 2026, a typhoon is approaching Tokyo. At 東京グレイス福音教会 (Tokyo Grace Gospel Church), in Tanashi, the preacher opens the Bible to Paul's farewell words to the elders of Ephesus: "Now, brothers, I entrust you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build up, and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified" (Acts 20:32).

He ties this verse to the one read at the start of the service, Matthew 11:12. In the Japanese version used, it can be rendered like this: from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven is attacked with force, and those who attack it seize it. In the World English Bible: "From the days of John the Baptizer until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." It sounds harsh. What does it mean, and how do you concretely inherit this kingdom?

The title of the message sets the direction: "Let's take back the children of God who are lost." The preacher will show that God takes his people back from this world, but without a single sword. His only weapon is his love, the love that was shown at the cross.

Outline of the Message

1. Inheriting the Kingdom: What Does "Seizing It" Mean?

• "Giving the inheritance": the kingdom that Acts 20:32 speaks of is the land where God reigns. That we inherit it by faith, you already know. But what does that mean in practice?
• Matthew 11:12 offers a clue. It is about the children of God, adults and children alike, whom the disciples take back from this world to bring them into the kingdom of heaven.
• The question then becomes: how did the disciples "attack" the cities? How did Jesus himself attack with force and take back his own?
• The saying gives an impression of brutality. The preacher admits it: "True love often imposes itself with force." He mentions the writer Arishima Takeo, author of a book with a similar title, but points out that Jesus was teaching about this love two thousand years earlier.
• The human heart is never more sensitive than when it comes to love. It is precisely through his love that God wants to take us back from this world. "God's love is the first weapon of evangelism."

2. The Devil Used Love First

• Love is what we do not want to lose at any price. It is also the most sensitive spot in a human being, so much so that we can become its slave.
• If God's love draws us to the cross, we receive forgiveness of our sins and freedom from the desires of the flesh: we become free.
• But the devil knows that people are weak on this point and that, deep down, everyone is alone. So he uses human love, the love of those close to us, and the preacher says it plainly: sensual and sexual love, to turn our eyes away from God's love. "Haven't you been through this several times in your life?"
• Even the most stubborn, hard, or capricious person is extremely sensitive to love: everyone wants to be loved.
• God's love has no face, and you cannot hear its voice. Human love, or what looks like it, can be seen and touched, and sometimes has a tender gaze. So the devil takes your heart first, occupies it, and fills it. When you hear about Jesus, you answer: "There is no room left in my heart."
• This is what Matthew 11:12 describes: the lost children of God have been taken by human love, and God's love comes to take back by force the hearts that had been taken. "That is evangelism."
• For some, this passage is painful: they have understood that God's love is real, but leaving a heart filled with human love comes at a cost. Later they understand: without knowing God's love, you do not know true human love either. The devil reversed the order.

3. Jesus Attacked Without a Single Weapon, and Love Governs His Church

• Many think human love is everything: "If I lose this love, I have no hope of living." These hearts, occupied in this way, God takes back with an unconditional love, and the preacher declares that we are living precisely in that time.
• Who takes back the kingdom? We do. We are God's soldiers, who attack with force through love.
• Jesus used no weapon. Yet he attacked with force, to the point of being crucified himself. He attacked, but through self-sacrifice: it was not his adversary he nailed to the cross, it was himself.
• Acts 20:32 specifies that the inheritance is received "among all those who are sanctified." These are the people set apart for God's work: the Church. It is the life of the Church to inherit the kingdom and to take back the lost of this world.
• The kingdom means the reign of God, and this reign is a reign of love. The Church is the place where God's love governs. There will be human mistakes, sometimes sins, but in the end it is God's love that reigns there, and you come to feel that this is where you are happiest.
• "He who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8). The preacher tells how he reacted when he first read this verse about fifty years ago: "How rude!" He even turned on the person who was teaching him: "Are you saying I have no love?"
• Today he admits it: that is exactly right. The love a person carries within is the channel God gave us to know him, the first one, perhaps even the only one. For God is love, and love can only be understood through love.
• When we believed in Jesus, we received authority. With it, we confront the devil: healing the sick, driving out evil.
• "But without love, this authority is useless." It comes from God's love, and its source is the cross.
• Romans 5:8 says it: "But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The preacher points out that the word used belongs to legal vocabulary: proof that is admissible before a court. The cross is the clear and irrefutable sign of God's love.
• If we have received this authority through the cross, we can break the devil's attacks in many places.

4. The Samaritan Woman: A City Taken Back Without a Sword

• "Often, we are too polite. Is that right, or is it a mistake?" To reach the Samaritans, Jesus did things that were not done: staying alone with a woman at a well and asking her for water (John 4:7).
• Jesus came with courtesy. The woman, for her part, answered him bluntly several times: "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (John 4:9). Jesus did not get angry. He answered: if you knew who is speaking to you, you would have asked him for a drink (John 4:10).
• Then she lied: "I have no husband." Jesus did not say to her: "You are lying." He answered rather calmly: you are right, the man you live with is not your husband, and you have had five husbands (John 4:17-18).
• No sword was used. Jesus spoke to her gently and untied, one by one, the tangled threads of her heart. "He did not accuse her, he untied." In the end she became convinced that he was the Christ.
• The Samaritans, who wanted nothing to do with the Jews, came out of their city. They listened to the woman's testimony, then believed because they met Jesus themselves (John 4:39-42). An entire city taken back without a weapon or a harsh word.
• When you go to others, you do not need weapons, but courtesy and words full of wisdom. This wisdom comes from the assurance of being loved by God. If God's love reigns in you, it teaches you what to say. You do not aim at the other person's weak spot: you go around it and lead them straight to God's love.
• If Jesus had said, "See, you lied," or "You are quite rude," the conversation would have ended right there. He moved the exchange forward with the patience of love. We get angry and the conversation stops, though that is not what we wanted. "Doesn't this happen often in our families? That is where we most need this wisdom."

5. Napoleon, Peter, and Malchus: The Sword or Love

• The preacher cites a testament attributed to Napoleon, written, according to him, during his exile on Saint Helena and, in his words, generally recognized as authentic despite some doubts. He relays this idea: "I governed the world, many served me, and today, in my exile, no one follows me. But him? He never used force, and after all this time, how many people follow him."
• "Him" is Jesus Christ. Napoleon governed his empire with weapons and cannons. Jesus governed the world through love, and still today many follow him without regard for their own lives.
• The kingdom Jesus founded is not governed by the sword but by God's love.
• At Gethsemane, Peter wanted to free Jesus with the sword. He did not yet know God's love. He struck Malchus, the servant of the high priest, who had come with the troop to arrest Jesus, and cut off his ear (John 18:10).
• Jesus said: "all those who take up the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52), then he put the ear back and healed him (Luke 22:51). "That is Jesus' method."
• The preacher mentions the film The Passion of the Christ, whose opening scene shows this moment. Healed by the power of God's love, that of the Holy Spirit, Malchus loses all desire to fight. The other soldiers shout at him to seize Jesus, and he does not move. He has understood: "He is not our enemy. We are the ones in the wrong. I am only a Roman soldier, and he loves me."
• According to the preacher, the film came out at a time when a war was raging in the Middle East. Many American soldiers were dying there, and America was asking what to do. The first scene shows the director's intent: force solves nothing. When you love with God's love, the adversary also loses the desire to fight. This is how God's kingdom expands.

6. The Real Battle Is Against Yourself

• "Seizing" does not mean brutalizing the other person. It means mastering yourself: nailing to the cross the enemy that is in your heart, your anger. It is not the other person you subdue by force. When we calm our anger, the lost are restored.
• You sometimes get angry and want to hurl insults. But before the Lord, you understand that the adversary to fight is not the other person, it is you. That is what brings peace.
• A powerful Church, a powerful family, is a Church or a family governed by God's love. The love of a father or mother is very little, "with my apologies to the many mothers present." The preacher includes himself: "Let our love govern, and everything collapses at once." Where God's love reigns, there is peace.
• Your love has limits. It can even drive out God's love, because it is too human. The devil eventually bares his teeth: "You're going to put up with that? You should tell them off, teach them a lesson." He teaches you self-fulfillment.
• Jesus' fulfillment, if he has one, is the cross: being called a sinner without having sinned. It was the goal of his whole life. "Can someone who chases after human love do this?"
• Those who speak harshly often carry a thirst deep in their hearts, because people are alone. If you lose your temper, the quarrel breaks out and you never reach that thirst, and then you tell yourself: "It wasn't supposed to go like this." When you endure out of love, you reach the depths of their heart: the desire to know true love.
• The Samaritan woman had had five husbands and was living with a sixth man. Each time she thought: "This one is the right one." Was she satisfied? If Jesus had quarreled with her, he would not have reached her thirst. He wisely steered around the conflict and showed deep patience until he reached her loneliness. "That is love."
• No one can do this alone. Jesus could, but we need the Church: to be encouraged, to pray together. It is with all these servants together that we can speak of attacking with force.

7. What You Need to Live and to Die

• When you enter the reign of God's love, the first thing you discover is that you are loved by God. That is when communication with him begins, because without love there is no communication. At the same time, the spirit of timidity that was in your heart disappears.
• "If you were about to die, what would you need at the very least?" Love. And conversely: "With this, I need nothing else."
• Here lie the powerful Church and the powerful Christian life. This love is given by the Holy Spirit, which is why it is said we inherit it.
• You need this love: you will have to endure many things and sacrifice a great deal. Loving God and loving your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39), that is what you need. "Give me this love, and I can do anything. I do not need money, or fame, or fine clothes. If you govern my heart with your love, that is enough for me."
• God's true love was shown at the cross. With it, you can take back even people who are hard to love. "Love. Love. It is by loving that you take someone back." Through the Holy Spirit, you can.
• In his closing prayer, the preacher asks that each person receive this love in order to take back their neighbor before God and to overcome "not by the sword, not by force, but by loving."

Key Takeaways

• God's kingdom is a reign of love. God takes back his lost children from this world, and his first weapon is his love, proven at the cross.
• The devil first occupies the heart with human love, which is easier to see and touch. Without knowing God's love, you do not know true human love either.
• Jesus attacked without a weapon: he won the Samaritan woman and her city through patience and gentleness, and he healed Malchus' ear instead of answering with the sword.
• "Seizing" does not mean brutalizing the other person, but nailing your own anger to the cross. The real battle is against yourself.
• This work is not done alone: it is lived out in the Church, through encouragement and prayer, by the love the Holy Spirit gives.

Personal Application

1. Which love holds first place in your heart today? Is there still room for God's love?
2. With which person in your family or circle does the conversation always end in an argument? How could you, like Jesus with the Samaritan woman, move it forward with patience?
3. Which anger do you need to nail to the cross this week rather than unload on someone else?
4. Behind the harsh words of someone you know, what thirst or loneliness could you discern?
5. How can you lean on your Church, its encouragement and its prayers, to love those who are hard to love?

Verses Quoted

• Acts 20:32
• Matthew 11:12
• 1 John 4:8
• Romans 5:8
• John 4:7-42
• John 18:10
• Matthew 26:52
• Luke 22:51
• Matthew 22:37-39

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "the violent take it by force" mean in Matthew 11:12?

The preacher acknowledges that this is a difficult saying in the Bible. He understands it this way: since John the Baptist, God's children are being taken back from this world for the kingdom of heaven. Those who "attack with force" are the disciples, the Church. But their only weapon is God's love, the love of the cross, not violence.

Why does the devil use human love to draw people away from God?

Because love is the most sensitive spot in a human being, and everyone is alone deep inside. God's love has no face and you cannot hear its voice, whereas human love can be seen and touched. So the devil occupies the heart first with this love that is easier to grasp, until there is no room left in it for Jesus.

How can you take someone back through love without ending up in an argument?

By following Jesus' way with the Samaritan woman: he did not get angry at her hurtful words or her lie, he untied the threads of her heart one by one. The preacher reminds us that the enemy to fight is within you: your anger, which you nail to the cross. The patience of love then makes it possible to reach the thirst hidden deep in the other person.