Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 2 It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 So watch yourselves.” (Luke 17:1-3a, NIV)
It’s true Jesus said things that seem odd or are difficult to understand. If you want to save your life then lose it. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. At one level we can read these things Jesus said (and many others) knowing what he means and then once we think about it for a bit we begin to wonder if we’ve understood at all. This phenomenon exists not because Jesus was good at being slippery—it’s not as if Jesus did all he could to be misunderstood by those whom he came to save. It exists because Jesus spoke in levels and as one worked (then) or works (today) to understand him correctly, they are bound to find Jesus to be deeper than what they imagined.
After Jesus tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus He warns His disciples about the inevitability of things that cause people to stumble. Specifically Jesus said, “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come.” Jesus couldn’t be clearer: there will be rocks in the path that cause some people to stumble. And Jesus doesn’t stop there.
“…but woe to anyone through whom they come. It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.” Jesus just said that things causing people to stumble are bound to come. In other words, it is a certainty that those things will come. And yet, Jesus places a woe over those through whomthey come. The ones acting as the instruments through whom those things that were a certainty to come are bringing calamity upon themselves.
Suppose with me for a moment that there was someone within earshot (Judas, perhaps?) who really took to heart what Jesus meant. Now, further suppose with me that the same someone, after committing whatever action (selling out Jesus to the authorities, perhaps?) that caused someone (all the disciples, perhaps?) to stumble responded to that statement by saying it wasn’t his fault—in fact, it couldn’t be his fault. Sure, he brought through what caused someone to stumble but, he was only a conduit becauseJesus said these things were bound to come—they were destined to come, they had to come. You can’t possibly hold someone responsible for something they did when the thing they did was bound to happen, can you?
If you are bound to Scripture the answer is: of course you can.[1]
Scripture is clear that just because God is in control of the world—even to the point where birds don’t fall out of the sky—this does not remove the responsibility the person who let’s say shoots a bird out of the sky. If someone were to go duck hunting in an area they were not allowed and they shot a duck out of the sky and then the DNR fined them for that, they wouldn’t be able to fight that fine by saying that it wasn’t there fault because, of course, God has control over what birds fall from the sky. God is in control of what birds get shot and the one who shoots them is responsible for shooting them. In the same way God is in control of those things that cause people to stumble and the one through whom those things come is responsible when they come through them.
In fact, the one through whom something comes that causes a little one to stumble would be better of if they were drowned in the sea. Therefore, the disciples (and we) are to watch ourselves so we don’t find ourselves being one of those who are shaking our fists at God for allowing something to happen (even planning for something to happen) that we were totally responsible for. If this seems like an incompatible, unharmonious, illogical mess to you, I would say you’re closer to the truth than if you just brushed it aside. I would also entrust you to the Scriptures to discover what really is incompatible, unharmonious, and illogical. Far to often we take our understanding of the way in which the world normally works and we assign those rules to the way in which we think God ought to govern the world he created. Instead, let’s submit ourselves to what we see in Scripture and, if it seems illogical, let’s first assume that we’re missing something rather than the Scriptures couldn’t be teaching what they seem to be teaching.
[1]If this short article has got you thinking more about how created beings can be held responsible for things God has planned, let me invite you to look out for an article coming soon that will address both Matthew 26:23-24 and Acts 4:27-28.