Luke 17:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The word translated ‘offences’ is the Greek meaning causes of stumbling or stumblingblocks, and originally referred to a stick to which bait was attached, which acted as the trigger for a trap of a snare. Verse 2 confirms this with the warning not to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Who are the little ones? In the similar (but not parallel) passages in Matthew and Mark, Christ has called a child to him and set him in the midst of the disciples in order to teach them, a child who believes in Christ. It is therefore a warning against damaging anything as precious and as vulnerable as the simple childlike faith of another believer, especially one whose trust is not yet fortified by a body of knowledge, and whose faith can be easily damaged by careless handling. This is not to say that God is unable to defend his children, or that one of them can be fatally harmed, but this warning will itself contribute to their protection.How great is the comfort and strengthening which faith gives to the new convert! The whole life is transformed and there is a childlike trust directed to the Lord, which he considers to be of inestimable value. How wonderfully he responds to that trust, and how careful he is not to damage it, or take advantage of it. God’s other children must be equally anxious not to damage the trust of the young believer. This child is weak in itself and yet it has reached out and placed all its confidence in the one who has eternal strength, and trusted him never to let it down. When we place our trust in the Lord, he feels the obligation not to betray our trust. But what if another should do so? What if someone who the child expects to be equally concerned for its spiritual welfare, does not value the child’s simple trust in the same way? They ought to, because they too are believers, or claiming to be believers. But there is a failure to value the work of God in the heart of that other one. Perhaps they set a bad example which offends the conscience of the child, or the childlike one, and he is encouraged to sin in some way. Perhaps they smother the earliest begins of the work of grace in the heart by rejecting it as having any reality. Perhaps they set some impossible standard before the child, not to help the child, but to show off in some way. There is nothing more precious than the faith which God gives to his children. In the early stages it is delicate and easily bruised. Some do not know how to nurture a seedling: to water it gently and protect it from violent winds. The Lord’s guardian care and his jealous concern is aroused on behalf of the weakest of his newborns. These words are very solemn. The threatening is equally solemn. Are we to believe that the Lord would destroy one of his true children who offended a little one in the faith? No, he can never turn against, or lose, one of his true children. But even for them this is a very serious matter, and this dire warning is here given to the disciples in order to prevent them from sinning in this way. But false believers may offend in this way and set stumbling blocks before the weak, and suffer the terrible consequences described here. There is a false church and there are nominal believers, and the warning is given to them as well. The depths of the sea are a terror to many. When we consider going down into its darkness and inaccessibility, and beyond the reach of help, then it becomes a fitting picture of hell. That is what is being described here. They top millstone had a hole in its centre through which the grain entered before being ground between this stone and the one beneath. That millstone was of enormous weight, and in the horrifying image, Christ imagine it placed around a person neck and he be thrown into the sea, so that he could hope that anyone could save him. Something worse than that will happen on the Day of Judgment to those who have offended God’s children, when the offender is plunged into the pit forever.