Luke 17:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Following on from the warning to not put a stumbling block in front of others, comes this related instruction. If you have legitimate cause to admonish your fellow believer, you must still do it with great caution. Christ’s focus in what he says here is entirely on the one who has been offended against. You are being tested as much as the one needing correction, especially if the offence was done against you personally. All sorts of wrong reaction could arise up in your heart, and you could easily be carried away by a desire for revenge, when you ought to be seeking the healing of the body of Christ. You must admonish the other with a clear understanding that you are yourself one who transgresses God’s law and causes offence to others. It may soon need to be the other way round, and then you will want this person to admonish you in a way that makes it as easy as possible to repent and apologise. Therefore you must not be harsh in the way you do this. Harshness will convey the message that you have no real concern for the offender or their recovery, and no awareness of your own readiness to fall. Yes, there are cases when the rebuke needs to be public and needs to be sharp. Paul instructs Titus: ‘The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. ¹³ This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith’ (Titus 1:12-13). But even in that situation, it is not to be done in an uncontrolled way, with rage that is zealous for self, and not for God. The temptation is to set yourself up as a judge over the other, and there is only one Judge, and we must all stand before him. We admonish not because we are without sin, but because it is part of the means by which God sanctifies us – mutual admonition. The check on overzealous admonition, which may really be self-righteousness disguised as zel for God’s standards, is that we must be ready for forgive as soon as the other repents. We must not allow our admonition to build up momentum, so that we want to see the other punished, come what may. If the repentance is genuine – and yes, there are deceivers in the world and in the church – then the forgiveness must also be genuine. That means that we do not retain a secret longing to hurt the other. If we do that, we have crossed a line. If we have cause to admonish in the right spirit and there is repentance, then the Lord’s law is, we take no further account of it. The warning here is against admonition as a means of venting our anger, so that we see it as inconvenient when they apologise, because it means we have to stop being angry. We take care always in any admonition that we truly desire the other to improve.