Mark 9:42 Commentary and Bible Study

Mark has included John’s question in verses 38-41 which interrupts Christ’s teaching about true greatness, but now after answering John, the Lord returns to this subject, so that verse 42 should be seen as following on from verse 37. It is a continuation of his correction to their wrong attitude in disputing who would be the greatest. This is not said of all children, for not all have faith, but of ‘one of these little ones who believes in me’. Verse 37 expresses God’s high regard for the believing child positively; verse 42 expresses it negatively; God watches such children them to avenge them if any should seek to harm them. What does it mean to offend such a child? It means to do something which causes them to stumble in their faith. This might include doing them harm, or putting temptation in their way, or even causing them great perplexity, as John must have done in challenging this exorcist as he had – Mark links Christ’s answer to this event also. God watches over and avenges his own. But what is the punishment threatened here? Christ says that one thing is better than another. It is hard to think of a more terrifying death than the one he describes. To have a millstone placed around the neck which cannot be removed, and to be thrown into the sea where that stone will drag the individual down into the horrifying unknown depths of the ocean’s darkness, is to be placed in a position of ultimate fear. What could be worse than that? Surely the next verse gives the answer. It is to be cast ‘into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched.’ Man has an instinctive fear of the ocean depths, and the thought of Jonah being cast into the sea and held prisoner in the fish’s belly is an apt picture of hell, of which Scripture makes it a type. God designs a fitting punishment for every sin, and this sin, Christ tells us, has a most awful punishment because of God’s love for the child. ‘Listen,’ says the Lord, ‘whoever shall offend’ – cause a believer, a child, a young believer or another person, to stumble, to fall into sin – is behaving so much like an unconverted individual, he had better repent is the implication, and make sure he really knows the Lord.