Scripture: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Observation: Obstacles are a part of life. It isn’t a matter of if we will encounter them, but when. Stumbling will happen and growth comes from getting back up and pressing forward.
That’s all true… and.
And Jesus has no patience for someone who puts obstacles in the way of “these little ones.” So little patience, in fact, that He employs the harshest of imagery to get His point across. Inevitability of stumbling does not erase culpability from the source of the stumbling.
Jesus’ first warning concerns the externals—warning anyone in earshot not to cause the vulnerable children to stumble in their life of faith. It seems reasonable to conclude that Jesus has similar feelings regarding anyone in a vulnerable position who is doing all they can to believe in Him.
Next, Jesus pivots to internals, hyperbolically suggesting self-mutilation if hand, foot, or eye cause you to stumble. Better to limp into the kingdom than skip into hell. These evoke, albeit in a more vivid and personal way, Jesus’ parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price. The point in each is that the value of gaining life in God’s kingdom so outstrips life without the Lord that it is worth the ruthless elimination of whatever inward roadblocks interfere with attaining that happy goal.
Paul put it this way in his letter to the Philippians: “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
There’s a wonderful parallel here. Jesus and Paul both cannot help but resort to the most severe language, so great is their conviction about the goodness of life in Christ.
The very brutality of the language testifies to the immense beauty of the promise.
Application:
What internal stumbling block might you need to ruthlessly eliminate that deters you from taking hold of the life Christ desires you to have in Him?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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Amen to your prayer Psalm139 ❤️