Luke 17:1-4 - Causing others to sin and forgiveness

17:1,2

How do we respond to sin in our own lives and in the lives of others? In this teaching Jesus addresses these questions. First of all, there is no point in hoping that we, or they, will never sin. “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come”. From time to time a “sinless perfection” teaching arises in the church, this is always an erroneous teaching. So we need to face up to the fact that sin will happen, it will happen in me and it will happen in you. The human reaction is often to somehow rejoice in the failings of others, thinking their failure somehow makes me less guilty. Jesus tells us here that our first concern should be to seek to ensure that we are not the instrument that causes someone else to sin. It is a terrible thing to cause someone else to stumble. This could come as judgement, or it could be the realisation of the consequences of our actions. “little ones” perhaps implies that Jesus is thinking primarily of new believers.

17:3,4

So we are to keep a watch on what we do. So often we cause trouble because we “weren’t thinking”, we need to think more! So what do we do if a fellow Christian sins against us, as will happen? We rebuke them. Now does this mean we rebuke every little sin? I think not, we need to take all of Scripture into account. Sometimes we should just overlook small things, and we should not be quick to take offence. However, there are times when we do need to rebuke someone. If they repent, ie admit their guilt and seek to change, then we should forgive them. This is the case even if they fail and repent on numerous occasions.

But isn’t this giving licence to sin, we may ask? Well, these words are directed to the one sinned against. So if we are sinned against then we need to have an attitude of forgiveness, but note that the rebuking, repenting and forgiving does not mean pretending that sin does not matter. To the person who keeps on sinning Jesus would have other things to say,  But if someone repents, even after many failures, Jesus sacrifice on the cross is sufficient to pay for that sin. We should also note that elsewhere Jesus has different things to say about someone who refuses to admit their guilt (Matt 18:17).