Luke 17:1 - 4
And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin[a] are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.[b] 3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
Questions:
ReplyDelete1. How do temptations come through us?
2. We should die rather than be guilty of tempting someone?
3. If the brother is sinning seven times in a day, is he repenting the first 6 times?
4. Is there some significance to seven times?
https://hartmangroupdevotions.blogspot.com/2015/12/matthew-186-9-6-if-anyone-causes-one-of.html?zx=7c16265430948c0c says:
ReplyDeleteThe form of capital punishment that he referred to was practiced, according to Barnes, by the Greeks, Syrians, and Romans.
It is very clear that the sin Jesus describes is any action on the part of a Christian which would aid, encourage, influence, or cause a new Christian to sin. Causing a young Christian to sin is clearly a terrible sin that cannot be taken lightly.
Let us consider three ways in which one might cause a new Christian to commit these sins.
NEGLECT: One of the reasons young Christians are spoken of as "babies" is that they must be cared for, they must be fed, and they must be protected from false doctrine.
1 Cor 8:10-12 says, "For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ" (NIV).
DISCOURAGEMENT: Disgruntled Christians sometimes "unload" their gripes and complaints on young Christians. Usually the disgruntled person is cowardly and selfish. He gives no thought to what sort of dreadful effect his complaining might have on the babe in Christ because his only desire is to vocalize his complaints, attack those he disagrees with, and gain the impressionable new convert to his side.
Of the offenses mentioned, the discouraging of a new Christian by a disgruntled complainer is the most inexcusable. It is the result of mindless selfishness and constitutes behavior of the worst sort.
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How do we stumble people? It is easy, isn’t it? To hinder their faith, to withhold the faith and the gospel from them, to intentionally not teach them about the gospel, or to teach a misleading gospel. To discourage their ministry, to dispute their actions, to pick on their words, to pour water on their passion. To cause them to quit serving the Lord, to cause them to leave the fellowship of believers, to cause them to be bitter against God. It happens, whether we do it intentionally or not. 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!
https://hartmangroupdevotions.blogspot.com/2016/01/matthew-1821-35-21-then-peter-came-to.html says:
ReplyDeleteJewish tradition limited forgiveness to three times, perhaps based on Amos 1:3, 6, 9 and Job 33:29-30 (note Luke 17:4). Peter thought his willingness to forgive seven times was much more generous than Jewish tradition and thus surpassing the righteousness of Pharisees and teachers of the law (Matthew 5:20).
The phrase may also be translated "seventy times seven." But regardless of the exact translation, it means unlimited.
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"For the old, corrupt, unforgiving nature of man is NOT forgiven ... IT HAD TO BE PUT TO DEATH SO THAT SIN COULD BE DONE AWAY WITH. Through what He did He has separated me from my sin and He does not hold it against me ... for He cannot. The fact is that WE, who have been separated from our sin CANNOT hold it against each other.
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If the forgiveness that we received at the cost of the blood of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is so ineffective in our hearts that we are bent on holding unforgiving grudges and bitterness against someone, we are not a good tree. We are not saved. We don’t cherish this forgiveness. We don’t trust in this forgiveness. We don’t embrace and treasure this forgiveness. We are hypocrites. We are just mouthing. We haven’t ever felt the piercing, joyful wonder that God paid the life of his Son.
And it is not unique to Jesus. It is everywhere in Paul as well. He is talking to Christians here. “Have I not warned you before? Revilers will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Then he adds: “Such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–11). What is a reviler? Somebody who hates and holds grudges and is unforgiving and bitter. People like that don’t go to heaven, not because kindness earns heaven, but because kindness is the fruit of the Spirit which is given to those who have been broken by the love of Jesus and have embraced the sweetness of being forgiven even though we have reviled God.
Struggling to forgive is not what destroys us. As long as we are in the flesh, we will do our good deeds imperfectly, including forgiving and loving others. Jesus died to cover those imperfections. What destroys us is the settled position that we are not going to forgive and we have no intention to forgive and we intend to cherish the grudge and fondle the wrong that someone did to me and feel the bitterness. It feels good. I like to go to bed with my wrath at night, because he legitimately wronged me. I am going to hold this against him the rest of his life.
https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-17-commentary says:
ReplyDeleteThe major reason that we are so prone to sin against others and to take offense when others sin against us is that our sinfulness prompts us to justify ourselves and to blame others.
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(STEP 1) If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. (STEP 2) But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. (STEP 3) If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and (STEP 4) if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Mt 18:15-17)
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Allen on rebuke him - "This does not mean that we are to attack him with arrogant accusations and demands for apology. Rather, we are to seek the brother out, expose the problem in its seriousness to him, and express the desire for fellowship. If his attitude is right, he will adopt the proper attitude without coercion.
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People would sooner walk away from a strained relationship than to give biblical rebuke to the person who is sinning against them or against others. Or, quite often if someone sins against us, we go and tell others about it, “just so they can pray about it” or “to get their counsel.”
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We are never more like God than when we forgive the sin of others. And note this is a command in to do this without delay. The only way to truly obey/keep this command is by jettisoning our natural reaction (which is not to forgive) and to rely wholly on the Holy Spirit to gives us the desire and the power to forgive.
Questions and findings:
ReplyDelete1. How do temptations come through us?
2. We should die rather than be guilty of tempting someone?
Jesus may not have been referring to humans, but to spiritual beings (for more information on spiritual beings and the Watchers, refer to Mike Heiser and the Naked Bible Podcast, or his books). It's important to note, that the speculation that this may refer to spiritual beings is mine (I don't know what Heiser would say in this case).
Here's the reason I think that Jesus may not be necessarily referring to humans: We are sinful people who in our natural relationships cause people to be tempted all the time when we act sinfully. If we were to direct this verse to ourselves and take it seriously, a natural reaction would be to pull away from people to keep from tempting them. That's exactly the opposite of what God wants us to do. We are to be salt and light in the world, and lean into others despite our sinfulness. The more we lean into people, the more opportunity that our sinfulness will tempt them. But God will overcome our sinfulness and reach others through us anyway.
3. If the brother is sinning seven times in a day, is he repenting the first 6 times?
First of all, this is addressing our own hearts. Are we willing to endlessly forgive others the way God forgives us? Do we see that we sin against God all the time? Once we have the correct attitude firmly in our own hearts, now we can be prepared to do some spiritual discernment. Forgiving someone in our hearts is different than the actions we take towards others. Our of love for them, the correct action will differ wildly depending on where they are at. For example, we must not condone their sin or make it OK.
4. Is there some significance to seven times?
There was a short section in Precepts Austin that claimed that seven is the number of completeness. Otherwise, the significance may mean that we should forgive endlessly.