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THE GOSPEL OF LUKE – BEWARE!

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BEWARE!

“He said to His disciples, ‘Hard trials and temptations are bound to come, but too bad for whoever brings them on! Better to wear a millstone necklace and take a swim in the deep blue sea than give even one of these dear little ones a hard time.'” Luke 17:1, 2.

Do we ever ignore this warning! Why is it that we fall into this trap so easily? We live in an interactive world. No-one is an island, and no-one functions in isolation. It was God’s intention to create an entire universe that functioned together as one as the greatest expression of His nature.

God is one – echad – unity in diversity. There are sects and religions that take pride in their ‘monotheism’, denying the plurality of the Godhead from the mistaken idea that one God implies a single entity rather that a unity of essence and nature. The name, God, is a term that refers to a species, in the same way as ‘man’ or ‘dog’ refers to a species. Within the species are a myriad varieties but their essence is the same.

There are many gods in the world but they are the creation of man’s imagination and are therefore the reflection of human nature. They are often cruel, capricious, unpredictable, dictatorial and demanding. But, according to the Bible, “This is what the Lord says – Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty, ‘I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Who is like me?'” Isaiah 44:6.7a (NIV).

God’s being is expressed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are one in nature and essence but separate and distinct with different functions, one in purpose, not three gods, but one God. Jesus could say, even in His earthly human form, ‘I and the Father are one,’ and of the Holy Spirit He said, ‘But when He, the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth…He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.’ John 16:13,15 (NIV).

What is the implication? When God created man in His image, He made a being that was one with Himself, reflecting His nature and fulfilling His purpose, to be part of a unified universe that reflects His nature and glorifies Him.   

Therefore, like the issue of adultery which we have already discussed, to do anything that disrupts that unity is to challenge the power that holds the universe together. What happens between individuals sets a chain reaction in motion that affects families, communities and nations.

Man chose to violate than unity when he followed the lies of the devil at the beginning. Now we live in a world that has been torn apart by disunity. Selfishness, greed and wickedness rip families and communities apart and create misery and suffering everywhere. Take for example the wars that have decimated nations and are still destroying people’s lives today. Nations on every continent are at war, ruining cities, tearing up society and devastating families. Why? Selfishness and greed!

Yet Jesus warned, ‘Don’t you be the cause of it.’ He takes this matter so seriously that He said it would be better for that person to be thrown into the sea with a grinding stone around his neck than to put a stumbling block in the way of the nobodies, the ones He called ‘the little ones’.

To do that, wittingly or unwittingly, is to deny the very nature of God which does no harm to Him but does terrible damage and destruction to us. We are only fully human when we are one with the Creator of the universe, and that takes the miracle of God’s forgiveness and grace, through Jesus Christ, to begin the process.

But it’s your choice…

Drastic Mutilation

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DRASTIC MUTILATION

‘If anyone causes one of these little ones– those who believe in me – to stumble. It would be better for him if a large millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It were better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and go to hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell where ‘the worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched.

Everyone will be salted with fire. ‘Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt among yourselves, and be at peace with one another.’ (Mark 9: 42-50).

What Jesus was talking about makes no sense to a westerner without an understanding of Hebrew background and rabbinic teaching methods. First of all, Jesus used a teaching method here called hyperbole or exaggeration. What He said was never intended to be taken literally, and His disciples understood that.  

He was not telling His disciples to mutilate themselves in order to get rid of sin. That would contradict what He had already taught them, that sin is not about behaviour first of all; sin begins in the heart and issues in words and behaviour. What would be the point of cutting off hands or feet or plucking out an eye without a change of heart? Equally useless are the rules about diet and washing the body, because none of these things have any effect on the heart.

What did Jesus mean, then? He was speaking to His disciples in the context of John’s information that they had stopped a man from casting out demons in His name because he was not “one of them”. Jesus was indignant because they were being exclusive, as though He belonged to them and to no one else. He opened the door for anyone to follow Him. If they were not against Him, they were for Him.

What did He mean by “little ones”? He used this expression not only for children but also for the ordinary people who followed Him. They were “little ones” in the sense that they were simple and down-to-earth, like children. They had no high-and-mighty ideas about themselves unlike the religious leaders who thought they were a cut above everyone else and that they had exclusive rights to the understanding of the Torah.

Jesus had to use strong words to get them to understand that their attitude was unacceptable to Him. They were sinning against Jesus and against the man by stopping him from following Jesus. By “cutting off” hand or foot or “plucking out” an eye that offended, Jesus was conveying the need for a drastic change of attitude. “Get rid of whatever causes you to sin against another person.”

What these men needed to do was not to mutilate their bodies in order to change the attitude but to mutilate their hearts. The Apostle Paul would take this thought ever further. In the light of Jesus’s death, in order to change one’s attitude, one was to reckon oneself dead to sin and alive to God.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Rom. 6: 1-2).

The use of the word gehenna (translated “hell”) is also misunderstood. Gehenna was the city rubbish dump outside Jerusalem in the valley of Hinnom where the fire burned continually and where the garbage was thrown, including the bodies of criminals. Jesus was not referring to a place of eternal torment but a place where worthless rubbish was destroyed. His words were a warning that a person who had both hands, both feet and both eyes, but whose heart was corrupted by sin, would be utterly destroyed, like the garbage in the city dump.

Was He advocating a literal fire that never went out? Was He saying that people will burn forever in hell? We don’t know. What we do know is that what He said was intended not to scare people out of hell and into heaven, but to warn them of the dangers of selfishness which issue from a corrupted heart. If we want to experience real life with Him, we must get rid of the attitudes that diminish and dehumanise us.

This is not a “self-help” programme but a response to what He did for us. He died to remove sin and change our hearts. Without that, whatever changes we may make will merely be cosmetic. He calls us to follow Him. Only through faith in Him can we experience the deliverance He achieved through the cross. He put sin to death when He died. Now we can enter into real like by dying to sin with Him.

Since you died with Christ . . .  Since you have been raised with Christ, set you hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col. 2: 20a; 3:1).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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