Nevertheless, despite this lack of information, none of us have any difficulty knowing what is meant by the term. It is not difficult for us because all of us have stumbled over something or another at some time in our lives. We know what a stumbling block is.
Stumbling Blocks in the Bible
I believe that the expression stumbling block is strictly a Biblical term. I do not know of any other literature that uses this idiom. To be technical about it, the word block has been added by the translators in an attempt to clarify the meaning for us. The meaning, of course, is quite clear. It first appears in the book of Leviticus (19:14) where there is a prohibition of putting a stumbling block in the path of a blind man in order to trip him.
By the time the
phrase appears in the New Testament, this “tripping someone up” came to mean
anything that would lead someone else to fall into doing a wrong deed. The
Apostle Paul for instance, spoke of stumbling blocks as those things in our
lives that will cause another to compromise his faith and fall into sin.
“Make up your
mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother’s way.” Paul
tells us (Romans 14:13).
In speaking
about stumbling blocks, the apostle means not only those things that are
overtly evil, but even those things that are neutral or innocuous, but which nevertheless
still may be a cause of stumbling to someone else. He uses the example of which
was the proper day to gather for worship, or of the dietary customs of the day.
Also, he speaks of some people that he knew who regarded the eating of meat as
wrong, or the drinking of wine.
About these
matters, Paul writes, “I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus
that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean,
then for him it is unclean.”
Nevertheless,
continuing with the example of eating meat, he writes, “If your brother is
distressed by what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your
eating destroy your brother, for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you
consider good, then, to be spoken of as evil.”
Paul’s point is
that rather than focusing on these external acts as Christians, our focus
should be on the inner qualities of ourselves and of others. “For the kingdom
of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and
joy in the Holy Spirit.”
“Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food!” Paul says. “All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to let his eating be a stumbling block. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything to cause your brother to stumble” (Quotations from Romans 14:13-23 BSB).
A Special Consideration for
Children
In Matthew 18,
Jesus brings up the subject of stumbling blocks in the context of our influence
upon children. He told the disciples, “Whoever causes one of these little ones
who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy
millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea”
(Matthew 18:6 BSB).
We can see that
Jesus took this issue of being a stumbling block seriously indeed. This is especially
so, it seems, when it comes to our influence upon children. Children naturally
look to adults as role models. They look to their parents in particular, but
they also look to all of us.
It is
understandable why they should do this. They know that they will one day be
adults, so to whom else should they look? It is the adults in their lives that
give them a guide as to what they should be like.
To many adults,
this is a frightening thought. It is frightening because they know that they
themselves have certain things in their lives that should not be there. In
order to ease our conscience about this, we often will say to ourselves, “This
is my personal affair and it is not the business of anyone else.”
We tell
ourselves, “There are many adults that do this same thing, so why should it
bother me?”
Well… that may work for us for a while, were it not for one thing. That thing is the Holy Spirit. If there is something in our lives that is not according to the way that God wants us to live, the Holy Spirit has a way of letting us know. He points these things out to us and he does not let us rest.
The Holy Spirit Confronts the
Stumbling Blocks
The truth be
told, there are many things about all of our lives that are not as they should
be. But the Holy Spirit does not simply say we are evil people, proceed to list
all of our faults to prove his point, and then tell us to change. It may be that
this is how it is before we become believers in Jesus. Before we came to Jesus, we saw our lives as
heading in an entirely wrong direction and understood that we need to change
everything about it. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and convinces us
that we need to turn to God in our lives.
This is the way
that we become Christians after having lived only for the world and for ourselves.
However, once we become believers, the Holy Spirit deals with us in a different
way. It is no longer that our entire lives are heading in a wrong direction,
but there are still things about our lives that are not right.
These the Holy
Spirit points out to us one at a time. He convicts us on one area of our life
that we need to bring before Jesus, so that we may confess it to him and ask
him to help us in it. When we have victory in that area, the Holy Spirit shows
us something else about our lives that we need to deal with.
Does that sound like a lot of work? Well, it is…sort of. But the even greater thing about it is that it is freedom; it is growth. Freedom is sometimes difficult to obtain, and growth inevitably comes slowly, but it is worth the effort. It is worth the time.
Dealing with Stumbling Blocks
“Woe to the
world because of its stumbling blocks!” Jesus said. “It is inevitable that
stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block
comes!” (Matthew 18:7).
As we can see,
this is a central issue for Jesus. This is not something that we can just brush
off as being our own personal affair. Whenever Jesus pronounced “woe” on
someone or something, the expression carried with it very serious consequences—eternal
consequences. This issue of stumbling blocks is an issue that we cannot brush
aside as being our own business and pretend does not matter. We see this even
more clearly as we continue to read what Jesus said.
“If your hand or your foot
causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you
to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast
into the eternal fire.
If your eye causes you to
stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life
with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.” (Matthew
18:8-9 NAS)
Those are some strong words. This is one of those instances where I do not think Jesus is speaking literally. I do not think that he is saying that we actually should cut off our hand if we do something wrong with it. I suppose some people might teach that Jesus does mean this literally. If you hear someone saying that, the first thing that I would do is to check to see if they still have both of their hands and both of their eyes.
However, neither do I want to compromise or water down the words of Jesus. He spoke in such strong terms because he wanted to show us that this is an extremely important matter. It is a matter that will have eternal consequences, and woe to us if we do not heed these words.
Beyond Dismemberment
So if Jesus
does not mean for us to literally cut off our hand or gouge out our eye, then
what does he mean?
What it meant
to the Apostle Paul was even more extreme than what Jesus had said. Paul said,
“I have been crucified with Christ,
and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20 NAS).
Paul did not stop at cutting off his hand or gouging out an eye. He crucified
his entire body!
This did not
mean that Paul literally and physically rigged up a cross and had someone nail
him to it. However, spiritually speaking, this is exactly what he did do. He
considered his life apart from Christ to have absolutely no value.
No… even more
than that, he considered his life apart from Christ to be dead!
He continues,
“It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now
live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and
delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20 NAS).
Paul did not
physically die in the flesh on that day that he gave himself up for Christ, but
spiritually speaking, his flesh did die. From that moment on, he worked on
living for Christ in all and every area of his life.
If we are sincere about our own lives with Christ, this is also what we must do. However, even knowing this, it still may leave us wondering about what Jesus said about stumbling blocks. How do we remove these things from our lives?
How to Crucify Your Flesh
Referring to
something else that Paul said, this is how he put it. “Take off your former way
of life, your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. Then
be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to
be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24).
Paul spoke of
the old manner of living almost as it if were a garment that we can take off
ourselves. When you think about it, this is more than simply an analogy, since
we accept that these bodies of ours are not what constitute our true beings.
Our true selves are our inner selves, our spirits. Our spirits are clothed in
our bodies.
Paul tells us
to take off our old self. He does not mean, of course, that our entire physical
body will change so that we have a different physical body, but spiritually
speaking, that is exactly what he means. “Take off that old body,” he tells us,
“So that you can put on your new self that is created after the likeness of God
in true righteousness and holiness.”
This is to be a
complete change over. We do not
change only the pants but not the shirt. We do not dedicate some areas of our
lives to Christ but continue to live for the world in other areas. It is to be
a complete transformation into the person that God has created you to be. There
is to be no corruption that comes from the world.
“I have been
crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
This means that when we see something about our former manner of life that has come from the corruption of the world, we are to take it off like an old, ragged garment. We are to cast it away. These things are the stumbling blocks that will cause not only ourselves to stumble, but will also trip up others in their walk with the Lord.
Our New Set of Clothes
I am told that
one of the treatments in overcoming an addiction of some kind is to replace the
addictive and hurtful habit with a good habit. It is appropriately called
addiction replacement. The treatment makes sense to me, since that is also
exactly what Paul is talking about in ridding ourselves of the habits of our
old self. These are the stumbling blocks in our lives, our “old garments,” as
he calls them.
When we cast
away these old garments, we are to replace them with new. When we take away
what is a hurtful stumbling block to ourselves and others, we are to replace it
with a helpful one.
“Put away
falsehood,” Paul says, “and learn to speak the truth.”
“Let the thief
no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own
hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”
“Let no
corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building
up…that it may give grace to those who hear.”
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (from Ephesians 4:22-32 ESV)
Stumbling Blocks in the Church
In Matthew,
chapter 13, Jesus puts the matter of stumbling in terms of a farmer planting
seeds in his field. Some of the seeds, he said, fell onto rocky soil. These sprang
up quickly, because the soil was shallow, but as soon as the sun began to dry
out the soil, they withered and died. Other seeds grew where there were thorns
and other weeds. These choked out the good seed.
All of this
Jesus puts into the context of the Kingdom of God. These seeds sprouting in
rocky ground or among the thorns are the ones who appear to accept the
teachings of God and initially have great enthusiasm in the teachings, but they
have no depth to their belief. Then, when they encounter some opposition, not
only do they themselves abandon the faith, but they cause others also to fall
away.
We can often
see these sorts of stumbling blocks in churches today. These are the people who
truthfully do not have any interest in knowing the way of the Lord, but instead
consider the church as just another organization to belong to. In doing things
and making decisions in the church, they do not consider the Word of God or for
what is helpful for the Kingdom of God, but rely only upon their own opinions
or the present culture of the day.
Or, another way
in which people can be stumbling blocks in the church is that they have certain
things about their lifestyle that is in direct conflict with the teachings of
the Bible. This causes confusion to those who are sincerely trying to learn how
to walk with Jesus. The people who mislead these Christians are the stumbling
blocks to the true believers.
In his story about the wheat and the tares, Jesus talks about “the end of the age” when he will send his angels to gather all of these stumbling blocks to cast them into that place of punishment where there will be endless weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the fate of those who live their lives as stumbling blocks.
Let’s Get Personal
What we do, the
way that we act does not only affect ourselves, but also has an influence on
those around us and on those who know us. The words that come from our mouths
can cut deep wounds into the lives of others. Our actions can ruin their lives.
“Woe to the
world because of its stumbling blocks.”
This especially
seems to be true in regard to our influence on young lives. After Jesus told
his disciples that it would be better to have a heavy millstone hung around one’s
neck and be cast into the sea rather than to cause a little child who believes
in Christ to stumble, he again brings up the subject of children.
“See that you
do not despise one of these little ones,” he told them. “For I say to you that
their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven”
(Matthew 18:10).
Is there
something about your life that you know is not consistent with the way that God
intended you to be? Cast it away. It is a stumbling block. Replace it instead
with something that is good.
Many struggle their
entire lives with some hurtful habit that
possesses them or an unwanted activity, but never being able to overcome it.
There may be many reasons for this and I know that it is sometimes a
complicated issue. However, one of the reasons may be that we often only
consider the harm that this thing or this manner of living is doing only to
ourselves. If we were to understand that these things are also stumbling blocks
to others who are walking through life, it may give us the incentive to cast it
away.
Do not despise
these little ones. Let them go to Jesus, for such is the kingdom of God.
Do not let
stumbling blocks be part of your life. As we walk in the newness of our lives,
the stumbling blocks will be removed.
Jesus asked, “Are
there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not
stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the
night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” (John 11:9-10 ESV)
And from the
book of Proverbs, “I have directed you in the way of wisdom; I have led you in
upright paths. When you walk, your steps will not be impeded; And if you run,
you will not stumble” (Proverbs 4:11-12 ESV).
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