Cause and Effect

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

CAUSE AND EFFECT

Luke 17:1-3

17:1 Jesus said to his disciples: "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. 2 It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3 So watch yourselves.

NIV

Temptations are going to come our way and it is doubtful that we are going to be able to resist every one of them. It is the corrupt condition of our humanness that it is inevitable we will fail to live a life completely free of all sin. This is the reason in the first place we need Christ and it is the continuing reason we need to live in Christ. Even with all the power of the Spirit within us, with Christ living in us, or as one author puts it, Christ living as us, we are bound to this flesh at this moment and this flesh is weak and will continue to yield to some of those temptations from time to time. Sure we do not live in the continual state of sin, as we did before accepting Christ as our Savior, but we still have sin in our lives. This is unavoidable as long as we live in the flesh. Jesus makes that clear, but he also makes it very clear that we are in grave danger if for any reason we are the cause of another person’s sin. How would we become the cause of another’s sin? Are they not responsible for their own sin? Yet Jesus says we can and woe to anyone who does bring sin to another so we should watch our selves. So how could we do that? It is possible that in some sense we could persecute another believer in their particular beliefs, or doctrinal position which could cause them harm in their faith or discourage their faith, or service to God. By insisting our interpretation is the only correct one and they are in error, we might cause them to question their beliefs, become discouraged or perhaps angry at us, even developing into hatred toward us, or on the other hand become self-righteous and defensive, actually attacking our faith, our beliefs. We could also act in some way as a seducer. That is teaching false truths causing people to believe what is not true. This would be corrupting the truths of Christ’s and his ordinances. If we did this with such authority that we were in fact seducing others, especially those who are either new in the faith, or weak in their faith, with little understanding of scripture, we would be causing them, in essence, to sin. It is also possible that if we profess our faith out loud, proclaiming we are Christians, but live in such a scandalous way, so to speak, we could be the cause of another’s sin. It is especially true of those of us who have the ear of others. But it is also true of all of us. If we say we are a Christian and then do or say things which are contrary to the way of Christ, we dishonor him first and foremost, but we also give way for others to either judge us, if they are believers, or see us as hypocrites, if they are unbelievers, and in both cases we cause sin to abound in them. The point is we need to be cognizant of our own lives, actions and reactions in our relationships with all other people so as to not be the one which brings the reason for sin. Yet having said that, we will most likely fail at that too, being in the human condition, but nevertheless we should be completely aware of how we are and as careful as we can to avoid being the cause, depending on Christ to live in and through us.