Luke 17.1-10

In the chapters we’ve been through recently, Jesus has been slowly but surely whittling away at our self-centered worldview, and drawing our eyes inexorably upward. He showed us how God sees the resources he has given us; he showed us how he sees the relationships he has given us. And in some ways, these things are fairly easy to wrap your mind around. You can break positive attachments to things that are valuable to you if you have a greater incentive to do it.

Here’s what I mean: most people who love money, love money for reasons they feel are pleasurable. But once they believe that in Christ, there is superior pleasure, the pleasure they used to find in money doesn’t seem so important.

When our marriage is the most important thing for us, that’s because we’re happy in that marriage; but once we believe that in Christ there is superior happiness, we no longer feel obligated to put all the weight of our happiness on another person who can’t possibly sustain it.

That, we can understand. But it is much harder if the “thing” we’re holding on to doesn’t come from something positive, but from something negative. There are things we hold on to—opinions, or feelings, or habits—that are born out of negative experiences. And few negative experiences are more formative than the experience of being sinned against.

Here’s where Jesus is going to go here. He’s going to talk about the way we handle our own responsibility in others’ sin; then he’s going to talk about how we approach the situation when others sin against us. He’s going to show us the faith that this kind of thinking requires; and then, perhaps the hardest thing for us to hear: he’s going to remind us that living our lives this way is absolutely possible.

The thing is, this is a lot harder

Watch Yourselves, For Your Lives May Lead Others to Sin (v. 1-4)

1 And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin 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.”

Causing Others to Sin

Jesus wasn’t naive. He knew perfectly well that being tempted to sin is part of what it means to live in a fallen world.

It’s important that we define some terms here. “Sin” is the word the Bible uses to talk about any thought, word or act that goes against God’s character and revealed will. The Bible is full of descriptions of who God is, and commandments of what God tells us to do. He calls us to “be holy, as [he is] holy” (). Sin is anything in us that is not in line with God’s own holiness.

Temptation to sin is different. Temptation, in itself, is not sin. Jesus himself was tempted: the letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was “in every respect…tempted as we are, yet without sin” (). Being tempted means being put in a situation where the opportunity to sin is there, and that opportunity can be taken or passed by. We can be tempted to do something sinful, and say no. We can be tempted to dwell on a sinful thought, and decide to not give into that line of thought.

Increase Our Faith

1 And he said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin 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.

It’s important that we don’t conflate temptation and sin: they’re not the same thing.

So we should be careful to not conflate the two, and imagine that to be tempted is the same thing as to sin outright.

Now, that is something most Christians have learned. But knowing the difference between temptation and sin can make some Christians go to the other extreme, and take temptation too lightly: because temptation is common to all human beings, we think of it as no big deal.

Temptation in itself is not sin. The letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus was “in every respect…tempted as we are, yet without sin” (). So we should be careful to not conflate the two, and imagine that to be tempted is the same thing as to sin outright.

But temptation is not to be taken lightly—neither our temptation, nor the temptation of others.

And that’s what Jesus is getting at here: ultimately, the way Christians live their lives will do one of two things: it will draw people to Christ, or push them away from Christ.

However, recognizing the difference between the two can sometimes cause us to take temptation too lightly, and imagine it as something harmless or “normal.” An alcoholic can tell you that it is during the very beginnings of temptation that the end result is decided: that’s why you don’t see alcoholics who are serious about not drinking hanging around outside of bars, under the pretense that they’re not doing anything wrong.

People will always find abundant reasons to run away from Jesus. That’s the sad reality of living in a world corrupted by sin: people are naturally drawn toward sin and away from Christ, because we are all sinners, and everyone naturally acts in conformity to our nature.

When it’s our own temptation, we often act nearly on instinct. If we are prone to a certain sin, and we desperately want to stop, we set up safeguards for ourselves, to not put ourselves into a position to be tempted—an alcoholic knows how dangerous it is for him to be near a bar, so he stays away. (Even if it wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for someone else.)

But Christians are called to counteract that draw: we are “new creations,” Paul says in —we are no longer under sin, but under Christ. As such, we can resist that pull toward sin and run to Jesus; and we are called to act as ambassadors who draw others in that same direction.

And part of what that looks like is taking into account the unintended effects of the things we say and do.

But here’s what Jesus is getting at in today’s text: somehow we forget about how insidious temptation can be when we’re with other people—we think about our own temptation, but we rarely think about theirs. For some reason we assume that if we don’t struggle with something, the folks around us don’t either.

When we say things that are not true, we dishonor the gospel and drive people from Christ. The so-called “prosperity gospel” promises wealth and happiness if we follow Christ, so people flock to it; and then when they see that become a Christian doesn’t mean that they’ll get rich and have everything they always wanted, they run away, feeling they’ve been lied to (because they have).

When we act in ways that run counter to God’s character, we dishonor the gospel and drive people from Christ. How disillusioning must it be for unbelievers to see people who call themselves Christians, and yet who show a shocking lack of love and understanding towards, say, people who live with same-sex attraction?

And yet, leagues of evangelical leaders are not only supporting his policies (that’s one thing), but positively singing his praises. They regularly talk about how there has been no better president for Christianity in American history, no president that better exemplified “Christian values.”

How disillusioning must it be for believers to see their brothers and sisters—people they trust—encouraging them to watch and enjoy things that are sources of temptation for them? Christians who are new to the faith—and I’ve seen this happen—have left the church because their fellow believers have led them into situations where they’ve been exposed to temptation, and they can’t find any help in coping with these temptations because the people they would turn to for help are doing the things they’re trying to avoid.

And so, in one fell swoop, unbelievers have a

Jesus calls us to think hard about other people’s temptation when we say or do anything—how our words or acts may drive people away from Christ. It would be better, he says, to die a slow and painful death here on earth than to have a lifestyle that leads others away from Christ.

Rebuke and Forgive, For Others Will Sin Against You (v. 3-4)

When I read, I can pretty easily separate books into one of three categories.

Category 1 books are books that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to anyone. Books like To Kill a Mockingbird, or the novels of Marcel Pagnol—those should be required reading for every human alive.

Category 3 books are books I simply can’t justify reading under any circumstances. These are books about which I will unequivocally tell everyone, “Stay away.”

The tricky part comes in between the two.

Category 2 books are books that I love…but that I won’t recommend until I know someone quite well.

In reality there are very few people I know well enough to know what may be a source of temptation for them, and what won’t.

And that’s the crux of the matter: Jesus is calling us to take not only our own temptations into account in our lives, but the possible temptations of other people.

Now, sometimes you can’t really know what’s going to tempt someone, and you can’t always avoid it. Let’s say I’m talking with someone who, unbeknownst to me, has been struggling to have children. I happily talk about my kids, and that conversation may tempt that person towards despondency. That’s not my fault, because there’s no way I could have known to not talk about my kids around that person. We can’t always avoid it.

When Jesus talks about the one through whom temptations come, he is talking about those people who knowingly place other people in front of something that will be a source of temptation for them. I say “knowingly” because you never really know what’s going to tempt someone, and you can’t always avoid it. Let’s say I’m talking with someone who, unbeknownst to me, has been struggling to have children. I happily talk about my kids, and that conversation may tempt that person towards despondency. We can’t always avoid it.

However, that is a very different scenario than, say, my encouraging someone to expose themselves to something I know not everyone can handle. The classic example from the Bible is found in , in which Paul talks about a man who would tempt his brother to sin through eating meat.

That sounds strange to us today, but at the time Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians were still learning to mingle. There were some meats that were, under the Law of Moses, ritually unclean. A Gentile Christian would have no problem eating these meats, because he knows that in Christ, as Paul says, “nothing is unclean in itself” ().

However, for a Jewish Christian, eating certain meats could provoke a serious crisis of conscience, because even if they know intellectually that Christ accomplished the Law for them, emotionally they still can’t handle the idea that eating these meats is now okay.

So Paul tells the Christian who feels free to eat to take his brother’s conscience into account—if what you see as “good” may expose your brother to temptation, then don’t do it! Your brother’s conscience is more important than what you may or may not eat for dinner.

Jesus says this is a very serious matter.

There are temptations everywhere, in every moment, waiting to spring on us, and we all react differently to them.

Forgiving Others of Sin

If we thought the first two verses were difficult, it gets much worse. Let’s take the first half of v. 3 first.

3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him...

Few things in the Christian life are more difficult than showing someone their sin in a way that doesn’t tempt them to more sin. It is a very difficult task to call someone on their sin without driving them to anger or prideful defensiveness.

People have sometimes taken the Bible’s admonitions to call one another on our sins as an excuse to feed our own anger. Someone sins against me; it makes me angry; and because the Bible calls me to rebuke my brother, I feel justified in showing my anger and lashing out at the other person.

But we have to remember that v. 3 comes right after v. 1-2. Jesus absolutely calls me to rebuke my brother if I see sin in him, or if he sins against me; but he calls me to do it in such a way that protects my brother from further temptation.

I remember one time Edouard Nelson, the pastor at Eglise des Ternes, called me on something I had done which had inadvertently hurt him. He did call me on it; he didn’t pull any punches about my sin or how it had hurt him.

But (and I realized this later on) his motivation for rebuking me was so clearly not anger towards me, but rather love for me and care for me, that I didn’t feel a single urge to defend myself. Rather, I felt sorry. I saw the truth of what he was saying, and I felt sorry for my sin, and I repented of it.

That is the goal; that is how we rebuke one another—not out of anger, but rather with a clear goal to protect our brothers and sisters from temptation, and to drive them to repentance. And that’s why after telling us to rebuke one another, Jesus says (v. 3b):

...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.”

In Judaism, it was considered honorable to forgive someone three times if they sinned against you. Three times was the gold standard. But Jesus’s disciples were called to go beyond that. (And in , he goes even further than he does here: he says that even seven times isn’t enough, but rather “seventy times seven”—an idiomatic way of saying, “Without end.”)

It’s natural (and even considered wise) for us to put a limit to our forgiveness. We say things like, “You say you’re sorry, and you keep doing it. So your sorry doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

As much sense as that seems to make, it is not the way the followers of Jesus are called to forgive. Jesus took on every sin of his children, and he was punished for our sin, in our place. Because God punished our sin in Christ, he forgives us without limit. Every sin we could ever ask forgiveness for has already been punished in the person of Christ.

In the same way, no matter how many times someone sins against you, if that person is in Christ (or if that person comes to know Christ one day), the sin he committed has already been punished in the person of Christ. So just as God forgives us without end, we are to forgive without end.

Now, that’s not to say that we should be stupid. If your brother has manifested a pattern of sinful behavior in the past that has hurt you, it is probably a good idea to keep away from that guy. But it is possible to protect yourself without harboring bitterness or anger toward the person in question.

Unforgiven sin nearly always hurts the person sinned against far more than it hurts the person who sinned. We hold onto our bitterness because we don’t want to give the other person the satisfaction of knowing we did something kind for them—because we want to punish them. But ultimately, holding on to bitterness does very little to the person who sinned, and positively eats away at the person who refuses to forgive.

And you don’t know what will happen: even if that person is an unbeliever, you don’t know what their future holds. You may be trying to punish someone for whom Christ was already punished by God.

So we are called to keep our eyes fixed on Christ, to remember his sacrifice for us, and to sacrifice ourselves in the same way. Forgiveness is a painful experience, always; but it is painful like removing a cancerous tumor is painful. Christ suffered our punishment, so we wouldn’t have to; and he suffered our punishment, so that we wouldn’t have to keep punishing.

I think we can agree that these are incredibly difficult things to do. Living in such a way that others are drawn to Christ rather than driven away from him; rebuking our brothers and sisters in such a way that they are protected and cared for rather than beaten down; forgiving our brothers and sisters without end, should they repent… These are almost unimaginably difficult things Jesus calls us to.

So difficult, in fact, that we cannot do it alone. Such a life requires faith.

Have Faith, for This Life Requires It (v. 5-6)

You have to admire the

The Faith This Perspective Requires

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

You have to admire the apostles’ clearheadedness here—it’s one of the few times we see them actually understand the full measure of what Jesus is telling them. Upon hearing him give these practically impossible commandments, they don’t ask him to help them forgive, or to give them more love, or to make them holy. They ask him for the one essential thing, the one thing that will make all these other things possible.

They ask him for more faith.

Their request reveals a couple of things about the disciples at this point.

First of all, it shows that they already had faith. It is by faith that we ask for greater faith. The disciples knew their faith was real, but they recognized that it was weak.

Secondly, it shows that they realized that they couldn’t produce more faith on their own. Trying to produce faith in yourself is like trying to grow a third arm. Faith is not something we can drum up through sheer effort.

Interesting side note (at least I find it interesting): In church, we often use the phrase “Place your faith in Christ.” I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a pastor tell that to unbelievers, when they call them to come to Christ. “Place your faith in Christ, repent of your sins, and trust him.” I’ve said it myself, hundreds of times.

And every time I’ve said it, I’ve said it because I am aware that there may well be people here who have faith, but who don’t know it yet. If you’re going to “place your faith in Christ,” you must have faith in the first place.

The reality of the Christian life is that God is the one who gives faith to whom he will, and always does it independently of our own efforts. We have to make the effort to place our faith in Christ, yes—but before we can do that, God must give us this faith that we will place in Christ.

The disciples knew their faith didn’t come from them, but from God; and in the same way, they knew that if their faith was to grow, it would not come from them.

Thirdly, they realized that in order to live the life Jesus was calling them to live—this life of extreme self-examination, to protect others from sin, this life of courageous exhortation and forgiveness—they would need help. They would need something to come from outside that would help them protect their brothers and sisters well, something that would help them rebuke sinners in love, something that would help them forgive when they are sinned against.

They realized that in order to do this, they would need faith.

Living like this requires faith—because it is only by faith that we believe what is true, and act on it. It is only by faith that we are able to believe that the well-being and salvation of other people are more important than my own personal pleasure or opinions. It is only by faith that we are able to believe that rebuking someone, calling on their sin, may actually be better for them, more loving to them, than not saying anything at all. It is only by faith that we are able to trust that God is perfectly just and does not let sin go unpunished…and so we don’t need to hang on to our anger, and we are able to forgive.

They already had faith.

Living like this is impossible withour faith.

They realized that living such a life is impossible without help.

And the good news is that the faith we need to live this life is possible, because, as Jesus says, a little faith goes a very long way. V. 6:

They realized they couldn’t produce more faith on their own.

6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

For some reason I’ve always understood the opposite of what he actually says here. For some reason we read this verse, and we see the effect. Like, if someone told a tree to come up out of the ground and launch itself into the sea, that would be impressive. So we imagine that he’s talking about the kind of faith I could never have.

But he explicitly says that the faith to do this is tiny—like a grain of mustard seed. Just a little faith is required for God to do extraordinary things.

Now, obviously he’s not saying that we should literally go out trying to get trees to launch themselves into the sea; it’s an image of something that is seemingly impossible. He’s encouraging his disciples, who are asking for more faith. He doesn’t tell them it’s a bad thing to ask for more faith; but he does say that God can do incredible things with even the tiniest shred of faith.

What’s the point? The point is that we are called to have faith, because this life requires it. It is only by faith that we can live as Christ called us to live; but Jesus gives us the faith we need to do it.

Now, we can look at everything Jesus has said to his disciples so far and focus on the immensity of the task. And we can imagine what it would look like to live like this. We may even know people who have lived like this. We look at their lives, and we admire them; we see them as giants. And we imagine that if ever we managed to live like this, it would be an extremely commendable thing.

He gives us enough to start believing that this may just be possible, and he knows that our natural instinct is to get ready to clap ourselves on the back for a job well done.

So he’s going to give us a reality check, and show us that when he calls us to live like this, he’s not calling us to something superhuman or extraordinary. What he calls us to here is not varsity-level, apostle Paul-level Christianity. It is baby Christianity. This is Christianity for dummies. It is not commendable; it is simply our duty.

Unworthy Servants

Live Like This, For It Is the Bare Minimum (v. 7-10)

7 “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8 Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ ”

7 “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8 Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ ”

Now, it’s easy to examine yourself with this passage. Look at v. 8—when he tells the servants to come in and prepare supper for him, to come serve him, before getting their own food. How many of us read v. 8 and find Jesus kind of mean?

The disciples lived in a very different, labor-based culture…and they were already susceptible to this kind of entitlement. If what he says here was necessary for them, it is a thousand times more necessary for modern Millenials.

It’s hard to see what he’s saying as anything other than harsh and cold, because we’re so used to being rewarded for dumb things that don’t deserve rewards. We’ve become so entitled that we think we deserve to be rewarded for things our grandparents wouldn’t have thought twice about doing, just because it needed to be done.

Jesus is exposing in us a “Well, what do I get out of it?” attitude. We imagine that in order to really see the point of doing something, we need to make sure we’re being properly rewarded.

Jesus agrees with our grandparents.

The danger of a “Well, what do I get out of it?” attitude.

But there is a minimum amount of work required of us, that is not deserving of anything extra, but that is simply our duty, because we serve a Master who deserves no less.

It’s not that hard to see the point of what Jesus says here; but it’s a lot harder to swallow when we remember the context.

He has called us to a life which seems incredibly difficult to us. He has called us to pay attention to the way we live, because our lives can push people away from the gospel just as easily as it can draw people to the gospel. He calls us to lovingly and courageously tell other Christians when they are sinning. He calls us to forgive those who sin against us.

This does require faith; Jesus isn’t saying it’s easy.

He’s saying that this is simply the normal Christian life. This is not extraordinary behavior that deserves exorbitant reward. This is basic holiness. It is the bare minimum. It’s not above and beyond the call of duty; it is the call of duty.

WHY does he say this? What’s the point of the whole?

Essentially, the three exhortations Jesus gives in v. 1-4 come down to this: take your responsibility toward other people seriously. I am not only concerned with my own salvation and holiness; I must be concerned with the salvation and holiness of others.

Jesus calls us to take care of each other, and we should take it as a matter of course that we will live this way, because 1) he will give us what we need to do it; and 2) it is the simple duty of every single Christian.