Today, I am reading and commenting on Luke 17-18.

Today’s passage begins with an interesting progression of Jesus’ teaching and request from His disciples.  He begins by warning us against being the cause of someone to stumble into sin.  He says that things which cause people to sin are unavoidable, situations will arise where people will be unable to resist temptation, but we should do everything in our power to avoid being the ones who create those situations.  This leads Jesus into telling us to rebuke those in our fellowship who sin against us, but to forgive them if they repent.  In fact, we should forgive them even if they repeatedly sin against us and ask for forgiveness.  There are really three interconnected things here, and their relationship is complicated.  First, we should carefully watch ourselves so as not to cause others to stumble.  However, if they do, we should point out their sin to them and call them back to God.  We should especially do that if their sin was causing US to stumble.  However, in any case, should they recognize their sin and repent, or even just say that they repent, we should forgive them, no matter how often they repeat the offense (this gets a little complicated when it comes to Church discipline, but that is covered in other passages and not part of today’s lesson).

Which brings us to how Jesus disciples responded to this teaching.  After hearing Jesus tell them to forgive others up to seven times a day for the same offense, they asked Him to increase their faith.  I find that interesting, when Jesus told them to forgive those who sin against them, they asked Him to increase their faith.  They didn’t say, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”  They said, “That’s really hard and I don’t think I have enough faith to pull it off.  Please give me more faith so that I can.”  And Jesus’ answer to their request to increase their faith deserves careful thought.  First, He tells them that it doesn’t take much faith to accomplish great things, that it takes less faith than they think.  But, if they want to increase their faith, He tells them how to do so.  He tells them, “when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  So, the answer to gaining more faith is to do everything that we know God has asked of us and then look for another task to do for Him.  I want to reiterate that Jesus makes two points in response to His disciples request for more faith.  First, He tells them, and us, that if you think you need more faith to do what God is calling you to do, you are probably wrong…it doesn’t take as much faith as you think.  Second, desiring more faith is a good thing, and the way you get more faith is by doing God’s will because you believe it is your duty, not because you think God will reward you for doing so.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus