One of the most striking instances of (TKa.v5a\ov in the experience of Jesus is that which is connected with Joim the Baptist. John was evidently dis-
appointed somehow in Jesus. He had had reason to regard Him as the Messiah, but He was not the Messiah John iiad expected. Where were the axe and the fan and the consuming fire ? Why, if the Messiah had really come, were not all wrongs irresistibly righted ? Why was a true servant of God like himself left to sutler for fidelity to his Master ? It is to this temper in John tliat Jesus says, ' Blessed is he whosoever shall not be ott'ended in me' (Mt II'*, Lk 7^). We must not impose our preconceptions on God, and dictate to Him the terms on which He may have recognition from us. This always implies the risk that we may stumble at wliat He actually does — refuse to recognize Him in Jesus because the manifestation does not square with our demands. The Baptist here is a perfect illustration of St. Paul's words, written in im- mediate connexion with his idea of Christ as cfKavoaXov. 'Jews claim signs.' They say. Let God signalize His presence ; let Him make bare His holy arm, and break in pieces the oppressor, and we will see and believe Him ; and when they see nothing of this in Jesus, they stumble at Him. He becomes a aKavSaXov to them. And just as Jesus in His acts may become an ottence to those who anticipated something quite different, so may He be by anything disconcerting or too challenging in His teaching. Thus the Pharisees in Mt 15'^ were offended by the word in which He seemed to abolish the distinction between clean and unclean meats : they could not get over the idea that a distinction on which so much of their sanctity depended should be so summarily swept away. It finally repelled them from Jesus. And in Jn 6^^ we find disciples put out, as it were, by the hard sayings about eating the flesh of the Son of Man, and drinking His blood : it is almost more than they can stand, and Jesus asks tovto unds ffKafdaXiffi ; ' Doth this cause you to stumble ?' Almost anything in Jesus may become a ground of stumbling — the demands He makes, the sacrifices which fidelity to Him entails, His disappointment of our expecta- tions, the paradoxical and apparently impossible elements or His teaching. And all these become grounds of stumbling to those who have made some acquaintance with Him, been to some degree attracted and held by Him. To be offended in Him is the sin of those who have had the oppor- tunity of being disciples.
Even thouffh the words irxavixXov, o-««»5aA./'?£;», are not used at every point, the whole of the central division of the Gospel according to Matthew (chs. 11-18) may be read as a series of illustrations of them. In ch. 11 we have the Baptist, the whole generation (v.i6ff), the favoured cities (20ff), and especially the wise and prudent (v. 25), offended in Jesus. In ch. 12 we have first the Pharisees, and then His mother and brothers. In ch. 13 the parable of the Sower gives the keynote : it is the experience of one who knows what it is to be an offence : cf. vv.'-i. -11. In ch. 14 there is the miraculous feeding with which the great ' offence ' proved in Jn ei^f- 66 is connected. Then cf . 1512 1623 1717.27 i86ff..
There is another side to the experience of Jesus, that in which the aKdvdaXov is not found in Him, but presented to Him. In Mt 16-^ He says to Peter aKdvSaXov eX i/j-ov. He had been telling His disciples for the first time of the necessity of His death, and Peter had made a vivacious remon- strance. He had tried, in short, to put Jesus at fault about the path appointed for Him by the Father. He had the human temper which avoids suffering at all costs, not the Divine love which at any cost is faithful to its calling ; and in yielding to his human temper he had made himself a stumbling-block in Je.sus' way. It is a signal illustration of ' a man's foes shall be they of his own household.' But Jesus does not stumble : in i'7ra7e dwiao) /jlov, aaravd, He sweeps the ffKavSaXov from His path.
2. Teaching of Jesus. — It is remarkable that almost the only thing approaching to a discourse of
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Jesus in our earliest Gospel (if we omit the chapter of parables (ch. 4) and the eschatological discourse (ch. 13)) deals with the subject of offences, and tiiis in both the aspects in whicli we have seen ' otience ' appear in the experience of Jesus : Mk d*-^-.
{ii) There is hrst t/ie giving of offence to others. The otiiers are conceived as disciples — 'little ones who believe' (Mt LS* says 'wiio believe innie'). To ' oliend ' such means to be responsible for lead- ing them into sin ; and when we think what and whose they are, it means to be responsible for their separation by sin from Christ. Tlius to mislead ' the little ones who believe ' is for Jesus the sin of sins : all the Evangelists record the terrihc words in which He denounced it (Mk 9-*-, Mt 18^ Lk 17"^). It is singular that side by side witli this both Mt. and Lk. preserve a saying in which the inevitable- ness of oti'ences coming is admitted, while iinabated woe is pronounced on him through whom they come. Nothing is said by Jesus about how thej' come, that is, about the ways in which the little ones who believe are led into sins whicli put them at fault about Him ; but what has been said above about Jesus as a <jKdv5a\ov has its application here. What is meant is in principle to seduce them to ways of thinking or acting such as led men to stumble at Jesus while He lived. It is only in the Christian society that this sin can be committed, and there is something peculiarly- solemn in the picture of the Last Judgment in Mt IS"*^ : the Son of Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom iravTa to. (TKdv5a\a. There is in the life of Jesus one very interesting illustration of His own care in avoiding what might cause others to stumble (Mt IT-^'^). Here we see — what will repeatedlj' come up later — that an inconsiderate use of our spiritual liberty as ciiildren of God may prove a stumbling-block to those who do not under- stand it ; and we are tauglit by the example and word of .Tesus that conduct is never to be decided merely by the abstract principle that this or tliat is in itself legitimate ; part of the motive on which a Christian must always act is consideration for others, and the moral significance of his conduct for them. Of coui'se, there is the complementary consideration of what the principle requires, and though it is not to be pressed to the hurt of ' little ones who believe,' it is not to be sacrificed to obscurantists or hj'pocrites (see for an illustration of this Mt 15^^"^^). All this will reappear in what is sometimes regarded as tiie characteristically Pauline part of NT teaching.