Luke 17:1-10

Temptations to Sin

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

Increase Our Faith

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”▼ 6 And the Lord said, “If you had faith like n a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this o mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.▼

Unworthy Servants

7 “Will any one of you who has a slave 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.’”▼

▼ Mahx Notes:

17:1 Putting the fact that we experience temptations into perspective. One must experience temptation, it is in the design of the world, but temptation does not have to take control of your life and make you its slave. One must experience temptation, but one need not become a tempter.

17:2 To what little ones does the Master refer? Because it is non-specific, it can be read as referring to any little ones. Whether they are in the category of little ones in terms of physical years or little ones in terms of years of spiritual life, they are yet innocents and not able to fully defend themselves against temptation. Little ones do not naturally experience strong temptations, therefore if one becomes a tempter and brings temptation unnaturally to the innocent, they themselves would have been better off having already died than to become this corrupted. It is left an open question whether one who has become a tempter of the innocent can be recovered. They are not the subject of this teaching here. Nor is what their fate might be the subject here. Rather, by considering the severity of the consequences of allowing temptation to take over one’s life, so that it is possible to turn one into a tempter of the innocent, either the naturally or the spiritually innocent, the importance of facing temptation and overcoming it is emphasized.

17:3 The Master, who has overcome all the power of temptation in his life, has begun a strong teaching on the necessity of dealing with temptation. He proceeds to say, “Pay attention to yourselves!” One might expect that he is going to say next, “If you see yourself becoming weak toward temptation, or even beginning to sin, then this is what you do.” Instead, after saying, “Pay attention to yourselves,” he immediately speaks about the experience of someone else sinning against you, and says first to be assertive and confront that person with what it is they have done to you. If you see that they are sorry and determined not to do it again, then he commands you to forgive them. Do you thereby help the sinner to overcome the power of temptation in their life? Do you thereby help yourself?

17:4 Even if that person fails to keep their word not to sin against you again and does so seven times more, if they repent each time, he commands you to forgive them each time. We are forced to ask what is the reason for this teaching? Will being truly forgiving toward someone who sins against us help us to overcome the power of temptation in our life? Is it measure for measure? Because we forgive another we will be forgiven, and sin will not rule over us? Or is forgiving those who sin against us the secret key to battling against the power of temptation in our community at large? If someone has fallen into corruption and become a tempter of the innocent, is it possible that it is because they never truly forgave those who sinned against them? We are left to meditate upon this.

17:5 The reaction of the apostles to hearing this teaching is most informative. Speaking, as it were, as one person, they ask the Master to do whatever needs to be done to increase their faith. Is it their faithfulness to forgive that they want strengthened? Or is it their faith in the words of the Master as being the words of truth that lead to life that they want strengthened, so that they will have the power to do and to hear all the Torah of God?

17:6 They are not mistaken in understanding that the meaning of the Master’s instruction is that just as it is faith that empowers true forgiveness it is faith that empowers one to rule over all temptation. For the Master immediately begins to do what is necessary to increase their faith. He responds in a way that tells them that indeed their faith is small and needs to be increased. Even a little faith, he says, can work miracles that turn the world inside out and upside down. If through faith their word has the potential to command a tree well rooted in the earth to uproot itself and fly into the sea and root itself there, then, through faith, their word also has the potential to subject the evil inclination to the subjection to the Holy Spirit.

17:7 The Master speaks of a slave who works in the field, or out upon the hills. Why does the Master specify that the slave he has in mind is one who plows the field or is a keeper of goats or sheep? Why does he not just say, a slave who comes in from the field? Many kinds of work might be done in the field. But he speaks specifically of PLO wing. And he specifically mentions the keeping of sheep, which idiomatically might also refer to goats. It may seem that he is adding specific detail like this like any good story teller, to keep the interest of the common listener. However, his disciples know that their Master has a meaningful purpose for every word he chooses to speak. Because he has introduced the idea of a slave and a master here, his disciples will have already understood him to be asking them to think of themselves as slaves. Biblically, in the Torah, the legal category of slaves is not defined by the case of stolen slaves, but by the case of indentured slavery, where someone owes their life to a master. Accordingly, the disciples would understand that their Teacher refers in this parable to God as their Master, the Redeemer of Israel, to whom they owe their lives. In that they realize that the Teacher is asking them to think about themselves as slaves commanded to plow in the fields, they know that they are commanded to turn the soil of their hearts with the word of God and to cultivate the whole Land of Israel with the Torah of God. In the parable, as keepers of sheep and goats on the hills of Israel as the slaves of God, they could think that he was hinting to them that they should think of themselves as the slaves who are commanded by God to keep the animals that are used for the animal sacrifices. And what do these animals represent? They represent their sins. Should a slave, therefore, who has been chasing and herding his sins all day, as he was commanded to do, come in and expect to be treated like someone who was free, who had overcome all temptation?

17:8 Indeed, if this slave is one who's debt has been bought by his or her Master, so that it is in the Master's hand to turn slavery into freedom, then, rather, will the slave not rejoice if told at the end of the day now, instead of plowing and herding to begin to do the work of a servant of the master's house?