<p>11:6&nbsp;<em>And blessed is he, whoever shall find no cause to stumble over me-</em>&nbsp;Clearly the Lord saw John as likely to be about to stumble. As explained earlier, the cause of stumbling was [and is to this day] that the Lord at times makes changes in the outworking of His prophetic program. Because things haven&rsquo;t gone just as mere humans imagined it, because they can&rsquo;t get their heads around God&rsquo;s huge sensitivity to human repentance and choices, nor His subsequent willingness to change His timetable to accommodate that&hellip; therefore people stumble at Christ. The Lord encountered a similar situation in Nazareth, where people again were &ldquo;offended in Him&rdquo; (Mt. 13:57) because His Messiahship was not as they supposed it ought to be. Likewise the death of the Messiah by crucifixion caused even the disciples to be offended- it was simply not how they had imagined Messiah&rsquo;s salvation. They were &ldquo;offended&rdquo; exactly because He was &lsquo;smitten&rsquo; (Mt. 26:31), even though the Lord had warned them ahead of time about His death so that they would not be offended (Jn. 16:1). The cross was therefore a rock of offence to many (1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 5:11). So often we see the process- people come to Jesus with preconceived notions of how things should be, and fit those notions into the structure of their &lsquo;Christianity&rsquo;. But the Christ&rsquo;s most fundamental teachings may in fact outlaw their beloved notions and favourite suppositions. And because their imagination of Jesus doesn&rsquo;t fit in with who He actually is- they stumble. It&rsquo;s like falling in love with an idea of a person, rather than with the person as they actually are. God&rsquo;s word presents Jesus as He actually is, and it is this which we must accept, allowing it thereby to jettison all preconceived notions we have of Him. The parable of the sower taught that persecution leads to people being offended (Mt. 13:21), and John was certainly undergoing persecution for the word there in prison. But persecution leads to spiritual stumbling largely because of the dashed expectations- that with Christ, all shall go well for us, and we in this life shall be delivered from problems. But the Lord is stressing throughout His teaching that that Jewish conception of Messiah and Messiah&rsquo;s Kingship over men was simply incorrect. Those who followed Him would suffer and die, in one form or another, the death of the cross.</p>
<p>The Lord tried not to offend people (Mt. 17:27) and yet people were indeed offended in Him. But in Mt. 18:6-9 He makes offence of others a serious sin. In this connection of thought we see an example of where there are some things which can be said of Jesus, some things He could do, which we simply cannot do. In forgiving others, we are often challenged to forgive&nbsp;<em>as</em>&nbsp;the Lord does. Not all that He does can be replicated by us, nor indeed is it possible. Thus for us, forgiveness is usually a process, whereas for the Father and Son it appears to be more instantaneous.</p>