Sun Swing Studies Library

"Lest I Make My Brother To Offend"

Written by Brent Leavitt

The Premise

“I haven’t seen that movie before. What’s it rated?”
“It’s rated ‘R’.”
And that's the end of the discussion.

As children of God, one of many blessings which accompany each human being is the ability to discern good from evil. In the infant stages of life, these rights and wrongs are very much black and white. However, the process does get more complicated as we progress spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, and even physically.

A profound benefit of increased Christian discipleship is a deepened understanding of the workings of the Holy Ghost. As we grow older, white and black swirl together into a gray indiscernible to the natural eye. Hopefully, we will always be discerning through the Spirit of God to clearly know black from white and right from wrong.

As we progress spiritually from the letter of the law to the greater spirit of the law, we do things which we wouldn’t have done before. Things which in our youth may have seen harmless are now viewed as debilitating. Things which appeared to be obvious violations of the law are suddenly required when done in spirit of love. Herein is where the Pharisees, almost comically, frequently missed the mark. Do we set pharisaic absolutes as our guidelines or do we teach Christian principles and let the people govern themselves? Obviously, the latter is the modern-day order.

Stepping beyond the conflicts with the Pharisees, we discover legitimate issues of discipleship. We want to be closer to our Heavenly Father. In our efforts to draw closer to him, we learn that our behavior may affect others negatively when to us it seems to be harmless. So how do we avoid becoming an offence to our brothers and sisters? Paul counseled, “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth,” (1 Cor. 8:1).