I. We understand from such a sentence as this, what a true, calm judgment of life the New Testament furnishes. It tells us the worst; it does not gloss things over. Its writers and teachers are not carried away by enthusiasm. They do not paint the world, even as it is to be in the light of Christian truth as a Utopia, a happy dreamland of perfection. We remember who it was that pronounced this sentence. Not one who despaired of humanity, not a cynic to whom its weaknesses were matter for sarcasm, but one who, for all its vice and weakness, "so loved the world," and so hoped all things and believed all things of the world, that He came from heaven to live in it and to die for it. And yet, in spite of this, He could say calmly, "It is impossible"so God had allowed it to be and proceed to warn and to persuade and to work for men and with men, as though the necessary existence of temptation did not lessen human responsibility, or make impossible the preservation of innocence or the growth of holiness.
II. Notice two or three applications of our Lord's words. (1) A life of selfish enjoyment can hardly escape being a life through which offence comes. It is hard to live before others a life which is easier than theirs more guarded and furnished with appliances of comfort and pleasure without causing some harm to them, it may be by rousing envy, it may more easily be by setting before them a wrong ideal, strengthening in them the dangerous sense that a man's life consists in the abundance of the things that he possesses. (2) Our Lord's words give the key to one side of human sin and wretchedness. "It is impossible but that offences will come" impossible but that one man's wickedness or folly should lead to sin and wretchedness in others; impossible even in a world Christian in name and profession; impossible even when men are trying in a sense and degree to live as Christians. It is a question that we must be always asking ourselves, whether we are so living as to help or to injure these near us those who look up to us, those who breathe the same air with us, those who will in any way form a standard from our acts and character.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons,p. 232.
Reference: Luke 17:3-5. Good Words,vol. iii., p. 700.