He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it will fall, it will scatter him as dust.”
Parallel Translations
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He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it will fall, it will scatter him as dust.”
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And whosoever shall fall on this stone he shalbe broken but on whosoever it shall fall vpon it will grynde him to powder.
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And whosoeuer shall fall on this stone, he shalbe broken: but on whomsoeuer it shall fall, it will dash him a pieces.
Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to Matthew 21:44 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Isaiah 8:14-15 He will be a sanctuary, but for both houses of Israel, he will be a stumbling stone and a rock that makes them fall. For the people of Jerusalem, he will be a trap and a snare. Many will stumble over it, fall, be broken, be snared, and be captured.”
- 1 Peter 2:8 and, “a stumbling stone and a rock of offense.” For they stumble at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed.
- Daniel 2:34-35 You saw until a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors. The wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them. The stone that struck the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
- Daniel 2:44-45 “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another people; but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it will stand forever. Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God has made known to the king what will happen hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
- Romans 9:33 even as it is written, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense; and no one who believes in him will be disappointed.”
- Luke 20:18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but it will crush whomever it falls on to dust.”
- Matthew 27:25 All the people answered, “May his blood be on us, and on our children!”
- Psalms 21:8-9 Your hand will find out all of your enemies. Your right hand will find out those who hate you. You will make them as a fiery furnace in the time of your anger. Yahweh will swallow them up in his wrath. The fire shall devour them.
- Psalms 110:5-6 The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings in the day of his wrath. He will judge among the nations. He will heap up dead bodies. He will crush the ruler of the whole earth.
- Zechariah 12:3 It will happen in that day, that I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples. All who burden themselves with it will be severely wounded, and all the nations of the earth will be gathered together against it.
- Matthew 26:24 The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.”
- 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who are dying, in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
- Isaiah 60:12 For that nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish; yes, those nations shall be utterly wasted.
- John 19:11 Jesus answered, “You would have no power at all against me, unless it were given to you from above. Therefore he who delivered me to you has greater sin.”
- 1 Thessalonians 2:16 forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, to fill up their sins always. But wrath has come on them to the uttermost.
- Hebrews 2:2-3 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation—which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard,
- Psalms 2:9 You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
- Psalms 2:12 Give sincere homage to the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish on the way, for his wrath will soon be kindled. Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain As chaff used to be scattered with the wind,…
As chaff used to be scattered with the wind, for he useth a word which signifieth properly, to separate the chaff from the corn with winnowing, to scatter it abroad.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall…
44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
Ver. 44. And whosoever shall fall on this stone] Christ is a stone of stumbling to his enemies, who stumble at his meanness, and a rock of offence, 1Pe 2:8; but like that rock, Jdg 6:21, out of which fire went and consumed them, Nemo me impune lacessit, No one provokes me with impunity, saith he. The Corinthians abused certain Roman ambassadors, and were therefore burned to the ground by Lucius Mummius. For irasci populo Rom. nemo sapienter possit, saith Livy thereupon. Christ is wise in heart and mighty in strength. "Who ever hardened himself against him and prospered?" Job 9:4. Who ever bragged of the last blow? If his wrath be kindled, yea, but a little, woe be to his opposites; but if he fall upon them with his whole weight, he will crush them to pieces, yea, grind them to powder. They can no more stand before him than can a glass bottle before a cannon shot.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain These words are taken out of Psa 118:22, which…
These words are taken out of Psa 118:22, which the Jews understood to be a prophecy of the Messiah, and accordingly Christ appliest them to himself. The church is the building intended, Christ himself the stone rejected; the rejecters, or the builders rejecting, were the heads of the Jewish church; that is, the chief priests and Pharisees.
God, the great master-builder of his church, takes this precious foundation-stone out of the rubbish, and sets it in the head of the corner. Nevertheless there are those who stumble at this stone. Some through ignorance, others through malice, stumble at his person, at his doctrine, at his institutions: these shall be broken in pieces: but on whomsoever this stone shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
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That is, Christ himself will fall as a burdensome stone upon all those that knowingly and maliciously oppose him; and particularly upon the Jews, who not only rejected him, but persecuted and destroyed him. Thus Christ tells the chief priests and Pharisees their own particular doom, and also declares what will be the fatal issue of all that opposition which is made against himself and his church. It will terminate in their inevitable and irreparable destruction.
Whosever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken; and on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.
That is, "He that stumbles on this stone, while Christ is here on earth, being offended at his doctrine, life, and miracles, shall be broken by his fall upon it; as the person stoned is by the sharp stone which he falls upon. But he on whom this stone shall fall, when Christ is elevated to his throne of glory, shall be more violently shattered by it, as is the person stoned, by the great stone as big as two men can lift, thrown down violently upon his breast."
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And whosoever shall fall on this stone,.... This is…
And whosoever shall fall on this stone,.... This is not to be understood of believing in Christ, or of a soul's casting itself on Christ, the foundation stone; relying on him, and building all its hopes of happiness and salvation on him; which is attended with contrition and brokenness of heart, or repentance unto life, which needed not to be repented of nor of a believer's offending Christ by evil works, whereby his conscience is wounded, his soul is grieved, and his faith shaken; and though he is hereby in great danger, he shall not be utterly destroyed, but being recovered by repentance, shall be preserved unto salvation; but of such to whom Christ is a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence: for as he is the foundation and corner stone to some, and is set for the rising of them, and to whom he is precious; so he is a stone set for the fall of others, and at which they stumble and fall, and fall upon it: and such are they who are offended at Christ's state of humiliation on earth; at the manner of his birth, the meanness of his parentage, and education; the despicable figure he made in his person, disciples, and audience; and at his sufferings and death: and these "shall be broken": as a man that stumbles at a stone, and falls upon it, breaks his head or his bones, at least bruises himself, does not hurt the stone, but the stone hurts him; so all such as are offended at Christ, injure their own souls, being filled with prejudices against him, and contempt and disbelief of him, which if grace prevents not will issue in their everlasting destruction: but whilst there is life, the means of grace continue, the kingdom of God is not taken away; there is hope that such may be recovered from their impenitence and unbelief: "but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder". Just as if a millstone, or any stone of such like weight and bulk, was to fall upon an earthen vessel; or, as the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, by which the Messiah and his kingdom, are designed, brake in pieces the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, so that it became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor. As the former part of this verse expresses the sin of unbelievers, and the danger they are exposed unto by it, this sets forth their punishment; and has respect both to the vengeance of Christ, on the Jewish nation, at their destruction, which would fall heavy from him in his state of exaltation, for their evil treatment of him in his state of humiliation; and to his severe wrath, which will be executed at the day of judgment on all unbelievers, impenitent Christless sinners, who have both offended him, and been offended at him; when their destruction will be inevitable, their salvation irretrievable, and their souls irrecoverably lost, and ruined. Some have thought, that there is an allusion in these words to the manner of stoning among the Jews, which was this (e):
"the place of stoning was two men's heights; one of the witnesses struck him on his loins, to throw him down from thence, to the ground: if he died, it was well; if not, they took a stone, which lay there, and was as much as two men could carry, and cast it, with all their might, upon his breast: if he died, it was well; if not, he was stoned by all Israel.
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Maimonides observes (f), that "stoning, or throwing down from the high place, was that he might fall upon the stone, or that the stone might fall upon him; and which of them either it was, the pain was the same.
(e) Misu. Sanhedrin, c. 6. sect. 4. T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 45. 1, 2. Maimon. Hilch. Sanhedrin, c. 15. sect 1. Moses Kotsensis Mitzvot Tora pr. Affirm. 99. (f) In Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 6. sect. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken…
Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken - Stumblers at Christ shall even then receive much hurt. He is said to fall on this stone, who hears the Gospel and does not believe. But on whomsoever it shall fall - In vengeance, it will utterly destroy him. It will fall on every unbeliever, when Christ cometh in the clouds of heaven. Luke xx, 18.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 44. The 44th verse should certainly come before…
Verse 44. The 44th verse should certainly come before ver. 43, otherwise the narration is not consecutive.
-Verse 42. The stone which the builders rejected, is become the head of the corner, c.
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-Verse 44. Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken, c. This is an allusion to the punishment of stoning among the Jews. The place of stoning was twice as high as a man while standing on this, one of the witnesses struck the culprit on the loins, so that he fell over this scaffold if he died by the stroke and fall, well; if not, the other witness threw a stone upon his heart, and despatched him. That stone thrown on the culprit was, in some cases, as much as two men could lift up. Tract Sanhed. and Bab. Gemara, and Lightfoot. See also the note on Joh 8:7.
He, whether Jew or Gentile, who shall not believe in the Son of God, shall suffer grievously in consequence; but on whomsoever the stone (Jesus Christ) falls in the way of judgment, he shall be ground to powder, λικμησει αυτον - it shall make him so small as to render him capable of being dispersed as chaff by the wind. This seems to allude, not only to the dreadful crushing of the Jewish state by the Romans, but also to that general dispersion of the Jews through all the nations of the world, which continues to the present day. This whole verse is wanting in the Codex Bezae, one other, five copies of the Itala, and Origen; but it is found in the parallel place, Lu 20:18, and seems to have been quoted from Isa 8:14-15. He shall be for a STONE of STUMBLING, and for a ROCK OF OFFENCE to both the houses of Israel - and many among them shall STUMBLE and FALL, and be BROKEN.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mat 21:44-46. Whosoever shall fall on this stone —…
Mat 21:44-46. Whosoever shall fall on this stone — Which the builders have rejected, but which God will make the head of the corner; that is, whosoever shall stumble at me and my doctrine, while I am here on earth in this humble form; shall be broken — Shall receive much damage. This is spoken in allusion to a person stumbling on a stone, thrown aside as useless; but on whomsoever it shall fall — When raised up to the head of the corner; it will grind him to powder — Like a brittle potsherd, crushed by the weight of some huge stone falling upon it from on high. So whosoever shall oppose me, after my exaltation to glory, and the outpouring of my Spirit, for the full revelation of my gospel, and proof of my mission, he will bring upon himself aggravated guilt, and dreadful, unavoidable destruction. Dr. Whitby thinks, that there is an allusion in these words to the two different ways of stoning among the Jews; the former by throwing a person down upon a great stone, and the other by letting a stone fall upon him. But it seems more probable that the allusion is to Dan 2:34; where the destruction of all the opposers of the Messiah’s kingdom is described in terms partly similar. See the notes there. “The chief priests, perceiving the drift of our Lord’s parables, were highly incensed, and would gladly have apprehended him to punish him that moment, but they durst not. It is true, they were not afraid of God, who is the avenger of such crimes, but they were afraid of the people, who constantly crowded around Jesus in the temple, and had openly acknowledged him as their Messiah.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be…
And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder--The Kingdom of God is here a Temple, in the erection of which a certain stone, rejected as unsuitable by the spiritual builders, is, by the great Lord of the House, made the keystone of the whole. On that Stone the builders were now "falling" and being "broken" (Isa 8:15). They were sustaining great spiritual hurt; but soon that Stone should "fall upon them" and "grind them to powder" (Dan 2:34-35; Zac 12:2) --in their corporate capacity, in the tremendous destruction of Jerusalem, but personally, as unbelievers, in a more awful sense still.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 44. Fall on this stone — He is now…
44. Fall on this stone — He is now a stumbling-stone; such stones as are found abundantly in the stony region around Jerusalem. A man falls over such a stone and gets bruised, or has a limb broken, perhaps; but he may recover himself, and place himself upon the corner-stone. It shall fall — In the siege of Jerusalem the stones hurled from the military engines, falling upon the Jews, did terrible execution. Mr. Milman says that the Roman army “threw stones, the weight of a talent, a distance of two furlongs upon the walls. The Jews set men to watch the huge rocks which came thundering down upon their heads. They were easily visible from their extreme whiteness, (this it seems must have been by night;) the watchmen shouted aloud in their native tongue, “The bolt is coming!” on which they all bowed their heads and avoided the blow. The Romans found out this, and blackened the stones, which now taking them unawares, struck down and crushed not merely single men, but whole ranks.”
If our Lord’s words are not sufficiently precise to limit the allusion to the balista, still they receive a forcible illustration from the engine.
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Grind him to powder — A very unsuitable translation, as there is nothing in the original Greek that signifies either grind or powder. The precise phrase is, shall winnow him. That is, shall scatter him as a winnowing fan scatters the chaff. There is probably an allusion to Dan_2:34-35, where the great stone scatters the other kingdoms “like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.”
Thus has our Lord answered the demands of these men for his authority. He is God’s Son, who has come for the fruits of the kingdom. If they reject him, they will yet find that he is Lord of all.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 44. whosoever shall fall on this stone, &c.] Lightfoot,…
44. whosoever shall fall on this stone, &c.] Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr., sees here a reference to the custom of stoning: “the place of stoning was twice as high as a man. From the top of this, one of the witnesses striking him on his loins, fells him to the ground: if he died of this, well; if not, another witness threw a stone upon his heart.”
But it is better to refer the image to an earthenware vessel (1) falling to the ground when it would be shattered, or (2) crushed by a stone when it would be bruised into atoms.
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will grind him to powder] The Greek word lit. = “to winnow.” So “cause to disappear,” “destroy.” Those to whom Jesus is a “rock of offence” (1Pe_2:8; Isa_8:14) in the days of His humiliation shall have great sorrow: but to incur His wrath when He comes to judge the earth will be utter destruction.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (44) Whosoever shall fall on this stone.—There is a…
(44) Whosoever shall fall on this stone.—There is a manifest reference to the “stumbling and falling and being broken” of Isa_8:14-15. In the immediate application of the words, those who “fell” were those who were “offended” at the outward lowliness of Him who came as the carpenter’s son, and died a malefactor’s death. That “fall” brought with it pain and humiliation. High hopes had to be given up, the proud heart to be bruised and broken. But there the fall was not irretrievable. The bruise might be healed; it was the work of the Christ to heal it. But when it fell on him who was thus offended (here there is a rapid transition to the imagery and the thoughts, even to the very words, of Dan_2:35; Dan_2:44), when Christ, or that Church which He identifies with Himself, shall come into collision with the powers that oppose Him, then it shall “grind them to powder.” The primary meaning of the word so rendered is that of winnowing by threshing the grain, and so separating it from the chaff, and its use was probably suggested by the imagery of Dan_2:35, where the gold and silver and baser materials that made up the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s vision were “broken in pieces together, and became as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.” In its wider meaning it includes the destruction of all that resists Christ’s kingdom, and so represents the positive side of the truth which has its negative expression in the promise that “the gates of hell shall not prevail” against His Church (Mat_16:18).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Christ proceeds to show the positive and terrible results…
Christ proceeds to show the positive and terrible results of such unbelief. Whosoever shall fall (peswn , hath fallen) on this stone shall be broken (sunylasyhsetai , shall be shattered to pieces). This may refer to the practice of executing the punishment of stoning by first hurling the culprit from a raised platform on to a rock or stone, and then stoning him to death. The falling on the stone has been explained in more ways than one. Some think that it implies coming to Christ in repentance and humility, with a contrite heart, which he will not despise. But the subject here is the punishment of the obdurate. Others take it to represent an attack made by the enemies of Christ, who shall demolish themselves by such onslaught. The original will hardly allow this interpretation. Doubtless the allusion is to those who found in Christ"s low estate a stone of stumbling and rock of offence. These suffered grievous loss and danger even in this present time. The rejection of the doctrine of Christ crucified involves the loss of spiritual privileges, moral debility, and what is elsewhere called "the scattering abroad". (Mat_12:30; comp. Isa_8:14, Isa_8:15) On whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder (likmhsei auton , it will scatter him as chaff). The persons hero spoken of are not those who are offended at Christ"s low estate; they are such as put themselves in active opposition to him and his kingdom; on them he will fall in terrible vengeance, and will utterly destroy them without hope of recovery. The idea is repeated from Dan_2:34, Dan_2:35, and 44, 45. Christ in his humiliation is the Stone against which men fall; Christ in his glory and exaltation is the Stone which falls on them.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 44. Whoever shall fall on this stone shall be…
44. Whoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken. Two fates are named for opposers in this verse; those who fall on the stone shall be broken; those on whom the stone shall fall shall be ground to powder. While the principle is general, the special application is to the Jewish opposers. Their falling upon the Stone (Christ) was the ruin of their nation. When the Stone fell upon them, in the judgment he had predicted because they rejected him, they were ground to powder in the awful desolation that occurred about thirty-seven years later.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Matthew
THE VINEYARD AND ITS KEEPERS
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THE STONE OF STUMBLING
Mat 21:44.
As Christ’s ministry drew to its close, its severity and its gentleness both increased; its severity to the class to whom it was always severe, and its gentleness to the class from whom it never turned away. Side by side, through all His manifestation of Himself, there were the two aspects: ‘He showed Himself froward’ {if I may quote the word} to the self-righteous and the Pharisee; and He bent with more than a woman’s tenderness of yearning love over the darkness and sinfulness, which in its great darkness dimly knew itself blind, and in its sinfulness stretched out a lame hand of faith, and groped after a divine deliverer. Here, in my text, there are only words of severity and awful foreboding. Christ has been telling those Pharisees and priests that the kingdom is to be taken from them, and given to a nation that brings forth the fruits thereof. He interprets for them an Old Testament figure, often recurring, which we read in the Psa 118:1 - Psa 118:29 {and I may just say, in passing, that we get here His interpretation of that psalm, and the vindication of our application of it, and other similar ones, to Him and His office}; ‘The stone which the builders rejected,’ said He, ‘is become the head of the corner’; and then, falling back on other Old Testament uses of the same figure, He weaves into one the whole of them-that in Isaiah about the ‘sure foundation,’ and that in Daniel about ‘the stone cut out without hands, which became a great mountain,’ crushing down all opposition,-and centres them all in Himself; as fulfilled in Himself, in His person and His work.
The two clauses of my text figuratively point to two different classes of operation on the rejecters of the Gospel. What are these two classes? ‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.’ In the one case, the stone is represented as passive, lying quiet; in the other, it has acquired motion. In the one case, the man stumbles and hurts himself; a remediable injury, a self-inflicted injury, a natural injury, without the active operation of Christ to produce it at all; in the other case the injury is worse than remediable, it is utter, absolute, grinding destruction, and it comes from the active operation of the ‘stone of stumbling.’ That is to say, the one class represents the present hurts and harms which, by the natural operation of things, without the action of Christ judicially at all, every man receives in the very act of rejecting the Gospel; and the other represents the ultimate issue of that rejection, which rejection is darkened into opposition and fixed hostility, when the stone that was laid ‘for a foundation’ has got wings {if I may so say}, and comes down in judgment, crushing and destroying the antagonist utterly. ‘Whosoever falls on this stone is broken,’ here and now; and ‘on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder,’ hereafter and yonder.
Taking, then, into account the weaving together in this passage of the three figures from the Old Testament to which I have already referred,-the rejected stone, the foundation, and the mountain-stone of Daniel, and looking in the light of these, at the twofold issues, one present and one future, which the text distinctly brings before us,-we have just three points to which I ask your attention now. First, Every man has some kind of contact with Christ. Secondly, Rejection of Him, here and now, is harm and maiming. And, lastly, Rejection of Him, hereafter and yonder, is hopeless, endless, utter destruction.
I. In the first place, every man has some kind of connection with Christ.
I am not going to enter at all now upon any question about the condition of the ‘dark places of the earth’ where the Gospel has not come as a well-known preached message; we have nothing to do with that; the principles on which they are judged is not the question before us now. I am speaking exclusively about persons who have heard the word of salvation, and are dwelling in the midst of what we call a Christian land. Christ is offered to each of us, in good faith on God’s part, as a means of salvation, a foundation on which we may build. A man is free to accept or to reject that offer. If he reject it, he has not thereby cut himself off from all contact and connection with that rejected Saviour, but he still sustains a relation to Him; and the message that he has refused to believe, is exercising an influence upon his character and his destiny.
Christ comes, I say, offered to us all in good faith on the part of God, as a foundation upon which we may build. And then comes in that strange mystery, that a man, consciously free, turns away from the offered mercy, and makes Him that was intended to be the basis of his life, the foundation of his hope, the rock on which, steadfast and serene, he should build up a temple-home for his soul to dwell in,-makes Him a stumbling-stone against which, by rejection and unbelief, he breaks himself!
My friend, will you let me lay this one thing upon your heart,-you cannot hinder the Gospel from influencing you somehow. Taking it in its lowest aspects, it is one of the forces of modern society, an element in our present civilisation. It is everywhere, it obtrudes itself on you at every turn, the air is saturated with its influence. To be unaffected by such an all-pervading phenomenon is impossible. To no individual member of the great whole of a nation is it given to isolate himself utterly from the community. Whether he oppose or whether he acquiesce in current opinions, to denude himself of the possessions which belong in common to his age and state of society is in either case impracticable. ‘That which cometh into your mind,’ said one of the prophets to the Jews who were trying to cut themselves loose from their national faith and their ancestral prerogatives, ‘That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries to serve wood and stone.’ Vain dream! You can no more say, I will pass the Gospel by, and it shall be nothing to me, I will simply let it alone, than you can say, I will shut myself up from other influences proper to my time and nation. You cannot go back to the old naked barbarism, and you cannot reduce the influence of Christianity, even considered merely as one of the characteristics of the times, to zero. You may fancy you are letting it alone, but it does not let you alone; it is here, and you cannot shut yourself off from it.
But it is not merely as a subtle and diffused influence that the Gospel exercises a permanent effect upon us. It is presented to each of us here individually, in the definite form of an actual offer of salvation for each, and of an actual demand of trust from each. The words pass into our souls, and thenceforward we can never be the same as if they had not been there. The smallest ray of light falling on a sensitive plate produces a chemical change that can never be undone again, and the light of Christ’s love, once brought to the knowledge and presented for the acceptance of a soul, stamps on it an ineffaceable sign of its having been there. The Gospel once heard, is always the Gospel which has been heard. Nothing can alter that. Once heard, it is henceforward a perpetual element in the whole condition, character, and destiny of the hearer.
Christ does something to every one of us. His Gospel will tell upon you, it is telling upon you. If you disbelieve it, you are not the same as if you had never heard it. Never is the box of ointment opened without some savour from it abiding in every nostril to which its odour is wafted. Only the alternative, the awful ‘either, or,’ is open for each-the ‘savour of life unto life, or the savour of death unto death.’ To come back to the illustration of the text, Christ is something, and does something to every one of us. He is either the rock on which I build, poor, weak, sinful creature as I am, getting security, and sanctity, and strength from Him, I being a living stone’ built upon ‘the living stone,’ and partaking of the vitality of the foundation; or else He is the other thing, ‘a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence to them which stumble at the word.’ Christ stands for ever in some kind of relation to, and exercises for ever some kind of influence on, every man who has heard the Gospel.
II. The immediate issue of rejection of Him is loss and maiming.
‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken.’ Just think for a moment, by way of illustrating this principle, first of all, of the positive harm which you do to yourself in the act of turning away from the mercy offered you in Christ; and then think for a moment of the negative loss which you sustain by the same act.
Note the positive harm. Am I uncharitable when I say that no man ever yet passively neglected the message of love in God’s Son; but that always this is the rude outline of the experience of people who know what it is to have a Saviour offered to them, and know what it is to put Him away,-that there is a feeble and transitory movement of heart and will; that Conscience says, ‘Thou oughtest’; that Will says, ‘I would’; that the heart is touched by some sense of that great and gentle vision of light and love which passes before the eye; that the man, as it were, like some fever-ridden patient, lifts himself up for an instant from the bed on which he is lying, and puts out a hand, and then falls back again, the vacillating, fevered, paralysed will recoiling from the resolution, and the conscience having power to say, ‘Thou oughtest,’ but no power to enforce the execution of its decrees, and the heart turning away from the salvation that it would have found in the love of love, to the loss that it finds in the love of self and earth? Or in other words, is it not true that every man who rejects Christ does in simple verity reject Him, and not merely neglect Him; that there is always an effort, that there is a struggle, feeble, perhaps, but real, which ends in the turning away? It is not that you stand there, and simply let Him go past. That were bad enough; but the fact is worse than that. It is that you turn your back upon Him. It is not that His hand is laid on yours, and yours remains dead and cold, and does not open to clasp it; but it is that His hand being laid on yours, you clench yours the tighter, and will not have it. And so every man {I believe} who rejects Christ does these things thereby-wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man, just because he has had a glimpse, and has willingly, and almost consciously, ‘loved darkness rather than light.’ Oh, brethren, the message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection. I have nothing to do now with pursuing that process to its end; but the natural result-if there were no future Judgment at all, if there were no movement ever given to the stone that you ought to build on-the natural result of the simple rejection of the Gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, pass away; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, ‘I will not have Christ to rule over me,’ the whole being degenerates, until manhood becomes devil-hood, and the soul is lost by its own want of faith. Unbelief is its own judgment; unbelief is its own condemnation; unbelief, as sin, is punished, like all other sins, by the perpetuation of deeper and darker forms of itself. Every time that you stifle a conviction, fight down a conviction, or drive away a conviction; and every time that you feebly move towards the decision, ‘I will trust Him, and love Him, and be His,’ yet fail to realise it, you have harmed your soul, you have made yourself a worse man, you have lowered the tone of your conscience, you have enfeebled your will, you have made your heart harder against love, you have drawn another horny scale over the eye, that will prevent you from seeing the light that is yonder; you have, as much as in you is, withdrawn from God, and approximated to the other pole of the universe {if I may say that}, to the dark and deadly antagonist of mercy, and goodness, and truth, and grace. ‘Whosoever falls on this stone,’ by the natural result of his unbelief, ‘shall be broken’ and maimed, and shall mar his own nature.
I need not dwell on the negative evil results of unbelief; the loss of that which is the only guide for a man, the taking away, or rather the failing to possess, that great love above us, that divine Spirit in us, by which only we are ever made what we ought to be. This only I would leave with you, in this part of my subject, Whoever is not in Christ is maimed. Only he that is ‘a man in Christ’ has come ‘to the measure of the stature of a perfect man.’ There, and there alone, do we get the power which will make us full-grown. There alone is the soul planted in that good soil in which, growing, it becomes as a rounded, perfect tree, with leaves and fruits in their season. All other men are half-men, quarter-men, fragments of men, parts of humanity exaggerated and contorted and distorted from the reconciling whole which the Christian ought to be, and in proportion to his Christianity is on the road to be, and one day will assuredly and actually be, a ‘complete and entire man, wanting nothing’; nothing maimed, nothing broken, the realisation of the ideal of humanity, the renewed copy ‘of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.’
There is another consideration closely connected with this second part of my subject, that I just mention and pass on. Not only by the act of rejection of Christ do we harm and maim ourselves, but also all attempts at opposition-formal opposition-to the Gospel as a system, stand self-convicted and self-condemned to speedy decay. What a commentary upon that word, ‘Whosoever falls on this stone shall be broken,’ is the whole history of the heresies of the Church and the assaults of unbelief! Man after man, rich in gifts, endowed often with far larger and nobler faculties than the people who oppose him, with indomitable perseverance, a martyr to his error, sets himself up against the truth that is sphered in Jesus Christ; and the great divine message simply goes on its way, and all the babblement and noise are like so many bats flying against a light, or like the sea-birds that come sweeping up in the tempest and the night, to the hospitable Pharos that is upon the rock, and smite themselves dead against it. Sceptics well known in their generation, who made people’s hearts tremble for the ark of God, what has become of them? Their books lie dusty and undisturbed on the top shelf of libraries; whilst there the Bible stands, with all the scribblings wiped off the page, as though they had never been! Opponents fire their small shot against the great Rock of Ages, and the little pellets fall flattened, and only scale off a bit of the moss that has gathered there! My brother, let the history of the past teach you and me, with other deeper thoughts, a very calm and triumphant confidence about all that opponents say nowadays; for all the modern opposition to this Gospel will go as all the past has done, and the newest systems which cut and carve at Christianity, will go to the tomb where all the rest have gone; and dead old infidelities will rise up from their thrones, and say to the bran-new ones of this generation, when their day is worked out, ‘Are ye also become weak as we? art thou also become like one of us?’ ‘Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken’: personally, he will be harmed; and his opinions, and his books, and his talk, and all his argumentation, will come to nothing, like the waves that break into impotent foam against the rocky cliffs.
III. Last of all, the issue, the ultimate issue, of unbelief is irremediable destruction when Christ begins to move.
The former clause has spoken about the harm that naturally follows unbelief whilst the Gospel is being preached; the latter clause speaks about the active agency of Christ when the end shall have come, and the preaching of the Gospel shall have merged into the act of judgment. I do not mean to dwell, brethren, upon that thought; it seems to me far too awful a one to be handled by my hands, at any rate. Let us leave it in the vagueness and dreadfulness of the words of Him who never spoke exaggerated words, and who, when He said, ‘It shall grind him to powder,’ meant {as it seems to me} nothing less than a destruction which, contrasted with the former remediable wounding and breaking, was a destruction utter, and hopeless, and everlasting, and without remedy. Ground-ground to powder! Any life left in that? any gathering up of that, and making a man of it again? All the humanity battered out of it, and the life clean gone from it! Does not that sound very much like ‘everlasting destruction from the presence of God and from the glory of His power’? Christ, silent now, will begin to speak; passive now, will begin to act. The stone comes down, and the fall of it will be awful. I remember, away up in a lonely Highland valley, where beneath a tall black cliff, all weather-worn, and cracked, and seamed, there lies at the foot, resting on the greensward that creeps round its base, a huge rock, that has fallen from the face of the precipice. A shepherd was passing beneath it; and suddenly, when the finger of God’s will touched it, and rent it from its ancient bed in the everlasting rock, it came down, leaping and bounding from pinnacle to pinnacle-and it fell; and the man that was beneath it is there now! ‘Ground to powder.’ Ah, my brethren, that is not my illustration-that is Christ’s. Therefore I say to you, since all that stand against Him shall become ‘as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor,’ and be swept utterly away, make Him the foundation on which you build; and when the storm sweeps away every ‘refuge of lies,’ you will be safe and serene, builded upon the Rock of Ages.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain stone shall be broken
stone shall be broken
Christ as the "Stone" is revealed in a threefold way:
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(1) To Israel Christ, coming not as a splendid monarch but in the form of a servant, is a stumbling stone and rock of offence. Isa 8:14; Isa 8:15; Rom 9:32; Rom 9:33; 1Co 1:23; 1Pe 2:8
(2) to the church, Christ is the foundation stone and the head of the corner 1Co 3:11; Eph 2:20-22; 1Pe 2:4; 1Pe 2:5
(3) to the Gentile world-powers (see "Gentiles," Luk 21:24; Rev 16:19 He is to be the smiting-stone of destruction Dan 2:34. Israel stumbled over Christ; the church is built upon Christ; Gentile world- dominion will be broken by Christ.
See "Armageddon" Rev 16:14; Rev 19:19.
And whosoever
Or, Whosoever falls on this stone shall be crushed together i.e. the Jews Isa 8:14; Rom 9:32; Rom 9:33; 1Co 1:23] but on whomsoever it may fall, he will be scattered as dust (Greek - ἀπόλλυμι," i).e. the Gentile nations, Dan 2:34; Dan 2:35; Dan 2:45 (See Scofield "Dan 2:35").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 21:44 Though in a short while the Messiah’s opponents…
21:44 Though in a short while the Messiah’s opponents would gain a brief victory, they would ultimately be broken and the stone would crush them because the cross became the gateway to Jesus’ vindication and triumph (see also Dan 2:34-35, 44-45).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.