Most people are familiar with how Christians are to act. For example:

  • Christian husbands are supposed to act according to their own marital roles and responsibilities
  • Christian wives are supposed to act according to their own marital roles and responsibilities

This can be difficult for complementarians and egalitarians as they usually try to deliberately distort these.

However, what we don’t usually see is that there is another command throughout the Scripture that is supposed to be between any Christian, including husbands and wives:

  • We are responsible for how we influence others around us: towards Christ or as a stumbling block to them.

Obviously, Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 admonish the ‘stronger’ Christians to take into consideration the weaker brothers and sisters in Christ. If you know you can eat meat without being defiled but your brother thinks that it does defile, then don’t flaunt it before him and so possibly cause him to stumble in his faith.

Most often we see this with modesty and chastity and mixing Christianity with feminism. Yes, it’s true that each person is responsible for their own heart and eyes, but if we’re dressing immodestly or acting in an unchaste manner that is also the fault of the one who is doing that. Not the responsibility of the person who is to guard their own heart or eyes.

Feminism tells young women (mostly) that they can wear whatever they want… revealing clothes, short skirts, and so on and no one is supposed to judge them for it. That’s wrong. If the way you dress is influencing others towards temptation, that’s antithetical to acting in a Christian manner.

Usually in marriage we see this play out with sex. Yes, a spouse is not supposed to be involved with pornography or romance novels. But if the other spouse is denying them sex (against clear Biblical command) and that is influencing them toward being tempted by pornography or romance novels, they are also complicit in their sin. They will have to stand before God for that.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record on the blog, but it’s clear that Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” means that He would not advocate putting stumbling blocks in front of other people so as to tempt them toward sin.

Yet, we always want “freedom” to do what we want, even at the cost of our fellow Christians being tempted and falling into to sin.