Each individual Christian answers to God.

Romans 14.10-13, Isaiah 45.18-25.

One of the many things about the ancients—and therefore the bible, ‘cause it’s ancient—which confuses Christians, especially kids, is the idea of collective guilt, collective responsibility, and collective punishment. Because it’s not how our culture works anymore. You don’t punish a whole family, a whole city, a whole state, a whole religion, a whole country, a whole ethnicity, for the acts of one person, or a few people. Isn’t that in fact a crime against humanity? A war crime? Doesn’t it violate the Geneva Convention?

You may not be aware the reason moderns think this way, is because Paul set the precedent right here in Romans 14: The idea God doesn’t judge entire people-groups, but individuals. The idea we individually stand before God, and have to individually answer for our sins and trespasses, and get individually rewarded or penalized for them. This idea is hinted at many times in the scriptures, but it’s spelled out pretty explicitly in today’s passage.

Thing is, the other idea—that you and I are part of a society, part of a collective, part of a tribe or nation or commonwealth, and if one of us sins we can bring down the whole—is all over the bible too. So much so, Christians will even claim it’s a biblical principle, and use it as the basis for some of their nationalist beliefs. And okay yes, it’s found in the bible… because it’s how the ancients thought. Doesn’t mean it’s how God thinks.

True, there are Old Testament passages where God punishes all Israel because the vast majority of the population is sinning themselves sticky. Yeah, sometimes he orders Israel or its judges to wipe out an entire Amorite city, including any children who might grow up and feel duty-bound to avenge their wicked forebears, because the city’s sins are just so vile. Collective guilt and punishment is found all over the bible. But those who are quick to condemn this behavior when they think God’s committing it, forget God frequently made exceptions to these genocidal-sounding orders. Like sparing Noah and his family when he flooded the land. Like sparing Rahab and her family when Israel wiped out Jericho. Like sparing Lot and his family when God poured burning sulfur upon Sodom. Repentant people got to live—in total violation of the “biblical principle” of collective guilt. Pagan kings would’ve spared no one. God spares lots of people.

Paul saw God’s tendency to judge individuals, not the collective, in the scriptures. Which is why he could confidently say the following when he corrected Roman Christians about criticizing one another, especially the weak in faith.

Romans 14.10-13 KWL

10You:¹ Why do you judge your¹ fellow Christian?

Or you¹ too: Why do you look down on your¹ fellow Christian?

For all of us will present ourselves before God’s judgment seat,

11for this was written:

“The Master says this: ‘I live.

Everyone will bend the knee to me.

Every tongue will confess God.’ ” Is 45.23

12Therefore each of us, by ourselves,

will give a word to God,

13so we should no longer judge one another.

Instead, judge this all the more:

Don’t place an obstacle before a fellow Christian,

nor something to trip them up.

’Cause you do realize some of the reason Christians are so adamant about condemning and penalizing every single misdeed, is this irrational, unjustified fear God’s gonna condemn the whole. I’ve heard so many Christian nationalists insist unless we ban this or that sin from the United States, God’s gonna smite our nation with the worst plagues and famines and natural disasters we’ve ever seen. (And that’s saying something, considering the Great Recession, the Covid pandemic, and the wreckage of the last 20 years of hurricanes.) But what’re they basing these worries on? Well, loopy End Times interpretations, plus the misbegotten belief God has some special covenant with the United States when he has no such thing. He only has a covenant with its Christians—and, as this passage plainly states, it’s with individual Christians.

Therefore neither the nationalists nor us have any basis for persecuting Christians who sin differently than we do. They individually answer to God. As do you. As do I. He knows whether we’ve been following Jesus, whether we’ve been listening to the Holy Spirit, whether we’ve behaved consistently with Jesus’s teachings and our consciences, and how much of it was earnest and how much was hypocrisy. He’s an absolutely fair judge; we are not, which is precisely why it’s not for us to judge. Work on yourself. And don’t trip others up.

Christians who love to be stumbling blocks.

That’s the other popular pastime of judgmental Christians: Tripping hazards. Stumbling blocks. Σκάνδαλα/skándala—the plural of the word Paul used, σκάνδαλον/skándalon. It’s derived from the Greek word σκανδάληθρον/skandálithron, the stick in a booby trap, and when the animal touches it, the trap springs. This was turned into the verb σκανδαλίζω/skandalídzo, “caught, ensnared, tripped up,” or metaphorically “offended”—then turned back into a noun to describe anything which trips a person up this way, skándalon. Our English word scandal comes from it

And we are not, if we can help it, to become skándala. Nor to place skándala in anyone’s way. No matter what good reason we think we have for it: It is the Holy Spirit’s job, not ours, to make our fellow Christians trip. It is our job to help them out when they do trip, but we’re certainly not to trip them: We can’t accurately predict whether they’ll stumble, fall, break bones, crack a skull, or even die. The Holy Spirit can control all these factors. We can’t.

Yet there’s many a Christian who thinks it’s their job to trip up fellow Christians. And love their job. And never think about the fact Satan likewise considers this to be its job—and thoroughly appreciates the help.

“But Paul says Jesus is a skándalon.” True, Ro 9.33 and he also says talking about how Christ was crucified is a skándalon to Jews 1Co 1.23 who hate the idea of their Messiah suffering such a degrading death. Peter calls Jesus a skándalon too. 1Pe 2.8 Now, when you look at all these passages where Jesus is described as a tripping hazard, y’might notice all of them are about how unbelievers see him this way. They’re tripped up because they can’t imagine a God who bleeds, an Almighty who suffers at the hands of his enemies instead of smiting them, a King of Kings who died, a Lord of Lords who invites people to follow him instead of irresistibly forcing ’em to. If they were God they wouldn’t behave this way, and they hate how Jesus behaves this way; they see it as so emasculating. If they claim to be Christian, they’ll downplay these facts as much as possible, if not try to reinterpret them till they no longer mean that. But more often they’ll reject and sneer at Christianity, and imagine they’re much wiser and better than silly ol’ Jesus.

In the context of this passage, Paul’s not talking about unbelievers, but fellow Christians. Whom we should not be trying to booby-trap! In fact if we are those folks who love to set hazards and traps for our fellow Christians, Jesus has this in mind for them at the End, as told in his Wheat and Darnel Story.

Matthew 13.40-42 NASB

40“So just as the weeds are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Other bibles translate skándala as “things that offend” (KJV, NKJV), “everything that causes sin” (NET, NIV, NLT), “causes of sin,” (ESV, NRSV), or “all who cause sin” (CSB). I like the way the CSB puts it, because those other translations glide over the fact Jesus is judging people who trip others up, not things.

And Jesus doesn’t at all approve of us deliberately tripping one another up. As infinitely kind as our Lord is, he’d rather we be drowned.

Luke 17.1-2 NASB

1Now He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to one through whom they come! 2It is better for him if a millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea, than that he may cause one of these little ones to sin.”

So for those people who love to test fellow Christians, and see how many of us they can knock down, and rejoice at how many “false Christians” they’ve humiliated and disproven and defeated: Even Jesus himself would rather see you dead. Something to think about.

The Isaiah quote.

Lastly I gotta bring up the bible quote Paul drops as his proof text for how each of us individually stands before God. Because at first glance this doesn’t look like it proves the idea. In fact the “Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess” passage is frequently connected to this idea of every human on Earth recognizing Jesus is Lord, and en masse dropping to our knees and putting our faces to the ground in worship. Some joyfully, some mournfully, but it’s still a collective thing, right?

Let’s bounce over to Isaiah 45.

Isaiah 45.18-25 KWL

18For thus said the LORD, creator of the heavens;

he, the God who shaped the land and made it;

he made it firm, not formless;

he created it in a form to be dwelt in.

“I’m the LORD.

No one else.

19I repeatedly didn’t speak in secret,

in some dark region of the land.

I didn’t tell Jacob’s seed, ‘Seek me,’ for no reason.

I, the LORD, speak justice.

I informed you what’s morally right.

20Assemble! Come in! Come near me together,

refugees of the nations who don’t know me,

who have to carry their wooden idol,

who pray to a god who can’t save them.

21Inform them! Draw near to them. Advise them together.

Who’s been listening to you since the beginning?

Who informed you? Wasn’t it me, the LORD?

Is there another just god and savior besides me?

None but me.

22So turn to me and be saved,

all the ends of the land.

For I am God.

No one else.

23I swear to Me,

the righteous word went out of my mouth,

and won’t return:

Every knee will bow down before me.

Every tongue will swear to me.

24Surely one will say to the LORD,

‘Justice and strength!’ to me continually.

All who are angry at him enters, and is ashamed.

25All Israel’s seed will be justified by the LORD

and praise him.”

Notice whom the LORD, through Isaiah, is addressing in verse 20: The פְּלִיטֵ֣י/felíti, “escapees, fugitives, survivors”—refugees who fled the gentiles and seek asylum in God’s kingdom, who heard about him from the fact he hasn’t been speaking to the Israelis in secret. Is 45.19 He’s their God too; he’s not just the God of Israel, but the God of the entire world, and created all of it for all humans to dwell in. You wanna be saved? Those blocks of wood your people worship, don’t hear you and can’t save you. Only the LORD can, and eagerly will.

These gentile nations are doomed, ’cause they’re collectively following their nasty gods. They don’t know what’s morally right, because they’re not following their gods to become moral or just; they’re following them because their gods claim to be mighty, and might grant them power and riches. They may not be Bel and Nabu anymore, but Mammon and unchastity and raw power will be just as nasty. Whereas the LORD is moral and just—and if you came out of those gentile nations and wanna follow the LORD instead, you individually are gonna be judged, separately from the gentiles you came away from. And judged righteous, ’cause you put your faith in God, so you’re justified.

So yeah, if you rip the individual verse out of its paragraph, you won’t see the context of Isaiah 45 which reveals all this. You’ll only focus on the proof text, which appears to be about collective judgment, not individual judgment. But really it’s not. Every knee will bow, but the devout Christian’s knee has been bowing already, and is quite used to it. The antichrist will be very reluctant to bend the knee, and may acknowledge Jesus as Lord, but be inwardly plotting to change that situation. Very different attitudes. Followed by very different judgments.