Summary
Stumbling
A disciple is born out of the waters of Holy Baptism, made a new creation and called by God to be his own. Yet just as a newborn must learn to walk—and learns through many falls and skinned knees—so the disciple learns to walk the walk of faith. Stumbling is part of that walk. Even the first disciples, who knew themselves to be followers of Christ, stumbled again and again; Peter himself heard Jesus say, "Get behind me, Satan." To be a disciple is not to be finished, but to be following.
The reason for this is that every Christian carries two natures at once. Reborn by the Spirit in Baptism, the disciple is a saint; still in the flesh of the old Adam, the disciple is also a sinner. Lutherans confess this as simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously righteous and sinner. Paul describes the wrestling vividly: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7:14-24.
Scripture is blunt about any pretense to the contrary. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us… If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" 1 John 1:8,10. The title is not "stumbled," as if it were past, but Stumbling—an ongoing reality. The disciple should strive not to sin, but the flesh is weak, and self-deceit is one of the devil's favorite schemes: the proud lie that we are basically good, that we can pick ourselves up, that we can stand righteous before God by our own doing. We may fool ourselves; we never fool God, who sees us laid bare.
Against this stands another person with two natures—Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, yet without sin. He walked the road of righteousness we cannot walk. He was tempted, but he did not stumble. He bore no sin of his own, yet he took the full weight of our stumbling to the cross. He has the scars; we are given clean knees. In his death and resurrection, he picks us up off the ground, stands us before the Father, and declares us righteous.
This is the good news of the very next verse: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" 1 John 1:9. This is exactly what happens in Confession and Absolution at the beginning of the Divine Service. We confess our stumbling—known and unknown, willful and unwilling—and we hear the word, "Your sins are forgiven." That word is not finally the pastor's word; it is Christ's own word, spoken through the called servant, lifting us up and setting us on our feet again.
So the disciple has no need to pretend perfection and every reason for confidence. We will stumble; Christ will pick us up. We confess; he forgives. He has borne our skinned knees, and he leads us forward in the walk of discipleship by his mercy, every step of the way.
Video citations
- "Stumbling" 5-4-25 — If you would please open your Bibles to the first letter of John, this is in the New Testament. If you are using a Pue edition of the Bible, it is on page 211 in the New Testament, where in the…