1 Corinthians 8:13
Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
Love must govern personal choice, so that a believer willingly gives up even a lawful, permitted, or innocent liberty rather than cause a weak brother to stumble or give offense. Applied to dress, this means selling a gold watch to avoid giving others an occasion to stumble. Applied to social conduct, this means a church elder must give up joining dancing parties because his participation wounds his brethren, places a stumbling block in their way, and fails to account for its harmful influence on others. It means refraining even from what is innocent in itself if it could encourage idolatry or trouble someone weak in faith, with Christian conduct considering its effect on others and avoiding giving offense.
It requires guarding every point against temptation, watching words and guarding the spirit that prompts them, standing as faithful sentinels over defective attributes of character, treating carefully those for whom Christ died, and refusing to make crooked paths that turn feet out of the way of life. Stumbling is done especially by the tongue, though a little member, which does great mischief by sowing seeds of bitterness and putting suspicious thoughts in minds.
It is violated by laying obstacles in a brother's way, injuring those outside, censuring and wounding and speaking unjust things, dwelling on fragments of God's Word that are not of vital importance, and talking truth anywhere and everywhere in an unacceptable manner that makes faith disgusting to unbelievers and lets souls stumble to destruction. It requires humility, thinking less of self, increased love for the brethren, sound judgment and reason instead of impulse and self-exaltation, and a holy influence upon all around including unbelievers, and one who has caused stumbling must take it all back and commence anew. Causing stumbling is a plague spot and rock of offense that wrecks souls and will be exposed in the day when every case is revealed, when many eternally lost will look with reproach upon those who caused them to stumble.