What Does John 16:1 Mean?

These things have I spoken to you, so that you would not be made to stumble.

John 16:1 · SDV

Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.

Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended.

THE KEY

Jesus speaks ahead of the pressure because his words can keep a hard moment from becoming a trap.

THE MEANING

Jesus’s words reach you before the moment that could unsettle your footing. They keep that moment from becoming a snare that makes you fall away.

THE ROOT

σκανδαλισθῆτε

skandalisthēte

GROWS FROM

σκάνδαλ-

skandal-

A snare or stumbling block: something that catches a person and causes a fall.

“be made to stumble” in this verse is skandalisthēte. The Greek verb carries the sense of being caused to stumble, beyond offense as hurt feeling. Its word family evokes a trap, so Jesus speaks to preserve your footing when events could catch you and make you fall away.

ALSO GROWS

skandalizō: To cause to stumble or ensnare.

σκανδαλίζω

This verb names the falling that Jesus’s words are meant to prevent.

skandalon: A snare, trap, or stumbling block.

σκάνδαλον

This noun reveals the trap-like image beneath the English word “offended.”

THE PATTERN

An encounter with a person or word can steady someone or become a point of stumbling.

Great wholeness is theirs who love your instruction, and no stumbling-block is theirs.

Psalm 119:165 · SDVLove of instruction is pictured as a way with no stumbling block to trip the one who walks it.

And flourishing is the one who is not made to stumble over me.

Matthew 11:6 · SDVThe verse names the possibility of stumbling at an encounter with Jesus himself.

And a stone to strike against, and a rock that springs the trap, to those who strike against the word and will not yield, and to this they were also set.

1 Peter 2:8 · SDVHere the word itself becomes a point of stumbling for those who encounter it.

THE THREAD

And flourishing is the one who is not made to stumble over me.

Matthew 11:6 · SDV

Matthew uses the same Greek word family for being caused to stumble, and locates the possible stumbling “in me.” John 16:1 shows why Jesus speaks beforehand: the encounter need not become a trap that takes your footing.

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