Offended?

When you think about Jesus, what kinds of things come to mind?  Do you think of someone who is always kind and ready to be with people?  The kind of person who is able to accept any person, no matter what they might look like or act like?  The person whose patience with others never runs out, no matter how annoying they might be?  The person who always has just the right words to say, and always says them in the right way for the maximum effect?  Words of comfort?  Words of peace?  Words of hope?  Words of love?

Those images, frankly, are ones that we would all probably agree with.  They describe the Jesus we would love to spend time with, love to talk with.  They are also images that you could also find widely scattered throughout the four Gospels.  But if you looked a bit more closely at the Gospels, to see Jesus as He describes Himself, you would also find something very different. 

You would find the Jesus who gets under peoples skin.  The Jesus who gets in your face.  The Jesus you might wish would just go away and leave you alone.

That's what I noticed when I was reading from Luke and saw these words in Luke 7:23:

 "And blessed the one who is not offended by me."

Jesus is offensive?  Can't be!

And yet it is true.  Jesus himself says that there are people who find him to be quite offensive.  People who perhaps feel insulted at the words he would say to them.  People who would turn their backs and cover their ears if Jesus were to speak to them.  They are offended because, in Jesus' own words from Luke 5:32, he says of his particular task,

"I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

There is the problem in a nutshell.  Jesus refuses to let us set the standard for our righteousness, or our ability to come before God in peace.  He reminds us that God has set the standards for our righteousness and that when we violate those standards we need to admit, to God, our error, and to seek His forgiveness.  There is no other way. 

To hear that call to repentance, to believe it, and to act on it by seeking God's mercy, is to not be offended by Jesus.  And the blessing from God that follows as we seek Him is glorious in ways that we can barely imagine. 

May you hear the words of Jesus and see yourself as you truly are, a sinner in need of a Savior.  Of all the things that we can think of when we think of Jesus, the one that is the most precious, that is most essential, is that He, alone, is our Savior, and in that we rejoice.  Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.