When Jesus is insulting  

Many years ago, when I’d be talking with unbelievers, I’d throw something out that I hoped would get them to think about the core of Christianity.

Normally, non-Christians will stiff-arm the faith via a litany of complaints about the Church, the hypocrisy of Christians’ behavior, and the supposed intellectual issues surrounding belief in God. Some of those criticisms, as you know, are valid, and others are pretty bad.

But because Christianity’s foundation rests on a divine person, I learned to table those criticisms and ask them a simple question to get down to the heart of the matter:

“What don’t you like about Jesus?”

At the time, I thought it would be awfully hard for someone to rail about the person of Christ. After all, when Jesus was illegally put on trial by His enemies, Mark tells us: “Now the chief priests and the whole Council kept trying to obtain testimony against Jesus to put Him to death, and they were not finding any” (Mark 14:55).

Christ’s enemies had literally dogged His every step, sent false disciples to try and trick Him into some verbal gaffe, and yet there was absolutely no dirt they could drudge up against Him then, so how could anyone today?

On very rare occasions, some more learned about the Bible would raise the complaint about Jesus supposedly calling a Canaanite woman a dog (Matt. 15:21-26) or follow the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell in dinging Jesus because He believed in Hell: “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in Hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.” 

But those things aside, it was normally hard for the person I was conversing with to list out reasons to dislike Jesus. And yet, most times there was still a firm resistance to Him; an unwillingness to change their mind about Christianity and sign on the bottom line as it were.

While that confused me back then, I get it now. When understood and not superficially dismissed, Jesus is quietly and instinctively insulting to everyone not born again.

Go away Jesus 

Tim Keller has said that the presentation of the Gospel typically produces one of two responses in people: “One side says they don’t need forgiveness, whereas the other side says that’s too easy,” leading him to conclude, “Grace is insulting.”

One group is offended by Jesus because He tells them they need forgiveness and are thus “bad,” and the other side is upset with Christ because He tells them nothing they do is good enough to earn favor with God. And that’s just for starters.

Trevin Wax rightly points out that people get offended at Jesus for how inclusive He is (“I can’t believe He’s associating with those people”) and how exclusive He is (“It’s insulting to say He’s the only way to God”). Pastor Jody Burkeen also correctly notes that Jesus ruffles everyone’s feathers because He confronts sin (“Forgive us our trespasses”), claims Lordship (“Why do you call me ‘Lord’, ‘Lord’, and not do what I say?”), and demands surrender (“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me”).

The Bible warned that He would be like this.

Isaiah said Christ would be “a rock to stumble over” (Is. 8:14). At His birth, Simeon told Mary and Joseph that Jesus would be “a sign to be opposed” (Luke 2:34). Jesus himself said, “Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me” (Luke 7:23).

His very presence and words upset us in a way described by Big Daddy Weave and Katy Nichole in their song God Is in This Story:

There’s torn up pages in this book
Words that tell me I’m no good
Chapters that defined me for so long.

Stuff that’s hard to hear and accept, especially today in our don’t-judge-me-everything-I-am-is-good culture, right? But it’s what we all need to hear and is done by Christ in a fashion like the writer of Proverbs describes: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov. 27:6).

The English Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon talked about the type of spiritual confrontation that we all need and that Jesus did when he said in his message “God or Self – Which?”: “You made the people pleased, but did you glorify your Master? Did you lay the axe at the foot of the tree? Did you come down on their consciences? Did you strive to drive the nail right into their hearts? You might have done better with rough words than with those garnished utterances.”

Nails in the heart and rough words are found throughout Jesus’ biographies, and anyone who pays close attention when reading them will either be pierced through their soul by the Spirit and commit to Him or become enraged to the point where they want to throw Him off a cliff (Luke 4:29).  

Hopefully you’re not in the latter group.

Evangelist Nick Vujicic warns that “’Jesus’ is the most offensive word in anyone’s life. When we mention Jesus, He is the only one who says ‘I am God. I am holy. I am the only way to a truthful life.’ No one — not Mohammad, not Buddha, not anyone says that they were holy, not anyone says that they were God, not anyone says that they faced the devil face to face and won.”

Take my advice and don’t be insulted by Jesus. Instead, let that faithful Friend wound you where and when you need, and remember: “Blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.”