Did you ever realize that true love can often be offensive? The expression “tough love” is often used to confront those we care for with sharing an unpopular message that we know may not be accepted well and may cause the person we love to be quite offended. Have you ever thought about the message Jesus came to preach? His message was one of the need to repent from sin and submit to God. And here is the dual nature of the message of Jesus. While He definitely loves you, He also warns you to know that you are a vile sinner in need of a Savior.
His love is clearly seen throughout the pages of Scripture. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and even raised some from the dead. His compassion for the poor and the downcast was evident to all. And His Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the greatest sermon ever delivered on positive ethics.
But as loving as Jesus is His message was also quite offensive to many for three main reasons. First, His message says that you are a sinner. The thought of being called a sinner doesn’t sit well with most people. Second, His message is very narrow-minded since it states that He is the only way to the Father. People take offense in the idea that all religions, except Christianity, are considered false religions. And third, His message states that if you don’t repent you will have to spend the rest of eternity in hell. So, when we really spell out the full Gospel message we are telling people that they are sinners, that Jesus is the only way to make peace with God, and that if they don’t they are headed to hell. As a result, it shouldn’t surprise us when people get offended by the message Jesus came to preach.
In addition, Jesus claimed to be God. And to many people down through the centuries, this claim has proven quite offensive. Just listen to how apologist Josh McDowell put it: “Why don’t the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn’t claim to be God, but Jesus did.”1
But perhaps C. S. Lewis stated the case for Jesus being God better than anyone else in his seminal quote: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”2
Let’s also remember that while the message Jesus came to share is offensive it also is quite loving since it has the ability to change people’s hearts, to heal, and to free sinners from bondage. As ambassadors for Christ our job is to share the Gospel and lead exemplary lives for Christ. Whether people repent or not is not within our control. What is in our control is our witness and the prayers we offer up on behalf of the sinner we are ministering to. So, let’s go forth into battle with the Word and prayer and the loving and offensive nature of Jesus!