I recently posted a note that has been very popular in the comment section (by my standards). Its subject was the topic of ‘speaking the truth in love’ and how Political Christianity seems to use this as a proud excuse to offend someone in the name of truth.
The responses were along the lines of, ‘You are hypocritically judging people for offending someone by offending them’, and ‘Yeah, but Jesus offended the Pharisees’, or ‘The gospel will always offend’. While I definitely agree the gospel will always offend and Jesus did offend the Pharisees, this does not justify the ‘speaking the truth in love’ excuse the PCs use and I believe Jesus’ life proves this.
So, in the vein of that now cliche’ idiom of the late twentieth century, let’s ask ourselves, what would Jesus do?
I will be honest, I purposely put the phrase ‘you’re just a jerk’ in that post and feel no guilt for doing so. I believe as followers of Christ, we should respond to religious hypocrites with a get-up-in-your-face attitude, and I dare say we should do so with the intent to offend them because that is what Jesus did.
In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees were arguably some of the smartest kids on the block as far as knowing the scriptures goes. They spent years studying and memorizing them and lived with a strict, legalistic, adherence to the over 600 laws in what we now call the Old Testament as well as oral traditions passed down through generations. The problem is this led to a very prideful self-image, and they wanted everyone to know.
To make a play on the words of the iconic song from 2011, they would walk around town singing, “I’m holy and I know it”.
In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus delivers a message I call the Woe is Them message. He rattled of list of the hypocrisies of the pharisees that would make any godly person blush. He opened his message by telling the people, ‘Practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach’. It was not that they did not know the truth of scripture, they did. But rather than allow it to be a mirror which revealed the sin in their hearts they twisted it into a justification for their pride. As a result, rather than lovingly guiding people to God, they snubbed their nose at them and beat them over the head with condemnation. They were right in the truth they spoke, just wrong in their application of it.
To drive the message home, Jesus said seven times, “Woe to you! You hypocrites!”. He follows these up with some very in-your-face statements such as, ‘You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter’, ‘You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell’, and ‘You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity’. So, Jesus was not some namby pamby, ‘all you need it love’ kind of guy. He could be extremely offensive when it came to the Pharisees, but He was very different with those the Pharisees called sinners and heathens.
While Jesus did not shy away from addressing the issue of sin, He did so in a way that caused the sinners to want to hear more and many times they even asked him to dinner. This led to Him being known to associate with the hated tax collectors, drunkards, prostitutes, and other people who made the skin of the Pharisees crawl and to the self-righteous Pharisees, this was a sign of Jesus’ lack of character.
While the Pharisees may be dead and gone, the spirit of the pharisee is still alive and well in the church today and one need look no further than Political Christianity to see this.
Many politically obsessed Christians take pleasure in what I call the three D’s of ‘political evangelization’; demonizing, demeaning, and disgusting. They demonize the democrats by harping on the sins of homosexuality and abortion, they demean them by hurling insults, such as calling anyone who opposes the republican agenda things like ‘libtards’ and ‘sheeple’, and they disgust them with their self-righteous attitude and scathing anger filled rants veiled as ‘speaking the truth in love.
Yes, abortion is murder, and the Bible does call homosexuality sin, and we should not shy away from proclaiming those truths, however, the political Christian message which all too often stops at the condemnation of sin, falls short of the whole truth of the gospel.
Proclaiming the gospel is not simply saying, ‘You’re a heathen who is dying and going to hell unless you quit sinning!’, it must also include the good news that a way of escape has been made. While Political Christianity is hyper-focused on the calling out of sin, it all too often shows little or no concern for leading the sinner to Christ where they can become a new creation.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Like the Pharisees, far too many Political Christians ‘shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces’ by condemning them without giving them hope that Christ can make them a new creation.’ These are the people we must oppose and even offend because they drive away those we are called to reach’
Now, I know many will take offense at this so let me say not everyone who calls sin what it is are hypocrites, so please don’t blow up the comments with your justification of yourself or call me soft on sin. If you call abortion murder or homosexuality abomination but you spend more time sharing the hope of the gospel, I applaud you. However, if you are one who is hyper-focused on labeling the heathens as such while giving a mere nod to or outright ignoring the gospel, I am going full Jesus on you and calling you out for what you are, a hypocrite!
Like the Pharisees, today’s religious hypocrites know the truth of the Bible, but they use it for sinful purposes. They twist it to prop up their political agenda, beat people over the head with the hell fire and brimstone passages, use it to justify their hatred and condescension for others, all while ignoring the passages that speak to their sins. In the process they give Christ and the Church a bad name. Instead of sparking a desire in the hearts of the lost, the instead disgust with their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.
That is why I feel no guilt when offending religious hypocrites and even do so intentionally. It’s a sad truth that someone like that, many times, must brutally offended in order to reach them. We must shake them out of their blindness to their sin.
Legalistic bullies who have no desire whatsoever to reach the lost need to be called out and while what I am about to say might spark a lot of angry comments, these people are those who Jesus referred to as ‘sons of Satan’ (John 8:44). They eagerly seek to make converts to their twisted, better than you religion and, as Jesus told the Pharisees, make them twice as much the sons of hell as they are. So, until God tells me otherwise, I will stand in their face and call them out for what they are, whitewashed tombs full of dead bones, hypocritical enemies of God.
But isn’t the Gospel Offensive?
So, am I saying we should not address the issue of sin when speaking to sinners? While my ‘speaking the truth in love’ dissenters always read that into my posts, I most certainly am not saying that. I am simply we should speak the truth…with a love for the person, not a love for offending.
It is impossible to bring someone to saving faith without them first realizing they are a sinner destined for an eternity in hell and need a savior. The reason the cross and resurrection of Jesus are good news is because men are hopelessly depraved, and it is humanly impossible to live up to the standard of holiness required to escape judgment. But if we stop there, that is not the gospel because the gospel ‘good news’.
Jesus addressed this with the Pharisees when He said, ‘You have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice, mercy, and faithfulness’. The problem with the pharisaical hypocrites of today is they focus on justice (the standard of moral rights and wrong) while neglecting the mercy and faithfulness of God.
God showed His mercy and love to us, ‘While we were yet sinners’ by dying for us (Romans 5:8). He did not show His love by beating us over the head with our sin and we can’t show love to others by doing that either. Yes, we must speak truth. But it is how and why we speak truth that makes the difference between speaking the truth in love or simply being a jerk.
When we are speaking truth to sinners, we must do so with a loving tone and desire to lead them to Christ. Our words and actions toward them must not be as a cruel taskmaster trying to beat someone into submission, but one of a compassionate shepherd leading the sheep to green pastures and crystal-clear water. At times that does require what I call a ‘daddy voice’ — speaking firmly with authority and correction — but it should never cause those we are speaking with to doubt our love for them.
While the hypocritical Christian loves to go out and offend the lost, the Bible never calls us speak truth for the purpose of offending. Our job is simply to speak the gospel in a compassionate, loving way and leave the offense to the gospel. The truth will offend. It will taste bitter to those who are in love with the darkness of this world, but for those the gospel draws to Christ that bitterness will turn to sweetness when it reaches their soul. But that will never happen if the sinner we are speaking to vomits the truth out in disgust of our prideful, self-righteous, and offensive presentation of truth.
When the condemnation of sin brings someone great joy and satisfaction while the proclamation of the gospel is of lesser concern, no truth they speak is done so out of love. They simply want to offend for the sake of offending and God opposes them. That is why we should offend the hypocrite for their sin of knowing the truth but not living it and love the sinner who does not know the truth and let God do the offending.
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