“Nobody will ever want you for anything but making babies” her drunken father said when he found out that his 15 year daughter was pregnant. I got to counsel this women at age 42, an alcoholic for 15 years, 6 babies with four different men, two of them aborted. Now on welfare with all her children taken away into foster care at very young ages.
She asks me what’s wrong with me? Obviously there were other things, but that comment her father made 27 years ago was instrumental in putting her life on the course it was on. There could not have been a more offensive and hurtful thing he could have said in her deeply emotional state, when she needed love the most. Sure she made a mistake but she carried this offense and let it dictate her view of herself for her entire adult life.
This is an extreme example, and this woman found healing eventually, but it demonstrates what we often do when others offend us. She hated her father and that hatred poisoned her every day of her life. She couldn’t punish him but she punished herself, and by living the way she did there was a part of her that irrationally thought that if she became what he said she was, that would somehow “show him”. It did nothing to him but the result was a miserable life wasted on a terribly misguided attempt to get back at her father for how he treated her.
Last week we talked about the trap of offence and some of the main problems associated with being offended - false assumptions, our expectations, pride, disobedience, self-preservation, and revenge.
Today I want us to look at the cure so we don’t allow offence to disrupt our lives. I said that we will not grow spiritually or emotionally until we honestly examine our inner life, and so the first thing I want to address this morning is the need to:
Take responsibility for yourself (Luke 17:3; Acts 24:16)
We need to see our own true condition and focus on our reactions rather than on what the other person said or did. Once something is said or done, it can’t be taken away, and often it can’t be fixed by the other person. If we spend our time and energy wishing and trying to get the other person to make up for what they did, we’re in big trouble.
For instance, if your spouse cheats on you, how do they fix that? They can’t make it so it didn’t happen, they can’t change the way you feel about it. I have seen husbands and wives spend their entire marriage trying to make up for what they did, but it never really makes a difference. Obviously what they did was wrong, and it hurt the other person to the core, but they can’t fix it, they can’t make it better after the fact. That healing and real forgiveness can only come from within yourself, with God’s help of course.
So even when we are deeply wounded by another person we have to take responsibility for ourselves eventually, even when it happens in childhood. Sometimes that will mean detaching from a relationship so that the person cannot continue to hurt us, but most often it means looking at your reaction and making a decision about how you are going to proceed with this offense.
I mentioned Luke 17 verse 3 last week. Jesus was talking about the fact that offense will come, but in verse 3 he says pay attention to yourselves if someone sins against you. In Acts 24:16 the same author records Paul saying, “So I often take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man.” It’s not easy.
Was there ever a person offended and hurt without deserving it more than Jesus? Maybe we need to:
Let Jesus be our teacher and model (Mt 5:21-26, 38-48, 18:15-17; Lk 23:34)
Part of being human, and especially being a Christian, is that we often have to do things that we don’t feel like doing, if we want good things to happen. So we need to let Jesus be our teacher and model. We must look at the word, see how Jesus lived and what he instructed us to do, and commit to living that way even if it’s difficult or we don’t feel like it.
Jesus gives us very specific instruction on how to deal with offense and relational problems in the book of Matthew. Look at Mt 5:21-26 when we are feeling angry with someone…
Unresolved anger is a prison, and until you are reconciled, you will be in a state of punishment yourself. Anger kills people, anger causes disease. The number one emotional factor in heart disease is unresolved anger. And notice here it’s talking about your anger, but it’s also talking about someone having something against you, or accusing you of something. Isn’t that often where our anger comes from?
And notice how the remedy relates very strongly to our first point about taking responsibility for yourself. It doesn’t say go tell the other person to make up for what they have done to make you angry, but you go reconcile and come to terms with the person.
Then a little later in chapter 5 and verse 38 (to 48) Jesus continues…
Why should we love our enemies? Because it will catch them so off guard that they may just wonder what it is about you that makes you so different. They will see Jesus in you, the one who literally forgave the people killing him while they were doing it.
Now when it comes to those in the church who hurt you or sin against you, he same principles apply but Jesus adds to it in Mt 18:15-17. “If your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses even to listen to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile or tax collector”.
Now this passage needs to be unpacked because it is not followed well, if at all. First of all it says if your brother sins against you. So again the first thing you must do is look at yourself, and accurately discern whether this was actually a sin or not, and whether it was intentionally directed at you. Did the person just make you mad because they were telling the truth or doing something you didn’t like or agree with, or was it actually sin against you?
If after this self-exploration, you decide it is sin according to the word of God, you then don’t go blab what so and so did to everyone you know, you get the guts to go to the person one on one to tell them what they did and how it affected you. You don’t go get a possy of people together to confront the person as a first step.
That is the second step if the person does not repent when you go to them alone. Now the second step has a very important purpose. It is not to intimidate, but it allows two or more people to help you discern if indeed it was a sin. Christians should be non-biased according to Scripture, so by taking a couple others along, they can help decide if your charge against the other person is valid, or if you’re just being a whiner.
Now if the charge is legitimate and the person still does not respond with repentance, then you go to the leadership of the church as a third step. At this point the charge has been established and now if the person doesn’t listen to the pastor and elders of the church, we all treat them as if they are not Christians. But we still forgive.
Now some believe this means total excommunication from the church, I don’t, I think it simply means what it says, that you don’t allow this person to participate in the church outside of mere attendance. They are not members in this unrepentant state, members of the church according to the Bible are converted baptized believers, so it may mean revoking or suspending a membership until there is repentance. It means not allowing them to have a leadership role in the church, or any privileges that come with membership, but you don’t lock them out of the building.
This is also not where it says you shouldn’t even eat with them or socialize with them. It means you treat them as any other lost, unsaved person. But not a brother or sister in Christ. You the saved sinner treat them as an unsaved sinner, period. You still love them.
That passage in 1 Cor 5 where it does talk about not even associating with a person is referring specifically to those in the church who blatantly and on purpose claim to be Christians while publicly choosing to sin. These are not necessarily sins against you, drunkenness, sexual immorality and so on. It refers to deliberate ongoing sin while claiming to love Jesus and be a follower of Jesus.
The essence of all these verses on church discipline have to do with when a person claiming to be a Christian in the church, is convicted of a legitimate sin and refuses to repent. It has to be a legitimate sin, it has to be publicly acknowledged as such by the church, and there has to be a conscious choice by the person to continue the sin and not repent.
Ok so back to relational sin against you specifically, we have one more verse pertaining to this and it’s Luke 23:34 where Jesus is hanging on the cross, and he says Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.
I submit to you that when a person sins against you personally, offends you, most of the time they do not know what they are doing in the sense that they are simply reacting in ignorance based on some deeper psychological, emotional or learned dynamics. I think there are very few people who set out in the morning to hurt the people they care about.
And Jesus is saying if they knew why they were doing this, because of their fear, their own pain, the teaching from their childhood and culture, and so on, they wouldn’t be doing it.
Now did the abusive father I started this message off with, desire to wound his flesh and blood like that? Did he want to be an angry alcoholic? I won’t go into it, but if you knew what his life was like when he was young, you would think much differently about him than when I first shared that story. His childhood was ugly.
It’s not completely intentional, so Father God let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and forgive them and seek to be reconciled with them. That is the heart of Jesus and it is the heart of the Holy Spirit who lives in you if you are a Christ follower. Seeing the need for their healing rather than your need for revenge. They need to be accountable and take responsibility for themselves, but they also need compassion.
Ok I needed to make that all very clear, but let’s quickly look at the next two cures.
Forgiveness (Mt 18:21-22, 6:14-15)
Back to Mt 18:21-22, “Peter came to Jesus and said, Lord how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” No I don’t think Jesus means that after the 490th time you stop forgiving. It means you don’t stop if there is repentance as clarified by Luke 17:34, “If he sins against you seven times in a day, and each time repents, forgive him”.
Why? “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you, but if don’t forgive others, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you”. Really? What he means is if you don’t forgive others after receiving forgiveness from Jesus, you really don’t get it and probably haven’t received God’s forgiveness in your own heart. You don’t understand what a sinner you are and what extreme forgiveness God has provided for you. Forgiveness is a choice and shouldn’t again be dictated by how you feel. It is a command, but it is based on the heart knowledge of the depth of the forgiveness you have received, which was unmerited, and probably not what Jesus felt like doing either. And just remember forgiveness does not mean tolerance of sin. Jesus never says I forgive you so now go sin as much as you want, in fact he holds forgiven people to a higher standard, “Therefore you must be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”. You get the point? You don’t have to tolerate sin and offence when you forgive as confirmed in Mt 5.
Finally there is:
Reconciliation (Rom 12:14-21, Js 3:13-18)
This is not the same as forgiveness though it can be a product of forgiveness. Rom 12:14-21… That is how a Christian is supposed to live with others. Highlight verse 18 because there is the distinguishing between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is not an option and is always possible.
Reconciliation to some degree depends on the other person. Just like God forgives anyone, reconciliation with God requires a response from people. But it does say do everything you possibly can to live peaceably with all. I think God did everything he could don’t you?
So take responsibility for your own feelings and actions, follow the teachings and model of Jesus for how to deal with conflict in relationships, always be willing and not only willing, but actively make the choice to forgive, and seek reconciliation by exhausting every possible means at your disposal.
Those things together are the cure for offense and all relational problems. And I will go even farther to say that they are the recipe for world peace. But we have to be willing to put this stuff into practice consistently. And we need to appropriate the Holy Spirit in order to do these things. Under our human will it will never happen, under the power of the Spirit it can. So again it all boils down to our surrendering to living by the Spirit rather than the flesh in every moment.
So know that there is a cure that God has provided through his word for your relational and emotional problems. Will we always be perfect? No. But at least after not being perfect we can do our best to fix it quickly if we take responsibility for our part. Be willing to take your medicine, follow the doctor’s orders and see if He’s right. I know he is.
That leads us into our next series entitled “God Is” where we will be examining exactly who God is, because if we don’t know this, we can’t know what he does and what it means to have him living inside us. But as John says in his first letter, whoever keeps on sinning and does not love others, does not know God, so we’re going to get to know Him better starting next week.
