Christ as a stumbling stone and rock of offense: Why Jesus and the gospel should offend you
How many times have you heard this said in various forms and in various guises?
“You know Jesus did not have a problem with the prostitutes and the sinners? it is the religious folks, the Pharisees and Sadducees that He had a problem with!”
Well, not really. The most cursory reading of scripture shows that this view is very problematic.
First, Jesus Christ makes it clear that He is hated by all,
“ But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’
(John 15:25)
Explaining why He is hated, not just by Pharisees, but by the entire world, Jesus states,
“ The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.”
(John 7:7)
So the person of Jesus Christ is not a testimony to the innate goodness and virtue within the hearts of men and the beauty of their works, but rather, a testimony that the world is at heart, evil. Right out the gate, we can see Jesus is telling people something they do not want to hear.
This same Jesus says to a crowd of Jews (not Pharisees or Sadducees),
“You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do…”
(John 8:44)
And to His own two disciples on the way to Emmaus,
“Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!”
(Luke 24:25)
And to Peter, His closest disciple,
“But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
(Matthew 16:23)
The above verses indicate that Jesus was an equal opportunity offender. He offended everybody one way or the other.
Even John the Baptist who prepared the way for Jesus Christ was offended when he was imprisoned because of the message and did not get as much as a greeting card from Him. John had to send disciples to clarify if Jesus was indeed the One or if he had just wasted his life. To this Jesus after proving His identity by doing various miraculous works responds,
“… And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”
(Matthew 11:6)
Not only that, Jesus also expected the world to be offended at His message (the gospel) which He commissioned the disciples to preach,
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
(John 15:18–19)
The message of Jesus is not one that ordinarily resonates with the human heart this is why it takes God to draw people to embrace Christ and His message,
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him...”
(John 6:44)
However, whether or not the people being drawn respond is another matter. As it is written,
“All day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
(Isaiah 65:2)
Paul writes of the message of the cross,
“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness”
(1 Corinthians 1:22–23)
The gospel message, like Jesus Christ its author and finisher, is an equal opportunity offender as well. It offends Jews and Gentiles alike. It offends both sets of listeners for various reasons but it offends them all the same.
Where have Christians gotten this strange idea that they have to make the gospel as palatable as possible? Since when has the idea of “niceness” and “respect” and “political correctness” and “sensitivity” overthrown and supplanted the dissemination of truth?
Imagine the cultures the gospel was introduced into in the first century and how offended its listeners must have been.
As a first century Jew who had prided yourself in being in an elite class as a descendant of Abraham. You grew up learning the Torah (The first five books of the Old Testament) and in an atmosphere where the Jews are God’s special people and the other nations are doomed to perish. The very seal and evidence of yourself being set apart was circumcision when you were eight days old.
Now the gospel comes along and preaches that there is no longer a distinction between Jew and Non-Jew but everybody who believes in Jesus is the seed of Abraham. Not only this, even circumcision is now pointless according to this gospel because someone who is not of the Jewish nation and has never heard of the Torah can now be placed on equal footing with you without being circumcised only because of this Jesus Christ guy and His message! Imagine the outrage!
As a first century Roman citizen, you are in an environment where the mentality is that might makes right and that as long as you have the power to do something, it is your divine right to do it. As the father in a household, you can kill your sons or send them into slavery without any fear of repercussion. In this climate, you are entitled to, in the words of historians, “relieve yourself using any of the orifices of your slave boys and girls”. Then the gospel comes along and says actually you should love your neighbour, care for the weak and restrict yourself to only one woman for life. This is the teaching of this Jesus Christ guy, how dare him?
Not only this, as a first century inhabitant of the Roman empire, the emperor is the representative of the gods. He is the Pontifex Maximus, the highest priest of the land! The proof of the gods’ favour is that Rome is the ruler of the known world and the highest power on the planet. Then this gospel comes along and says, “Well, there is only one God, and only one Lord, this Jesus Christ guy!”, Heck is this guy for crying out loud?!
As a first century Greek, you value wisdom and insight. You believe you have knowledge in spiritual matters. Then the gospel comes along and says, the wisdom of this world is foolishness, the cross of this guy Jesus Christ is the real wisdom of God you are ignorant of and then a guy called Paul shows up and says you have been worshipping a God you do not even know! The audacity!
You, as a Greek, believe that the body is bad and that the immaterial soul will one day be free from this evil body…but this Paul fella says a man you have not heard of died and rose from the dead so that everybody who dies would be raised from the dead in their bodies. Is this not madness?!
You are part of a remote tribe in a location nobody has ever heard of, raised to worship the great Sun god with all the appurtenant rituals and ceremonies. You have devoutly prayed to this deity every single day of your life, then the gospel shows up and says your god is false, your religion is false, your feasts are false and that this guy Jesus is THE TRUTH! How condescending!
Jesus offends everybody across the spectrum! In Islam, the greatest sin ever is attributing partners to Allah, yet the gospel has always been that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh! Islam is so offended by this that it orders Christians to be subjugated for this belief,
“Fight against those who do not believe in Allāh or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allāh and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture — [fight] until they give the jizyah1 willingly while they are humbled.
The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allāh”; and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allāh.”…”
(Surah 9:29)
Point is Jesus offends everybody across the spectrum. The message of the gospel has always been an offense to every culture it comes in contact with. So the offensiveness of Christianity to the media, sports, modern day proponents of moral relativism/abortion/LGBTQ/secular humanists/atheists/Islamists, Paris 2024 Olympic committee is absolutely nothing new and Christians ceding ground on some of these issues in order to pacify or pander to the sensitivities of the cultural climate are fighting a losing battle. Nothing but the very ripping away of the fabric of Christianity, nothing but the extinction of the name of Christ, would suffice to pacify the culture. The heart of the matter is this,
“They hate Christ!” period!
The idea of “inclusion”, “diversity”, “equity” for some odd reason never seem to include those who disagree with the people propagating those ideas. For some weird reason it never includes Christians and those who uphold Biblical ethos, there are a couple of names for those people by the way, “bigots”, “Intolerant”, “Far-right” “closed-minded” and all manner of “phobics”.
You know why we will always be offended by Christ?
The late pastor Tim Keller once said that if there is a God who created the entire universe, a divine omniscient mind masterminding the affairs of the earth, why in the world would we expect this being would agree with us on every view we hold?
Christians and Non-Christians alike, by nature, will never agree with Christ on everything because He testifies that our works, which are driven by our nature, are EVIL! The dangerous response to this though, is to get Christ to agree with us! Thus Christ becomes an ambassador for our own prejudices, sentiments and sometimes the very evils in our heart. But as Paul writes,
“ …is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not!”
(Galatians 2:17)
The fact our nature is at heart evil is why Jesus demands absolute commitment. He modelled that absolute commitment to humanity by dying on the cross for all of its sins. We as Christians are to carry our own crosses through the shame, discomfort, accusing fingers and hatred of the culture and follow after Him. It is only in submitting our wills to the will of Christ that we can see how our own desires are evil and His are good, as it is written,
“ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God”
(Romans 12:1–2)
We as Christians should expect to be outsiders, the lone voices in the wilderness, as a result, it becomes important that we heed the advice of the writer of Hebrews,
“Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.”
(Hebrews 13:13)
What is the overall take away?
Peter, the Apostle of Christ, says this about Jesus,
“Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who are disobedient,
“The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling
And a rock of offense.”
They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.”
(1 Peter 2:7–8)
Paul writes of Jesus,
“As it is written:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”
(Romans 9:33)
We should not be coy about the gospel. We should not market it to people. We ought to preach it as it is. There is a lot of wisdom required on how it should be presented but at every turn, we must make sure we are not removing every possible stone of stumbling when we preach Christ to a dying world. If our message becomes one that is so adulterated that everybody agrees with it and nobody takes offence or one that does not cause the listeners to trip or stumble over its implications for them, we are beginning to preach another gospel and as Paul says,
“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.”
(Galatians 1:8–10)
