“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘LIVE!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘LIVE!’…. I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became Mine.” Ezekiel 16
He wasn’t offended by us - we who were wallowing in our blood and sin. The Father didn’t take offense at humanity when we decided a snake was worth listening to instead of Him. He didn’t take offense at us when we chose inferior lovers instead of choosing the One more attractive and satisfying than thousands upon thousands of other beloveds. we grieved Him, we broke His heart, He hates our sin, but that didn’t keep Him from the greatest inconvenience for love the halls of history would ever echo. God chose to die instead of being offended. He inconvenienced Himself for us - to the point of death. a death so brutal the most gruesome of perverted murderers deserves. it was a death difficult to look at, as any death is. but it was more than the offense of a crucifix, it was the Man hanging on it who was offensive to the onlooker, the romans, the religious. it was the words He spoke. the claims the made. the way He loved and loves still.
The life of Jesus and His undiluted words are offensive to those who don’t see Him for who He is. He is offensive to flesh because we were made for GOD - not to live and die in the nature we were born into. He allows His words to be offensive because He wants to pierce beyond the flesh and show us the necessity of being born AGAIN and receiving a new heart. a heart so in love and hanging on His every word that we “don’t want to leave too.” (John 6:67)
To those who know how worthy they are of an eternity in a real hell separated from Life Himself because humanity is incapable of saving ourselves from our sin, this God Man is through and through everything for which we’ve ever longed.
The life of this scarred Man declares that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” but only those who have received in themselves the flesh and blood of the Man of Heaven - Jesus Christ.
And all of a sudden, in light of this- It makes sense that He has the right to train our hearts to see how willing we are to remain unoffended by Him. He knows what the days ahead look like. He needs a Bride convinced of His nature and loyal to Him no matter the cost. The unoffendable God made knowable says, “eat my flesh and drink my blood” and many turned away and walked with Him no more because they took offense at Him.” Who are we to take offense at Him when He never took offense at us? If we only have the capacity to love because He first loved us, we also have the capacity to be so swept by Him that it doesn’t matter what He says, how He says it, when He says it… we have nowhere else to go because He has the words of life. Love doesn’t take offense. Do we truly love Him?
Is He this real to us? Are we tethered to Him so much so that He has been given complete authority in every arena of our lives? He is not simply our Friend, (although wonder of wonders- this is indeed true) but He is our LORD. He is the Almighty God who is truth and who gets to define our definitions. What if our wills were broken enough to be unoffended by Him? What if we actually chose to wrestle with Him about the complexities of things instead of walking away with a cold heart? What if His body died to the fear of offending the world and stopped trying to conform christianity into a palatable pattern for the world to digest with greater ease? His physical body died to model to the Church, the body of Christ, what love looks like: keeping no record of wrong; choosing to go to the end with the hope that maybe some would see Him and turn to Him and trust Him for who He is even if it means embarrassment/injustice/even our physical death.
What if we, like Jesus, walked in the fear of God (and thus, friendship with God) to such a degree that we trusted Him above our own acceptance in the world? What if we simultaneously (and seemingly paradoxically) loved people deeply enough to actually feel the heartbreak of Jesus if they turn us away because they’re actually turning Him away? it takes us being willing to suffer with Him to even be aware of when His heart aches.
What if what we seem to take initial offense at from Him is actually all we’ve ever longed for? It just requires surrender to receive. “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:24
“And blessed is he who is not offended by Me” Matthew 11:6
