The most offensive thing about God

There’s been a shift recently. At least for me there’s been a shift recently and it’s been unpacking itself more and more over the last week or so and it began when I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that I was badly out of alignment with the nature of God in a very specific, very powerful way. I realized that I had accusation in my heart towards the people of my opposite political leaning in America. I was reading in James chapter 2 where James talks about how mercy triumphs over judgement. As I processed with the Lord He began to speak to me about what He’s like which at first felt a little off topic. If you’re just beginning to be able to identify the voice of God in your life, I’d say definitely pay attention when He says something that seems completely off topic because He’s never off topic. Catching up to how He’s on topic when He says stuff that seems off topic always results in breakthrough so pay attention!

So track with me here, I went to God and was like, “Lord I’m concerned about this group of people doing concerning things.”

And He responds with, “My favorite thing is having mercy towards people.”

If you’ve followed this blog for very long you may have read about a spiritual function where we get to experience the real, authentic satisfaction when we hear the voice of God and do what He’s saying to do. Every time we act in obedience to the voice of God, we get to feel real satisfaction. (See Matthew 5:6 – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled. Some translations say completely satisfied. I wrote a blog on the concept so here I’m just going to reference it.)

So there was this moment where I went to the Lord with real concerns and He told me His favorite thing is to be merciful towards people. The opportunity He was presenting me was to step into His divine nature and enjoy the things He enjoys. Like, I went to Him saying, hey I’m not having fun because of this thing and He invited me to play a different game altogether which has the satisfaction equation built into it. As I began to let mercy have it’s perfect work within me the ramifications were wide reaching and have continued to spread to every area of my life. I’ve certainly not arrived at the destination mercy is taking me to just yet but since this thing is life giving and growing in me I thought I’d share a bit from the places I’ve spent time thinking around the mercy of God.

There’s a story that takes place in three books of the Bible. Each eye witness account tells the story a little differently but it’s the story of a paralyzed man being healed. If you want to read the story it takes place in Matthew 9, Mark 2 and Luke 5. The story goes like this. Jesus was in Capernaum and was so empowering and fresh with His teaching that rabbis and other religious leaders from a bunch of surrounding 1st century Jewish towns came along with a huge crowd of people to listen to Him teach. The religious leaders and random people packed into the house to hear Jesus. They packed in so tightly that a crowd formed around the open door straining their ears to hear what He was saying. That must have been an interesting day in Capernaum. Imagine waking up having not heard the news that rabbi Jesus had come to your town to share. You’d have awoken to quite the stir. To get into that house you’d have to have gotten up really early and maybe waited in line like people trying to get a PlayStation 5. One of the reasons there was such interest in Jesus is because people throughout the region had heard how He healed the sick everywhere He went. So on that day, in Capernaum, there were five friends. One of them was paralyzed from the waist down and so he had no hope of getting to the house where Jesus was in time to get inside. Much to his surprise, the other four guys in the squad conspired behind his back to get him in. They carried him to the house and when they saw the crowd was too big for the house and there was no way to get their friend through the door they considered just waiting till the end of the day. Maybe they even did wait an hour or two, straining to hear what Jesus was saying. When they got tired of waiting they formulated a plan. They carried their friend to the roof (which would have been a flat roof like you see in the modern day Middle East to this day). They began to move the tiles on the roof and created a hole big enough to tie ropes to the four corners of their friend’s bed so they could lower him down on top of all the little sardines who woke up early enough to secure their place standing shoulder to shoulder with all the other early birds. Scripture tells us that the first thing Jesus says to the paralyzed man is, “Take heart son. Your sins are forgiven.”

Why does this matter? It matters because in the 1st century, the dominant belief was that good things happened to righteous people and bad things happened as punishment for sin. So this man would have 100% believed that he’d become paralyzed because of some kind of unrighteousness on his part. He would have rationalized that he deserved to be paralyzed and beg in the street. He would have coped with his condition by partnering with guilt to explain his circumstance and his reality. Guilt would have been a primary part of his model of the universe, the lens through which he would see and perceive everything. Then, before he can apologize or say or do anything, Jesus steps out and reveals to everyone in the crowd the true nature of the Infinite Divine and declares throughout every realm of reality that this man is a son of God and is forgiven, cancelling out the power and consequences of sin within the man himself.

The religious leaders were pissed. Forgiveness without an apology? How dare He?

I’m a religious leader. I serve on the leadership team at Rock Creek Church in Portland, Oregon and I went to the Lord with accusation towards a people group in my heart and He decided to show me how He’s perpetually extending and showing mercy to those people. I had the opportunity to say in my heart, “How dare He?” But it’s these moments where there’s an offer on the table to grow and change and become more than we were before because the story we find ourselves in is that if we’re growing spiritually, we’re growing more and more into the likeness of the Infinite Divine and His nature is merciful in ways that offend judgement. The invitation was to step into agreement with the mission of the Cross. What do I mean by that?

Again, I’m referencing a previous blog post where I spent the entire blog talking about the mission of the Cross. Pretty much anyone who’s grown up in the Western World would be familiar with the narrative that Jesus died for our sins. One summer, I was laying in a park reading the Bible and sun tanning and Holy Spirit began to speak to me about the nature of forgiveness. If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the concept that forgiveness releases us from something and in a lot of cases where someone is pursuing inner healing, forgiving ones abusers can be supernaturally powerful. I was trying to understand why I had to go back and intentionally forgive this one person over and over and over throughout my life. I couldn’t quite get free and it felt like I couldn’t quite forgive all the way if that makes sense. Holy Spirit started speaking to me about the mission of the Cross. It felt off topic so I paid attention. He showed me that I hadn’t forgiven all the way because the mission of the Cross wasn’t to create an apology door but to actually truly forgive everybody’s sins, creating a new environment where humanity could now interact with God freely because of what Jesus manifested in the earth through His death and resurrection. This was evidenced by the veil hiding the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem splitting down the middle. I said in a previous blog that the veil splitting showed that the story of the Cross wasn’t God making a way for us to come to Him but it was God bursting out of the Heaven realm to come to us. The profound realization is this: the mission of the Cross is not just for me but for every human in history and future and the power of the cross is to completely cancel the power of sin. That means the Cross has the restorative power to make it so that the effect of the sin within me, never happened. The power that we are now called into as agents of the Cross is the power to help bring people into a realization that their sins are forgiven and actually, they can let go of the idea that they’re separated from God. When we forgive people who’ve wronged us in a way where we step into agreement with the mission of the Cross, we’re able to forgive all the way which is to stand before God and agree with the offensive thing He did by extending His full sin-cancelling forgiveness towards them before they ever apologized. They don’t need to do anything more to come into the full benefit of intimate relationship with God despite what they did to us. That’s the most offensive thing about God. He delights in showing mercy, (Micah 7) and His mercy triumphs over judgement (James 2).

As I press more and more into allowing His mercy to become the lens through which I perceive everything, it aligns my default with compassion. If I’m angry about something someone did, I’m not aligned with mercy. Here’s the big key though. Trying to be merciful doesn’t align us with the mercy of God. The satisfaction equation doesn’t work that way. We can’t imagine what we think God would say, do that and reap real satisfaction. That equation is disconnected from His voice and that’s never going to work truly. The context where the mercy of God can transform us is the context where we look at the posture of the heart of God towards the people that offend us and see His mercy extending towards them. It’s the most offensive thing to perceive but that’s what He’s doing on the earth! We’ve got to get over the hurdle of offense to step into mercy.

What I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’ve discovered another spiritual function in all this mercy and it was staring us in the face all along. Go look at Matthew 5:7.

If there’s one thing I need in my life after the year we’ve just had, it’s mercy and as I’ve begun to step into letting mercy have it’s perfect work within me, I’ve begun to experience the mercy of God directed towards me. As I partner with that, I step into a posture of mercy towards myself and the outworking of living a life where your orientation towards yourself is merciful like God is an exponential equation. You become like Him – really offensively merciful towards yourself and everyone else.

The most offensive thing about God is that He loves being merciful to everyone. Everyone. That’s also one of the most beautiful things about God. Let’s let it become one of the most beautiful things about us too. Bless you!