What does it mean to offend?
The Bible word is somewhat different than how we use it today. It carries with it some of the same meaning, but there's more.
According to Strong's Greek and Hebrew Dictionary, the Bible word means "to trip up". It means to cause to stumble. Something that leads people to sin. And to lose faith in God and Christ; to fall away. It’s a serious word, and if we take it in that original sense that is closer to the scriptures we get a whole other idea of what it means to offend. Whatever leads people to sin, whatever erodes faith in God and Christ, this is offensive in Bible terms, and taken that way, the people who are doing the most offending are quite possibly the false teachers, and false prophets, and reckless evangelists, these are the people who may be doing the most offending of all.
In his book Marx and Satan, Pastor Wurmbrand quotes a liberal theologian who he says was instrumental in destroying the Christian faith of one of Marx's closest associates, Friedrich Engels. The admission is quintessential of what it means to offend in a Biblical sense of the word:
"I deliver lectures here at the university before a large audience. I don't recognize myself when I pronounce my blasphemies from the pulpit. They are so great that these children, whom nobody should offend, have their hair standing on end. While delivering the blasphemies, I remember how I work piously at home writing an apology of the holy Scriptures and of the Revelation. In any case, it is a very bad demon that possesses me as often as I ascend the pulpit, and I am so weak that I am compelled to yield to him.... My spirit of blasphemy will be satisfied only if I am authorized to preach openly as professor of the atheistic system."
His desire was to "preach openly the atheistic system"; the blasphemies that he mentions but does not describe, may well have been as much of what would erode faith in God and Christ that his liberal theology would allow.
It isn’t only our words in teaching and preaching that offend in a Biblical sense, but also our actions. A few months ago the Catholic Church was hit by yet another scandal (incidentally the English word is very close in pronunciation to the Greek word we are considering here) in which some of its priests in the Diocese of Philadelphia were indicted with sex abuse charges. Cardinal Regali who oversees the Philadelphia Archdiocese, in delivering a homely shortly after the scandal surfaced reminded those under his watch of the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 18:6. I know because the local news radio played a sound byte of him quoting from the text during mass on Ash Wednesday.
Yet the word still carries with it a sense that is close to how we use it today. When we say offend, what we mean by it is something that is anywhere from being made to feel uncomfortable, to being deeply wounded and hurt. I believe the word carries with it a similar meaning, because being deeply wounded and hurt can have the same effect as bad teaching or failed predictions. It can crush our faith and send us on a road to more sin and hurt.
Solomon said "there is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health."
There is, Solomon said, speech that wounds like a sword. But a wise man's speech brings health. Life.
You can kill with words. You can crush another person's spirit. You can hurt them so bad that they may never recover. They may even lose their faith. Hurtful, misplaced, ill-timed words can offend deeply. Maybe permanently. Solomon said that a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. The word for offend there is close to what we have been looking at. Strong's says it means 'to break away'. It's someone who has left fellowship. In our time, broken off fellowship with the Church, with other Christians. And Solomon says their contentions, their reasons for being away, are like the bars of a castle. The wrong words we say can throw up barriers in a person's heart that God may have spent years breaking down. The miracle God performs in softening the hardness of our hearts can be undone: lies, gossip, slander, harsh, unduly or unfairly critical and ill-spoken words can turn a tender heart back into a heart of stone.
But didn't the Lord Jesus offend people? And didn't He and Paul and the other Apostles use language that could be termed offensive? Isn't the Bible itself like a sword?
It is one thing to say that men may be hurt or turned back by something God said. It’s something else to say they were turned back by our own. And just because something is written in the Bible doesn't mean it should be repeated anytime or anywhere, to anyone, in anyplace. Whatever can be said of the words and teachings of the Lord Jesus, it must also be said that they were thoroughly gracious (Luke 4:22). John Wesley says of this passage:
“A person of spiritual discernment may find in all the discourses of our Lord a peculiar sweetness, gravity, and becomingness, such as is not to be found in the same degree, not even in those of the apostles."
A becomingness... His words were always timely, always fitting. Always appropriate.
As for Paul and whatever may be said of any peculiar manner or method of speaking that he used, his speech was as he said it should be of others, that is, always with grace, seasoned with salt. The great mass of food that a person eats for nourishment is only seasoned with salt: seasoning and spice comprise only the smallest part of a meal and too much of it will make for something that is inedible. If not sickening.
We strive that our speech will be the same. Always gracious, sweet, grave, becoming. Gracious. Seasoned with salt. And we desire that if we have something to say with heat and spice, the word in our heart, like the food in our mouth, is enough to bring us to tears, as well as or even before, it does so in others.
