What Does It Mean to Take Offense?

When you take offense, you hold on to hurt or anger over what someone else has said or done, and as a result, you regress emotionally. It’s not just that you get annoyed. There are little annoyances that simply happen. Instead, you hang on to the hurt and pain rather than letting it go and offering the offender grace. As a result, you end up losing connection in your relationships. Wise Solomon from the Old Testament wrote, “Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends” (Prov. 17:9). When you take offense, you repeat the hurt in your head over and over rather than letting it go. It becomes your narrative.

Paul wrote to the believers living in Colossae to “bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Col. 3:13). The word for grievance in Greek is memphomai, which means a complaint against another.3 It implies quarrels. This is important to understand because when we take offense it’s usually over some quarrel or misunderstanding. Paul is not talking here about violent crimes or huge acts of betrayal, but personal problems between people.

We have many who are living lonely lives because they simply can’t get past what someone said or did years ago. Certainly, this is true in the church. I remember hearing about two pastors who had had a disagreement years before and, as a result of that disagreement, refused to ever be on the same platform together. How sad! It would have been such a great testimony for Christ if they had been able to look beyond their differences and model for the church the unity of Christ.

Can I just be so bold as to say, we’ve all been hurt by churches? I’m not trying to be unempathetic, it’s just that everyone I know has been hurt at some point. It makes sense because the body of Christ is made up of broken people. We hurt each other. Hopefully, we apologize and reconcile. However, this I know: God doesn’t give us permission to drop out of His body or to hold grudges. We are part of the family of Christ, and I don’t see any evidence that biblically supports cutting off the family. It’s tough. I know. I’ve been hurt countless times by various churches. However, I’ve learned to let it go, understanding that people are human, and they likely didn’t even know they hurt me, just as I’m unaware of times I’ve been the one who was hurtful.

Let me take a moment and clarify that for the purposes of this chapter, we’re talking about hurt feelings, being falsely accused, disagreements, misunderstandings, and the like. Those are
offenses.* However, people often treat offenses as though they’re criminal. On a scale of one to ten, with one being a minor issue and ten being a horrific crime, everything becomes a ten to the person who is easily offended. As a result, they put distance in the relationship or cut off the relationship entirely, only to discover that they are living a lonely life.

What Does Jesus Say About Offense?

Jesus had some hard words about not taking offense and offering grace instead. In His amazing Sermon on the Mount where He instructed His listeners on what it meant to follow Him, He said, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:14–15). Whoa! That’s a strong statement! Friends, Jesus took forgiving others very seriously. It’s not optional depending on where you are on your spiritual journey. It’s mandatory!

As I’ve considered why Jesus was so firm on this topic, I’ve come to realize that we really can’t enjoy Christ’s forgiveness unless we allow it to flow through our lives to others. The forgiveness Jesus extends is meant to set us free, but some of us are still in bondage to our offender. When we take offense, we nurture and stroke our hurt feelings or anger, and ultimately, we live trapped lives. Our unforgiveness keeps us in prison. We’re left with countless arguments in our heads about why we’re justified to be angry or hurt or whatever. The truth is, according to the gospel, our ongoing anger is not justified. We may feel initial anger over some injustice or slight done against us, but we are never justified in hanging on to our anger!

You might be wondering, “Well, isn’t there a time to be angry?” Of course. But we must rely on the Holy Spirit to discern whether our anger is justified, and when it has occurred simply because our feelings are hurt. Righteous anger is in a different category, and it belongs to God, not us. Am I angry because the church no longer uses the hymnals my great-grandparents donated many decades ago? Or am I angry because rent for a neighborhood storefront unjustly shot up so high the long-time family-owned business was squeezed out? I love the way author and radio host Brant Hansen puts it: “We are too good at deceiving ourselves to know if we have ‘righteous anger’ or not.”4 Maybe you feel offended and honestly have good reason to. But here’s the thing: I have searched Scripture from cover to cover and nowhere do I see us encouraged to hang on to anger or hurt. Instead, grace is to flow unhindered through the channels of our lives.

How do we change the narrative in our heads so that we don’t become trapped, and we can enjoy the deep connections God delights to give us?

Think the Best of People—Not the Worst

It’s amazing how often we assume the worst about others rather than the best. We take offense because someone forgot our birthday. We assume they don’t value the relationship when in reality, they are overwhelmed with the chaos of their own lives. Or they just forgot, as we ourselves do. Or we might take offense when someone doesn’t greet us at church. We assume the worst and imagine, “that person doesn’t care about me.” In reality, they might just be spacy and have a lot on their mind that morning.

Maybe you didn’t get invited to a gathering and you assume that person has forgotten you or they have ostracized you because you’re divorced or widowed. That might be the furthest
thing from their minds! They might have gathered people who have similar interests. Assume the best. Later you can invite the person over for a cup of coffee and ask them about their story. Maybe you feel overlooked at work because you didn’t receive the job promotion. You assume it is because you’re quiet or you’re too outspoken when in reality it might have nothing to do with that. Assume the best of your boss. They might be looking for a very specific skill set.

Friend, when you feel yourself taking offense, stop. Change the narrative in your head and assume the best about the other person. Continually offer grace. Let it flow from your life like a
river. Grace gives the other person the benefit of the doubt.

The question then becomes, what do we do when we’ve already taken offense? Rather than becoming trapped, how do we offer forgiveness, especially when people all around us disagree, annoy, or hurt us? We have a self-management meeting.

This is a principle I have taught in recent years to help people process some of the feelings that overwhelm them. We are called to be filled with the Spirit and for self-control to flow through our lives. At times we need a meeting between us and the Holy Spirit where we can reflect on our attitudes and clarify where our faulty thinking lies. In a self-management meeting, no one else is invited except you and the Holy Spirit. You ask yourself some penetrating questions and invite the Holy Spirit to search your heart and bring conviction.

Are you ready to have a self-management meeting?

Great. Here are five questions to get you started.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Next Time You’ve Taken Offense

1. How is holding on to my hurt or grudge helping me? (Col. 3:13) When I ask myself this question, I begin to realize that hanging on to hurt or anger does nothing to benefit me in any way. Quite the opposite: it makes me anxious and unsettled. It gives me high blood pressure and heartburn. And it destroys relationships. I believe that one of the key contributing factors to our current epidemic of loneliness is our inability to forgive freely. As a result, we have mothers and daughters not speaking, siblings who haven’t talked for years, neighbors and friends who are distanced, and members of churches who are repeatedly leaving because of church hurt. The answer is to let go. Your anger is not helping you. To the contrary, it is pushing others away. If you’re living a lonely life, perhaps start by asking yourself if you are holding on to hurt from some past offense.

2. What can I take responsibility for? (Prov. 28:13) When I have been hurt or misunderstood in my relationships, I need to ask the Holy Spirit to probe my heart and show me what I can take responsibility for. When I do this, I begin to realize that perhaps I didn’t communicate well. Or it could be that I overreacted to some insignificant comment. Maybe the other person was simply having a bad day and I took what they said too seriously. Or possibly that person felt misunderstood by something I said or did. I might have failed to be sensitive to what they were feeling. Or is it conceivable that I triggered defensiveness in the other person by coming on too strong with my own opinions?

The point is, if I analyze the offense I’ve taken, and ask the Holy Spirit to show me what I can take responsibility for, He is faithful to show me. This helps in two ways. First, I can offer an apology. Second, I can offer grace to the other person, realizing that neither of us are perfect. All of us make mistakes in relationships. At the end of the day, I can choose to praise God for
another opportunity to offer grace.

3. How do I need to change as I move forward? (Matt. 7:5) Jesus said we were to take the plank out of our own eye before we attempted doing eye surgery on someone else. What did He mean? Often, we take offense and judge the other person for offending us. Rather than finding something wrong with them, Jesus counsels us to consider what’s wrong with us first.

When we take offense, we need to look internally and spend some time reflecting on what caused us to take offense. Were we hurt? Insulted? Did we feel devalued? Excluded? By analyzing what we felt, we are able to figure out how to move forward.

For example, if we felt devalued, we can spend some time remembering that God values us deeply. He calls us chosen, holy, and dearly loved (Col. 3:12). If we felt taken advantage of, we
might need to consider better boundaries moving forward.

4. Do I value this relationship? (1 Peter 4:8)I love the way Peter wrote, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Friend, relationships are precious! They take work but they are worth the effort. Pausing to consider, “How much do I value this relationship?” will help you clarify quickly what offenses to let go.

Now to be clear, you can’t cultivate deep connections with thousands of people. Our humanity limits us. However, if you’ve been close friends for years, or if you have a misunderstanding with a close family member, in the words of Solomon, “Go—to the point of exhaustion” and apologize (Prov. 6:3). Take the lead to work things out. Why? Because your relationships are precious. Express how much you value the relationship to the other person.

5. How do I want to show up to initiate restoration? (Matt. 5:9) Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” To be a peacemaker is to initiate reconciliation where possible. Within your community or close friend group, where relationships have become fractured or distant, take initiative. Consider what you have to do to open the conversation so that your relationship can be healed.

When our relationship with God was broken by our sin, He took the initiative by sending Jesus. Christ Himself went to extreme measures to provide reconciliation. He wasn’t defensive, though He certainly could have been. When Jesus went to the extreme for us, how can we then hold a grudge against those who hurt us? Letting it go and seeking reconciliation could be the answer to your loneliness.

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* Many people experience more egregious circumstances that are difficult to work through, and if that is your situation, know I grieve with you. And I encourage you to seek professional counseling or even to involve law enforcement if that is called for.