Unoffendable

Primary Text: James 1:19-20 | Supporting: Ephesians 4:26-32 | Romans 12:19

Opening/Introduction

We are doing our last sermon on the Heavy series.

Today we are talking about something that might be the most common weight of all (Christian and non-Christian), because it does not announce itself as a burden. It feels like justice.

It is called offense.

Here is what I want to do today. I want to make a case, straight from Scripture, that there is a way to live where you are genuinely hard to offend.

Not because you are weak.

Not because you are naive.

Not because nothing is wrong in the world.

But because you have understood something about yourself and about God that most people, including most Christians, have never fully reckoned with.

I want to challenge the idea that anger is something you are entitled to. That when someone wrongs you, when the world goes sideways, when the church disappoints you, you have a right to hold onto that. To nurse it. To build a case.

The book I have been drawing from for today is Brant Hansen's Unoffendable. Hansen is a radio host, an author, and one of the sharpest cultural observers in the Christian space right now. His central claim is this: the idea of our own righteous anger is a myth. Not a small myth. He says it may be the number one problem in our society today. And Dallas Willard agreed with him. Christians, Willard said, have not been taught out of it.

Dallas Willard (a writer and spiritual formation mentor) wrote the following,

"I think a mature Christian is someone who is very difficult to offend."

Dallas Willard

So let us see what the Bible actually says.

PART ONE: THE CLAIM WE MAKE FOR OURSELVES

"My Anger Is Different"

I want to start with the most common objection to what I am about to say, because you are already thinking it. It goes like this: "Okay, sure, some anger is sinful. Petty anger, selfish anger, I get it. But there is also righteous anger. Even Jesus got angry. There is such a thing as being angry about the right things." And you are going to point me to Ephesians 4:26.

Ephesians 4:26 NIV

“In your anger do not sin”

See? Anger is not sin. The verse says so. Anger and sin are two different things. Therefore, I can be angry and still be right with God.

As we sit with this verse, there is an uncomfortable observation. We memorize the first half of that verse and we stop. We build entire theological structures on half a sentence. But look at what comes next, right after the colon.

Ephesians 4:26–27 NIV

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

Wait. If this anger is so righteous, why are we supposed to get rid of it before tonight? Not eventually. By sundown. And then look at what comes five verses later, in the same paragraph, same argument, same letter:

Ephesians 4:31 NIV

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

All anger. Not "sinful anger." Not "anger that has gotten out of hand." The Greek here is broad. Paul says get rid of it. And we have been using verse 26 -- the verse that says deal with anger immediately -- as our proof text for why our anger is justified. That is a genuinely remarkable thing.

Then go one book over. James says it even more plainly:

James 1:19–20 NIV

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Human anger.

That is the category.

Not some anger.

Not anger in the wrong situation.

James does not give you an escape clause here.

The anger you feel -- the kind that lives in a human chest, in a human heart, with a human agenda -- does not produce God's righteousness.

Ever.

Now I know the next objection. "What about Jesus flipping the tables?" Every single time this subject comes up, someone raises the temple. And look, I want to take that seriously. Jesus did express strong emotion in that moment. But let me offer you two things to consider.

First, Jesus is not a sinner. You are. I am. The reason God's anger is righteous is because God sees the whole picture, his judgment is never distorted by ego, self-interest, or wounded pride. The moment you say "I'm being righteous like Jesus," you have already appointed yourself as the final judge of the situation. You have put on the robes. And if you are being honest, a lot of what you called righteous anger over the last week had your interests somewhere close to the center of it.

Second, notice what Jesus' anger produced. Action to correct injustice. Not a grudge. Not a withdrawal. Not a posture of ongoing resentment toward the temple establishment that he carried into every subsequent conversation. He acted and then he moved on.

That is a long way from what most of us do with our so-called righteous anger.

PART TWO: WHAT ANGER ACTUALLY DOES TO YOU

The Carrion We Won't Put Down

I want to get practical here for a second, before we get back to the text, because I think part of why we cling to our righteous anger is that we have confused it with something else. We think holding onto anger means we are taking the wrong done to us seriously. That if we let it go, we are saying it didn't matter. Or that the other person gets away with something.

But here is what the research actually shows, and here is what your own experience shows, if you are honest: staying angry at someone is mostly just hurting you. The other person is often not thinking about you at all. You are carrying them around, rehearsing the argument, replaying the moment, and they are sitting somewhere having lunch. You are the one lying awake at 2am constructing the perfect response to something they said six months ago.

Brant Hansen uses a phrase I have not been able to shake. He says holding onto offense is like carrying around something dead. It starts to smell. It weighs on you. And the longer you carry it, the more it defines you. You become "the one who was wronged by so-and-so." Your whole posture shifts. Your relationships start to be filtered through this old offense.

Offense is one of those things. It is not a righteous burden. It is not a noble weight. It is a slow poison dressed up as justice.

Paul's instruction in Romans 12 is one of the most counterintuitive things in the New Testament:

Romans 12:19 NIV

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

Notice what Paul is saying here. The answer to injustice is not that you stop caring about it. The answer is that you stop appointing yourself as the one who has to fix it. You leave room. You trust that God sees, that God's justice is perfect, and that your anger -- which is imperfect, which is mixed with ego and self-interest -- does not need to be the instrument of correction.

That is a massive act of faith. Letting go of offense is not weakness. It is actually one of the deepest expressions of trust in God's sovereignty that exists.

PART THREE: THE FREEDOM ON THE OTHER SIDE

What Unofficial People Look Like

I want to spend a few minutes here painting a picture, because I think when people hear "be unoffendable," they imagine someone who is either passive or dishonest. A person who pretends everything is fine, who never speaks hard truth, who is a doormat in relationships.

That is not what I am describing here. And it is not what Jesus modeled. Being unoffendable does not mean you do not notice when someone hurts you. It does not mean you never have a hard conversation. It does not mean you do not grieve injustice.

What it means is this: you do not make offense your default setting. You do not walk into rooms looking for things to be wounded by. You do not build your identity around your grievances. You extend to other people the same thing that God extended to you -- a posture of grace, a recognition that they are broken and so are you, a decision not to be permanently defined by what they did wrong.

Here is the diagnostic question. When you catalog the ways someone has wronged you, how quickly do you get to your own failures in the relationship? Or does your mental list only run one direction?

Because the person who is genuinely hard to offend is not someone with low standards.

They are someone with high self-awareness.

They know they are not the hero of every story.

They know they have a “plank in the eye” situation when they want to go after the speck.

And that knowledge produces something that feels like freedom.

Paul spells it out at the end of Ephesians 4. Right after he says get rid of all anger, he says this:

Ephesians 4:32 NASB 2020

Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.

Just as. That is the hinge. The measure of what we extend to others is what God extended to us. And what God extended to us was not what we deserved. It was not proportional to our merit. It was grace in the face of offense. Real offense. The kind that cost something.

If you are in Christ, God looked at everything you have done, everything you have thought, every way you have hurt people who did not deserve it, and he said, "I am going to absorb this. I am going to pay for this. I am going to forgive this." Not because you earned it. Because that is who he is.

That is the foundation. And if that is the ground you are standing on, then the little offenses -- the ones you have been nursing, the ones you have been building cases around -- they start to look different. Not because they are nothing. But because you are no longer the aggrieved party at the center of the universe. You are a forgiven person, living among other broken people, in a world that needs to see what grace actually looks like in practice.

PART FOUR: THE WITNESS WE LOSE

What the World Sees When Christians Stay Offended

I want to say one more thing before we land this plane. We are in a series about cultural crises -- about dechurching, deconstruction, the reasons people are walking away from faith. And I think one of the most underrated reasons is this: the church has not looked unoffendable.

We have, in many ways, looked like the most easily offended people on the planet. Offended by questions. Offended by doubters. Offended by people who left. Offended by the culture. Offended by politics. Offended by each other. And people on the outside are watching this and thinking: if Jesus is supposed to be the answer to human brokenness, why do his people seem to carry so much of it?

What if Christians were the most unoffendable people on the planet? What if we were known as the people who were genuinely hard to wound, genuinely free, genuinely unbothered by the small stuff and genuinely trusting God with the large stuff?

What would that witness look like? What if the person in your office who never escalates, never retaliates, never carries a grudge past sundown -- what if they were the one who said, "The reason I live this way is because I have been forgiven an unpayable debt, and I cannot carry anger against you when that is the foundation I am standing on?"

That is a compelling witness. That is a life that raises questions. That is the kind of thing that makes people curious about what you actually believe.

Jesus said in John 13:35

John 13:35 NIV

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

that the way the world would know his disciples is by their love for each other. Not by their theology, though theology matters. Not by their political positions. By love. And you cannot sustain that love if you are constantly feeding the machinery of offense.

LANDING / INVITATION

Putting the Weight Down

So here is where we land.

Today I am asking you:

What offense are you carrying right now that you have labeled righteous? What anger are you maintaining because you believe you are owed something?

I am not asking you to pretend the thing didn't happen. I am not asking you to say it was okay. I am asking you to trust Romans 12:19. To leave room. To stop appointing yourself as the instrument of justice in that situation. To extend toward someone else the same radical, unearned, unpayable grace that was extended to you.

James said human anger does not produce God's righteousness. Not ever. But here is the other side of that: when you let it go, when you actually put the weight down, something else gets to grow in its place. Not weakness. Not passivity. Peace. Gratitude. The freedom that comes from not being the center of the universe anymore.

Ephesians 4:32 says to forgive each other just as God in Christ forgave you. That is the model. That is the measure. And that is the invitation today.

There is someone in your life right now who has wronged you. And you know it. And you have been carrying it. You have dressed it up in the language of justice, but it is eating you alive. Today I am inviting you to put it down. Not because they deserve it. Because you were forgiven when you didn't. And because you were never meant to carry this.

CLOSING / PRAYER