Causing Offence

Acts 6:8-15

Introduction

I want you to think about a time when a person or a group of people were very upset with you. Not just slightly annoyed but downright angry. Now I want you to think about what it was that made them angry. How accurately were they interpreting the facts of what you supposedly did? There are basically three options. One is that they totally got the facts wrong and that you didn’t do anything like what they thought you did. Another is that they totally got the facts right and you are guilty as charged. Probably more often, it is a mix of false and true, something you did do but perhaps exaggerated or mixed with falsehood.

Probably most of the controversies we see in politics or in entertainment, and yes even in the church, is that mix of true and false, something that was done but facts being stretched to various degrees.

This was also true for the life and ministry of Jesus, as well as that of the early church. Did Jesus do anything that made the religious leaders angry? He absolutely did. Were the charges they brought against him at his trial completely true? They absolutely were not.

This brings us to the story of Stephen. While this book is called the Acts of the Apostles, significant space is given to Stephen and Philip, neither of whom was one of the Twelve. We will see that this same principle applied to him and how this informs us as a church in the way we interact with our critics.

Stephen Accused

Stephen is such an interesting character. We saw last week that Stephen was chosen to be one of the Seven, those gifted Christians who would make sure that the needy received the care they required. The point of the Seven was to free up the Twelve for the preaching of the Word. So what does Stephen do, he goes off and preaches Jesus.

Apparently he was quite good at it as well. Perhaps even too good. There would have been many people sharing Jesus throughout the city but it was Stephen that caught the eye of the religious authorities.

Perhaps they thought that as someone who was not an apostle that he would be an easy target. They could bring their best and brightest against him and demolish his arguments in front of the people. But it did not go as planned. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, was able to  overcome the arguments of the leaders. That did not go well.

The religious leaders had to act and in so doing, they fell back to the strategy they used against Jesus. They took kernels of truth and wrapped them with falsehood.

We are not told here exactly what Stephen had been preaching, although we will get a good example in the next chapter. What we do know is that Stephen seemed to speak about the temple and the law. From other early Christian preaching, from Jesus and others, we can guess somewhat of what Stephen said. The Jews understood the temple as the one place where God dwelt. But Christians believed that in one way Jesus was the temple of God, as the fullness of God dwelt within him. In another way the church was the new temple, as the Holy Spirit was active within it. There were also prophecies that the physical temple was coming to an end. None of this was meant to be an attack on the temple. Both Jesus and the apostles valued the temple. But the leaders took this as an insult to God’s holy house.

As for the law, Jesus and the apostles never insulted the law. They believed that the law had been revealed by God. What they did believe was that obedience to God was primarily by following Jesus rather than each of the commandments. The law was important but it was not what offered eternal life.

The charges that were being brought against Stephen were not completely baseless. He probably spoke about the temple and the law in a way that made them uncomfortable. But those religious leaders took that truth and expanded it and wrapped it in a cloak of exaggeration and falsehood. We will soon see how Stephen responds.

The Church Accused

It would be nice if I could say that was the last interaction between the church and her critics. But that is not the case. People continue to look at Christians with an eye of suspicion. If you asked a person on the street if they could think of anything negative about the church, you probably would not have difficulty getting a response. Some of the criticisms may be well deserved, others not so. 

The same principle that went into the attack on Stephen continue with the church. Let me give you an example from the early church. Did you know some of the Roman critics of the church thought that they practiced both incest and cannibalism? That sounds ludicrous to us but listen to the logic. They were aware that Christians called each other brother and sister. And if a married couple were both Christian, then they would call each other brother and sister. Then they would hear about the communion services where Christians would claim to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. That sounded too close to cannibalism for some. So what was happening is that outsiders were hearing something that was true but then misunderstanding it so much that it became falsehood.

This is what we need to know as a church today. There are things about Christianity that are truly offensive on their own. The idea of Jesus as lord rather than we being in charge is one of the most offensive things in our culture. The idea of picking up your cross is completely offensive. The idea that it is only through Jesus that we find salvation is one of the most offensive ideas out there. The gospel by itself is offensive without any help from us.

The problem is that Christians create offence where there should be no offence. We create a hierarchy of who is loved by God when Christianity is designed to be the most inclusive faith. We tie the gospel to politics and condemn people who are not like us. We say one thing and do another. We speak hypocritical judgment rather than uncompromising love.

We need to let the gospel be offensive in its own way without adding any offence of our own. We also need to clarify what is and what is not the gospel. People on the outside can’t tell the difference between our personal convictions and what the gospel real is. They assume that if one Christian says this is the way, then that is the message of Christianity. This is why I like C.S. Lewis’s concept of Mere Christianity. Instead of trying to defend every idea that has attached itself to Christianity, we need to put forth the gospel as it really is. Often all we can do is clarify the truth, separate the truth from fiction and let people decide for themselves.

Conclusion

Is Christianity offensive? Yes it is, in its own way. If you want to be lord of your own life with no obligations to God or other people, the gospel is deeply offensive. But the danger is that we will make Christianity more offensive than it needs to be.

Stephen preached Jesus and the religious authorities didn’t like it. They heard some of what he said but either misunderstood or misrepresented. 

Those same forces are at work today. People hear a bit of what we say and then based on ignorance or malice, come up with a different message. All we can do is focus on the basic gospel and correct the misrepresentations as best we can. However, as Stephen found, there are those who will be too offended to listen. And thus we rely on God.