Many, many years ago-- before I had children, before my husband was ordained into pastoral ministry, before I gave birth to a little girl with severe heart disease, before prematurely burying friends and brothers and sisters in Christ, before the highs and lows of the past decade and a half-- I heard a message that comes to mind often throughout the years and this week in particular:
You can't offend a dead man.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
I will never forget the words, spoken so passionately by a man who had laid down his life and given up the very identity he was born with to build the Church in an area of the world where he wasn't welcomed, was betrayed by the very people he was serving, was deported for sharing Jesus, and had chosen to return to nonetheless. The same words that were spoken by the Apostle Paul, a man who knew what it was be beaten, abused, misunderstood, and misrepresented yet understood something infinitely greater-- not one thing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus-- and repeated hundreds and hundreds of years later by another man who understood the same great thing: you may take my money, my time, my possessions, my freedom, my body, but you cannot take my joy, my identity in Christ, my eternal destination.
I admit, I get offended sometimes. I let the old me reign supreme and the result is that I am disappointed, let down, hurt. By my children. By my husband. By my family. By those in the Church and those outside of the Church. And, yes, at times when I am particularly misguided and selfish and myopic, I feel offended or disappointed by the very good God who gave Himself for me.
And each time I am tempted to embrace that hurt; to withdraw, lick my wounds, and throw myself the biggest and grandest pity party available, I hear those words that have not left my soul since the day I first heard them:
You can't offend a dead man.
Oh! the call is a deep one. Lay down your life. Give up your rights. Let go of your pride.
But in that call, and in that daily act and moment-by-moment choice to respond, is life and life more abundant.
What freedom is found when I live in the reality that this isn't my life anyway! I died with Christ. The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. He is my prize, He is my surety, He is my hope, He is my destiny-- and He does not disappoint.
So when the hurts come, when the offenses knock at my door, when the pity party is calling-- and sometimes because of things that are very real-- I get to let every single person off the hook. Whether malicious or accidental, words or actions, choices or forgetfulness, they can't offend me. Me is no longer. Christ is.
I lay down my life and, with it, my right to be offended. And in exchange I get love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Peace with God. Peace with man.
The Gospel, what Christ did for me, never ever ever gets old. It is water that truly quenches my thirst.
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