Nathan risked offending King David (2 Samuel 12); it’s why Paul risked offending Peter (Galatians 2:11–14); it’s why Jesus risked offending the scribes and Pharisees; and it’s why we are sometimes called to risk offending someone with a painful rebuke. In these cases, if our motive is love and our goal is to remove a stumbling block from someone’s path of faith, our hard words are not truly offensive. They are acts of love, the “faithful . . . wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). If our hearers find them to be “a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:8), it may be due to the hard knots of unbelief in their hearts, rather than the sharp wedge of our words.

A few months back, considering the heightened level of contention among some American Christians in recent years, I stumbled upon this golden nugget of pastoral wisdom from Richard Sibbes, the English Puritan pastor from four hundred years ago:
It were a good strife amongst Christians, one to labor to give no offense, and the other to labor to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others. (The Bruised Reed, 47)
Sibbes was exhorting his Christian brothers and sisters during a terribly contentious historical moment, when professing Christians in England were saying and doing appalling things to one another. And it seems to me that we would be wise to heed Sibbes’s counsel, and do our part to contribute to the collective public reputation Jesus desires for us: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
We all know from Scripture, however, that there are times when faithful love requires us to speak hard, even sharp, wounding words (Proverbs 27:6). And we all know that those on the receiving end of our hard, wounding words may, and often do, find them offensive. So, if we embrace Sibbes’s biblical principle that, when possible, we all, for the sake of love, should labor to give and take no offense, what principle should guide us for the (hopefully) rare exceptions when we must, for the sake of love, risk offending someone with our words?
Well, not surprisingly, Sibbes has something very helpful to say about this as well. But first, I need to provide the biblical context from which Sibbes draws his principle.
Jesus on the Offensive
It was during the last week of Jesus’s earthly life, just days before his crucifixion. There had been numerous tense verbal exchanges between Jesus and the religious leaders, as the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees all tried to get Jesus to incriminate himself with his words — and all failed. So, they gave up that strategy (Matthew 22:46).
And then Jesus laid into them, delivering seven prophetic, scathing “woes” to the scribes and Pharisees, requiring 36 of 39 verses in Matthew 23 to record. Here are a few choice excerpts:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. (Matthew 23:13)
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15)
You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel! (Matthew 23:24)
You are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27)
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? (Matthew 23:33)
This is Jesus at his most offensive — at least we would have thought so, had we been scribes or Pharisees back then.
But this raises an important question: Just because most of the scribes and Pharisees would have taken offense at Jesus’s words, does that mean he was truly being offensive? The distinction may seem small, but answering the question illuminates when our own love requires hard words — and what our aim in those hard words should be.
To answer, we need to briefly look at how the New Testament defines an offense. (Then I promise I’ll share that other gold nugget from Sibbes.)
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Our whole life, then, needs to be committed to pursuing purity in everything we think, say, and do. We have been made blameless by His Son, but we still have a responsibility to live blamelessly until we become like Him in glory. And that must motivate us to pursue holiness in the fear of the Lord. As you fix your eyes on Christ, identify the sins that entangle you, repent, ask for His help to overcome them by His Spirit, and then take diligent effort to mortify them as we renew our minds with His holy Word.

You have been entered into the marathon. You have been given a number. You have taken your mark. The starting gun has been fired.
Uh oh.
This particular marathon will prove to be much harder and longer than the norm. Twenty-six miles, shortness of breath, leg cramps, and moments of regret somewhere in the middle will seem mild comparatively. Because, while the race has a clear starting time and location, the end point plus the terrain and challenges in between is entirely unknown.
Single believer, how do you feel about being signed up for this marathon called “The Christian Life?” Unlike the tug of war where you are at the mercy of whichever team proves the strongest, the results of this event are entirely up to you. Instead of being stuck on a rope and mercilessly tugged back and forth, you are running to break a rope at the end of this marathon that says in big letters CHRISTLIKENESS. (Be honest…did you think I was going to say marriage?)
Whether you knew what you were getting yourself into or not, you’re in this race for the long haul. Therefore, it’s important to know how to run it well. How you train will make all the difference whether you’re on the track, in the mountains, or on the pavement at any mile marker (at least that’s what I have been told…).
So how do we train well and thus help ourselves continue pressing on regardless of what’s along the route?
Cultivate habits of godly obedience (1 Cor. 9:25-27; 1 Tim. 4:7-8).
Do you consistently practice the spiritual disciplines?
Do you regularly attend and serve the local church?
Men, do you seek to emulate the 1 Timothy 3 elder qualifications?
And women the Proverbs 31 woman?
Do you faithfully use your time and money?
Do you work for the glory of God?
Make these actions and attitudes a normal part of your training routine. Every good runner has specific exercises and diets to help increase their strength and stamina. Neglecting our spiritual muscles will only make it harder to get back into the routine or to run the race later as the terrain changes and the challenges come. Identify where you are weak and then discipline yourself to pursue obedience in that area. Let it become natural and a joy to open the Word, go to church on Sunday, be a faithful steward and servant, and let your light shine before men in all aspects of life.
Pursue discipleship (1 Cor. 11:1; Tit. 2:3-6; Heb 11:1).
Do you have at least one person in your life that you can learn from as you both seek to imitate Christ, either formally or informally?
Do you seek to gain wisdom from older saints in how to continue pursuing godliness?
Have you humbly acknowledged you desperately need others’ perspective into your training schedule to help you see your potential weaknesses?
Every good runner needs a coach. Take time to identify who can be that for you. Pray the Lord would help you find a man or woman in your life that is a little ahead of you in their race. Perhaps it’s a parent, a pastor, or an older saint.
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The Christian life is lived not under one’s own power, strength, or ability, but in the power, strength, and ability of Christ which eliminates our human boasting. The believer’s union to Christ is a central doctrine to know and understand, not only in our justification, but also in our sanctification. Once we’ve been united to Christ by faith, it is He that works in and through us for His own good pleasure. Failure will be the necessary and only result of a life lived in our own strength.

Any discussion on the fruit of the Spirit as laid out in Galatians 5 must begin with the simple fact that the list gives fruits of the Spirit, not fruits of human effort and achievement. Thus any discussion on faithfulness as a fruit of the Spirit also begins there. Faithfulness in the life of a believer is a product of the work of the Holy Spirit, working in him or her to accomplish all that God desires in our sanctification. That is not to say, however, that we don’t have a responsibility within the sovereign plan of God. As in all things biblical, there is a mysterious and glorious cohesion between the work of our sovereign God and our responsibility to obey and, as Paul says, work out our salvation with fear and trembling. So while we need to of first importance acknowledge that faithfulness within the life of a believer is a work of God, we also must be clear that Scripture gives clear commands and indications of what faithfulness as a fruit of the Spirit must look like. Any faithfulness that is a work of the Spirit must resemble the Scriptural precedent of what faithfulness is and does. To do so, 1 Timothy 1:12-20 is a key passage to examine what faithfulness in the Christian life looks like. It is here that Paul states explicitly that God “judged me faithful, appointing me to His service” (1 Tim. 1:12). How then does Paul explain what that faithfulness looks like? He seems to give four characteristics that describe a faithful Christian life.
Christ-Empowered
Paul opens the pericope with this: “I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful.” The first descriptor of a faithful Christian life is that it is Christ-empowered. Paul acknowledges from the outset that any work done in his ministry, any effort he put in, any souls won for the Gospel are a work of Christ within Him, giving Him the necessary strength to persevere. All service in the Kingdom is done through the work of the King within and through. As Paul says in Galatians 6:14, “Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ….” The Christian life is lived not under one’s own power, strength, or ability, but in the power, strength, and ability of Christ which eliminates our human boasting.
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