Conflict

Sermon Transcript

One of the joys of pastoring a younger-than-average church is the number of weddings I get to officiate, which typically includes pre-marital counseling. In pre-marital counseling we spend a decent chunk of our time on the topic of conflict, because it is a well-known fact that conflict can ruin the happiness of marriage and even lead to divorce. Beyond marriage, conflict can ruin friendships, families, workplaces, and churches—basically any community or relationship. That said, not all conflict is bad. A conflict occurs anytime there is a disagreement—if we want to go out to lunch together and you want to go one place while I want to go another place, we have a conflict. In that sense, conflict is just a product of putting two different people together, and God always intended to put two, even more than two, people together in the human family. We probably all sense, though, that there is a way of dealing with that conflict that pleases God and strengthens our relationships, while there is also a way of dealing with it that displeases God and weakens our relationships. In other words, there is a wise way to handle conflict, and a foolish way, and this morning as we consider what the proverbs say about conflict, we want to consider how to wisely handle conflict. As we do, we’re going to see that the ESV translation of the Bible which we use doesn’t use the word conflict in any of them. Instead, the most common words are strife and quarreling, because Proverbs is most concerned with the kind of conflict that doesn’t please God and damages our relationships. That’s the kind of conflict to which strife or quarreling refer. That’s the kind of conflict that can ruin marriages, families, friendships, and churches. So, work hard to stop quarrels, and these proverbs give us six ways to do so: Consider the cost of them, be hard to offend, cover all offenses, confront gently, know when to move on, and wait for the LORD.

 

Consider the cost of them

 

Proverbs 15:17 says, “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.” Sometimes my kids ask me what’s for dinner and when I tell them, they aren’t always thrilled. I can’t imagine their reaction if my answer was, “Well, tonight we’re having oregano with a side of parsley.” I know intermittent fasting is cool and people take oregano pills when they’re sick now, but dinner is typically your biggest meal of the day—can you imagine eating only herbs for it? Can you imagine, further, having the choice between herbs and a nice, fattened ox, I’m talking a big, juicy steak, and choosing the herbs? Well God tells us that if the dinner of herbs comes with love, while the fattened ox comes with hatred, you’d be wiser to choose the dinner of herbs. Proverbs 17:1 makes essentially the same point when it says, “Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife” (Prov 17:1).

 

In a fallen world, you will not be able to avoid quarrels, let alone conflict, entirely, but to come home to it every day is worse than abject poverty. It’s common that when citizens of developed nations travel to less developed nations, they comment both on the poverty and on how happy the people there seem to be in comparison to the citizens of their own nation who have more money. A lot can and has been said to explain that, but one simple way to explain it from these proverbs is to notice that often those materially poor people who seem happy are happy because they are relationally wealthy, while many in developed nations are so busy becoming materially wealthy that their relationships suffer. The healthy marriage, the healthy church, the healthy friendship with little will tend to produce happier people than the wealthy family going through divorce.

 

So Proverbs 21:9 adds that “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” Of course, that would be true of a quarrelsome husband too, but Proverbs deals in what is generally the case, and it is generally the case that in an unhealthy marriage, the husband is passive, while the wife is quarrelsome. This proverb and many others like it suggest it’s better to live just about anywhere than in a quarrelsome home—another even says it’s better to live in the desert (Prov 21:19), where you could die of thirst or be eaten alive by wild animals!

 

And on the flipside, consider the incredible blessing it is to come home to peace. God has given me an excellent wife; I don’t deserve her, but God is gracious, and I can just tell you from experience that when I’ve been involved in conflict, one of the ways the Lord has sustained me through them has been bringing me home to an excellent wife. Beyond marriage we can also see the Lord sustaining us through a healthy church family, a community of people we can “go home” to and let our hair down among. So quarrels anywhere, but especially quarrels in your home and church, the places in which we are supposed to find relief, can weigh you down in ways that are hard to explain. And that’s why it’s wise to work really hard to stop such quarrels from erupting, whether that be by preventing them from ever starting, or resolving them once they have begun.

 

Now maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t know Mike, these seem like extreme examples. My marriage isn’t on the brink of divorce or anything,” but as you consider the cost of quarrels, consider Proverbs 17:14 – “The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out.” We have a little Philadelphia patio with a spigot we installed that has a hose typically attached to it, and sometimes the water doesn’t quite get turned off all the way. No big deal, right? Not at first, but let that go for a day, and the whole patio will be covered in water. The wiser approach is to not let the water out at all, and so it is generally wise to quit a conflict before it erupts into a quarrel. You don’t get from a peaceful house to a quarrelsome house, from a peaceful church to a quarrelsome church, overnight. It happens as strife is slowly allowed to fester, until one day you wake up and realize you’d rather live in a desert than spend another day in that house or church. So consider the cost seriously as you engage in conflict, which often means deciding it’s just not worth it.

 

And consider the cost seriously as you consider whether to enter into someone else’s conflict, which is almost always not worth it. Proverbs 26:17 says, “Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.” I’ve never tried to take a passing dog by the ears, but my guess is they wouldn’t like it, and I’d end up getting unnecessarily hurt by it. To the degree you catch wind of other peoples’ quarrels, the best way you can typically help them is by throwing water on that fire, not gasoline. Rather than statements like, “Yeah how could they do that?” consider statements like, “Ok I can see why that came off that way, but might there be another explanation?” Work hard to stop quarrels rather than entering into them flippantly or inserting yourself into others’ because they just have such potential to wreck your life and the lives of those you love. Consider the cost. Ok, but how do you actually stop them then? Let’s talk next about being hard to offend.

 

Be hard to offend

 

Proverbs 12:16 says, “The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.” Fools are easily vexed. Not only are fools easily vexed, but their vexation is immediately observable—the vexation of the fool is known at once, whereas the prudent ignores an insult. It’s an insult, which is different from a transgression of God’s law. To insult someone else typically is a transgression of God’s law, but it isn’t necessarily. Another English word that English Bibles use to translate it is “shame” and that’s something God even does at times—he shames the wicked. What’s probably in view here, though, is someone shaming the prudent unjustly, insulting them, as our ESV has it, and what is generally the prudent thing to do in such a situation? Ignore it.

 

Really? Just ignore it? What about standing up for yourself and not letting yourself get walked all over? Our world today has, in a sense, made a virtue out of taking offense and expressing it. Sociologist Robert Bellah characterized American society in the 1980s as one of “expressive individualism,” in which each individual identifies their individual feelings as the truest thing about them, and then feels morally compelled to express them. The hero stories of such a culture, then, are not like traditional hero stories in which the protagonist denies his feelings in order to serve the common good. Instead, the heroes of expressive individualism are those who express their feelings, even if everyone in their community thinks they’re wrong. And as with most unbelieving thought, there is an element of truth in it: God cares about how we feel, and once fully sanctified, to express our individual feelings about God will bring him glory, even if everyone around us hates him.

 

Even in the realm of conflict, expressive individualism is concerned to protect something important: The ability of minorities to speak of ways they’ve been truly wronged, even when those in power have been the perpetrators of the wrongs. Our culture rightly celebrates the courage of a Rachel Denhollander, no expressive individualist herself, who exposed the rampant sexual abuse of Larry Nassar, the former team doctor for the U.S. Women’s gymnastics team, after having herself been one of his victims. But as happens anytime we become untethered from Scripture, expressive individualism has also borne some bitter fruit in the realm of conflict. Think about it: If the heroes of a culture are those who stand up to the powers that be and express the ways they’ve been wronged, and if we’ve taught people that what they feel is the truest thing about them, what does that create a ripe environment for? A generation of people who assume that because they feel wronged, they’ve been wronged, and who are then quick to express it in harsh, combative ways.

 

In Tim Keller’s book on forgiveness, he puts it this way, drawing on the work of sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning: “Modern culture teaches us that our primary concern is to demand respect and affirmation of our own identity…People today are encouraged to respond with outrage to even the slightest offense…[our culture] ends up valuing not strength but fragility and creates a society of constant good-versus-evil conflict over the smallest issues as people compete for status as victims or defenders of victims.” Or, to put it in the words of proverbs, it produces a culture of folly, people whose vexation is known at once, and who are unable to ignore an insult, who then go on to cultivate quarrelsome universities, quarrelsome workplaces, quarrelsome neighborhoods, quarrelsome political discourse, quarrelsome families, and yes, lamentably, even quarrelsome churches at times.

 

Yet what an opportunity we have as God’s people to shine as lights in the midst of that darkness by being people who are not easily vexed, who even ignore insults. We can’t ignore everything, and proverbs doesn’t tell us to; we’ll talk about confrontation in a moment, but especially when the action we’re dealing with is more of a personal slight than a transgression of God’s law, it is typically prudent to simply ignore it. One of the key ways we can stop quarrels is to be hard to offend. You and I aren’t that big of a deal. My feelings aren’t the arbiter of what is right and wrong. God is a big deal, and his word is the arbiter of what is right and wrong. And yet even when his law is transgressed, the next way we can work hard to stop quarrels is by covering all offenses.

 

Cover all offenses

 

Proverbs 10:12 says, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” This proverb takes us right to the heart of the matter. There are two actions contrasted: Stirring up strife on the one hand, covering all offenses on the other, but behind those two actions are two opposite heart postures: Hatred on the one hand, which stirs up strife, and love on the other hand, which covers all offenses. If in your heart you hate someone, you will tend to stir up strife with them. Strife comes before quarrels, so the idea of “stirring up strife” is creating it when it is not already there. You may have resentment in your heart toward someone for any number of reasons—maybe you envy the life God has given them, you may view yourself as morally superior to them, you may view them as a threat to you, they may have hurt you or someone you love and you’re still holding it against them. It may just be that they are in authority over you—remember Proverbs 13:10 that we saw weeks ago—“By insolence comes nothing but strife.” Whatever the occasion, the point is that if in your heart you hate someone to any extent, you will tend to stir up strife with them. Far from covering their offenses, you’ll produce offenses when they aren’t even there. The person you hate will say something that is capable of multiple interpretations, and you’ll almost instinctively choose the most negative interpretation. Even when they do something apparently good, you’ll find yourself questioning their motives. If others say something positive about them, you’ll assume they must have been manipulated, and it couldn’t just be that this person you hate isn’t actually the demon you’ve made them out to be in your heart. That stirs up strife.

 

But here’s what love does: Love covers all offenses. I expected that to give some other qualifier, like love covers minor offenses, but it doesn’t do that. It says love covers all offenses. Now what is an offense? It’s a different Hebrew word behind it than the one translated “insult” in Proverbs 12:16. The word translated “offense” here is typically translated “transgression”, meaning a transgression of God’s law, an offense against God’s law, not against your feelings or preferences. Yet even those, love covers, and covers all of them. Hatred inclines us to stir up strife where none exists; love inclines us to cover offenses that already exist!

 

How, then, should we cover all offenses? The first way to which I have already alluded is being slow to accuse others of offenses in our hearts and minds when another explanation is possible. It’s been said that sin inclines us to view our own sins with a telescope and others’ with a microscope, while love inclines us to just the opposite. Or, as Jesus put it, “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt 7:5). Your own sins should appear to you like a log, while the sins of others should appear to you like a speck, because you don’t know anyone as well as you know you. God hasn’t hired you to be the private investigator of anyone else’s sins; his Word and Spirit can handle that job just fine. So the Westminster Larger Catechism lists “misconstructing intentions, words, and actions”, “unnecessary discovering of infirmities”, and “evil suspicion” among the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment. If you find yourself accusing someone of sin in your mind, stop and prayerfully consider, “Might there be another explanation for this that doesn’t accuse them of sin?” Try to even generate that explanation, and err on the side of it in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary.

 

The next way we cover an offense is by not talking about it, especially not to others besides the one we assess to be guilty of the offense. Zach spoke last week about how the whisperer separates close friends (Prov 16:28), and Proverbs 17:9 adds, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.” Note the opposite of covering an offense there: Repeating it. What does repeating it do? It uncovers it, especially to those who were not already witnesses to it. It’s one thing if you are out with a group of friends and one of them is visibly drunk to later turn to another friend who was there and ask, “Hey, it appeared to me like Bill had too much to drink tonight. Did you notice that too or am I crazy?” That may be necessary to lovingly confront Bill, but there is no reason to go spreading the report of Bill’s drunkenness to people who were not there, or even to keep bringing it up later to Bill or others after Bill has already been confronted and repented. As the 19^th century commentator on Proverbs, Charles Bridges put it, love will not “wantonly expose a brother’s faults; nor will it uncover them at all, except so far as may be needful for his ultimate good.”

 

Not only do we cover all offenses by not talking about them unnecessarily, but we cover many offenses by not talking about them at all, not even privately with the offending person. Proverbs 19:11 says, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Think about the things in your life you regularly overlook—I think of the billboards I see every 50 feet or so on the streets, or the commercials during a game I’m watching. I don’t argue with them, I don’t ruminate on them and process them, I just overlook them, and Proverbs 19:11 says the glory of a man or woman with good sense is to do that with offenses, real transgressions of God’s law, rather than always needing to confront them.

 

Alasdair Groves is the current executive director of CCEF, a biblical counseling organization headquartered just outside the city. He wrote a helpful essay in the Journal of Biblical Counseling on confrontation, but toward the beginning he shared some excellent wisdom on when not to confront. Let me just read you a section: “Knowing when to confront is the first step of wisdom. These are hard judgments to make because sinners living in proximity (i.e., two or more people on the same planet!) inevitably breed tension and conflict. You do foolish, selfish, blind, proud, thoughtless, vindictive, cruel things, and so does everyone else. Even when our conflicts are over simple matters of preference, sin surfaces quickly. So are we supposed to confront sin every time it occurs? Thankfully, no. When you witness someone else’s sin—be it grumbling, a snarky tone, a white lie, or something more serious—there are two paths open to you: cover the offense [or I might prefer to say, overlook the offense] or confront the offender…the vast majority of our responses to sin ought to fall into the category of covering an offense. Scripture does not encourage us to confront every sin in the people around us. Life would grind to a halt if you addressed every wrong action and attitude in even just the people close to you, never mind the stranger who cuts you off in traffic.” He defines, then, covering or overlooking the offense as “continuing in the relationship with someone without making an issue of the person’s sin. It is an act of forbearance, accepting the pain and damage of another’s actions and choosing to not let it affect the relationship.”

 

Before we move on to confrontation, let me just point out finally that love covers all offenses, whether overlooking or confronting, by forgiving all offenses. In Mark 11:25 Jesus said, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone.” What he’s dealing with there is not your interaction with the offender, but your interaction with God. If you’re praying to God and realize you still have some hostility in your heart toward someone else, forgive them then and there, in your heart, whether the next step with them is to overlook or confront.

 

Lover covers all offenses by being slow to accuse others of offense, by not talking about the offenses of others unnecessarily, by overlooking the vast majority of others’ offenses, and by forgiving all offenses. Work hard to stop quarrels by covering all offenses. And, when it is wise to do so, confront gently.

 

Confront gently

 

Ok, I know the obvious question, then, is when it is wise to confront rather than overlook? From the end of Proverbs 25:7 to verse 10 we read, “What your eyes have seen 8 do not hastily bring into court, for what will you do in the end, when your neighbor puts you to shame? 9 Argue your case with your neighbor himself, and do not reveal another’s secret, 10 lest he who hears you bring shame upon you, and your ill repute have no end.” There’s a lot here: It’s basically saying even if you’ve witnessed something worthy of public correction, be slow to bring it out into the public. If you do, the person you’re accusing has a right to defend themselves, and may do so by also bringing private things about you and their interactions with you out into the public. Instead, this passage tells us to “argue your case with your neighbor himself.” I think it’s fair to say, then, that it is generally wise to confront someone rather than overlook their offense when it is a serious and observable enough offense that if your neighbor is unrepentant, you could see it resulting in some kind of public action, like formal church discipline.

 

Proverbs doesn’t give us hard and fast rules on this; that’s not how wisdom works. But to put down some wise guidelines at least, we could say that generally the more serious, and the clearer a person’s sin is, the more that should tilt us toward confrontation rather than overlooking. Another factor worth considering is the closeness of our relationship with the person. Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” We’ll talk about this more next week when we look at friendship, but friends have more latitude to wound with confrontation because they know one another well and trust one another. So as you get further from the serious and observable end of the spectrum, you’d want to have more of a friendship with someone before confronting.

 

I mentioned drunkenness earlier; let’s just use that as an example. Let’s say you’re out for a few drinks with some fellow church members and you see one of them publicly urinate, vomit, and pass out on the couch. You’d guess you saw them have 10 drinks over the course of that night. Is the sin of drunkenness serious? Yes; 1 Corinthians 5:11 lists unrepentant drunkenness among sins worthy of excommunication. Is it observable? In this case, yes, the evidence is pretty clear. So I would say even if you have very little friendship with the person, the sin is serious and observable enough that it would be wise to confront the person. On the other hand, let’s say you saw the person have three drinks over the course of the night, and you just sensed they seemed to be talking and laughing more than normal. Drunkenness is still serious, but in this case, the evidence of it is less clear, and if you don’t have much of a relationship with the person, it would probably be wiser and more loving to not accuse them of the offense in your heart, let alone confront them. On the other hand, if this is your best friend and you notice it seems to happen frequently, it may be wise to say something for their good.

 

If you do hit that point of confrontation, how do you do it in a way that stops quarreling, rather than stirs it up? Certainly do it clearly; even be prepared to make an argument if you need to: “Argue your case with your neighbor himself” our passage says. But do so gently. Proverbs 15:1 says, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” If you confront someone harshly, what does that proverb teach you to expect? Anger. A harsh word stirs up anger, whereas a soft answer turns it away. Here’s another way you can use those categories of serious and observable: You should calibrate the seriousness and clarity of your speech to the seriousness and clarity of the sin you are confronting. Like if you were confronting the person who publicly urinated and passed out, it would be totally appropriate to say something like, “Hey, I love you as my brother in Christ, I know in your heart of hearts you want to follow Christ, and because I do, I wanted to follow up on what I observed last night. I think we both know you were drunk. I saw you publicly urinate, vomit, and pass out on the couch. Are you familiar with the Bible’s teaching on drunkenness?” But if you’re best friends with the person who had three drinks and kinda made you wonder, it should sound more like, “Hey look, I know there’s no prescribed drink limit in the Bible and God made wine to gladden the heart of man, so I’m not charging you with anything here, but I have noticed it seems to be a regular occurrence when we’re out that you order more drinks than others and that you start to act differently as you do. Have you considered the possibility that you may be overindulging alcohol?”

 

Again, except in cases of serious, observable sin, most confrontation will better stop quarrels if it sounds more like the latter of those, especially when it’s a relational tension. “Hey, it feels like the temperature of our relationship has changed recently. I love you, I value our relationship, and I’d love to work together to strengthen our relationship so it doesn’t feel like that as much going forward.” Work hard to stop quarrels by confronting gently. Give it your best shot in humble dependence on God, but then, know when to move on.

 

Know when to move on

 

One way to move on from private confrontation is the one to which we’ve already alluded—making it more public. Again, considering the high value proverbs places on covering offenses, we should be slow to take this step, and only do so when further on the “serious” and “observable” end of the spectrum. Jesus tells us before telling it to the church, we should take one or two others with us, so that the charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses before being told to the church (Matt 18:15-17). At that point it’s generally wise to involve a pastor if you haven’t already done so, so that they can help assess the seriousness and observability of the sin alongside the offender’s repentance before deciding whether to take it to the church. Only the most serious, observable, unrepentant sins would then be taken to the church. In our church, we do that in a members’ meeting.

 

That’s rare; we would much rather overlook the sin and keep it covered, but when sin is serious, observable, and unrepentant enough that it causes us to wonder whether this person is still walking on the path of wisdom to life, the loving thing to do is to confront it. “Better is open rebuke than hidden love,” Proverbs 27:5 says. And if even that fails, another way to stop the quarrel is to remove the person who refuses to repent from the membership of the church. Just leaving the household of God full of strife indefinitely because it’s uncomfortable to confront sin is not an option God has given us.

 

So Proverbs 22:10 says, “Drive out a scoffer, and strife will go out, and quarreling and abuse will cease.” The scoffer is in the most spiritually desperate condition in Proverbs; they not only reject wisdom; they mock it. We should be very slow to ever put someone in that category, but this proverb and the rest of the Bible clearly demonstrate the necessity of being willing to do so if after repeated, loving attempts at confrontation, a person remains in serious, observable, unrepentant sin. In that case, we cannot just keep engaging in the conflict in hope of their change. Instead, we remove them in hope of restoring them upon their repentance, but in the meantime, we move on. Part of stopping quarrels is knowing when to move on. Part of working hard to stop quarrels is being able to say, “Ok; we’ve talked about this enough and been through enough pain and distress. It’s time to move on.”

 

Proverbs 18:18 goes so far as to suggest that casting a lot is preferable to indefinite strife and quarreling! “The lot puts an end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders.” In cases of church discipline, we cannot leave it to the lot, but Proverbs 18:18 is telling us that there are other conflicts in which the evidence isn’t clear, when enough conversation has taken place, that it’s better to just flip a coin than to keep fighting over it. Members here know there have been times in members’ meetings, even when the debate has been gentle and respectful, that someone says, “ok can we just vote already?” That’s wise.

 

But how do you do that? How do you just move on, especially when you still think you’re right and they’re wrong? How do you cover all offenses? The ultimate thing you must do to work hard to stop quarrels is to wait for the LORD.

 

Wait for the LORD

 

Proverbs 20:22 says, “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.” When someone commits an offense against God’s law and it is the occasion of pain to you, what will your flesh instinctively want to do? Repay the evil! Here the proverb is reaching once again into your heart and mind and commanding you not to say that in your heart or mind! Think back to the description of overlooking an offense that Alasdair Groves gave: “accepting the pain and damage of another’s actions and choosing not to let it affect the relationship.” Why should you do that? If they’re the offender, it’s their fault; why should you accept the pain and damage AND not let it affect the relationship? Why not instead repay them, and so force them to feel the same pain and damage you feel? Isn’t that just?

 

No, it isn’t. It’s vengeful and quarrelsome. You should not say, “I will repay evil” because evil is not yours to repay. If someone transgressed God’s law and it caused you pain, is that their fault, not yours? Absolutely. Does justice matter? Absolutely. Is it your job to administer it? Absolutely not. There is a better way, because there is a better judge who actually exists. Do not say, “I will repay evil,” rather, wait for the LORD, because there is a real God, and he will deliver you. If there is a real evildoer who is hurting you who will not repent, he will deliver you from them and punish them with perfect justice. That’s good news…unless you are an evildoer. You may in this life have been wronged by someone to whom you did nothing wrong—they’re the evildoer in that relationship. But in our relationship to God, he is always the one wronged, who did nothing wrong himself. We are the evildoers.

 

From the moment you and I were born, we were in a quarrel with our maker. As Whitefield said, the cat hisses, and the dog barks, because they know you have a quarrel with your maker. And it’s not because God is easily offended. He’s given us ample freedom to enjoy the good gifts he has given us in creation, he has given us diverse personalities and tastes through which we can glorify him, and he only asks that we love him above all else, and love our neighbor as ourselves. But instead of loving him, we have hated him in our hearts, and so stirred up strife with him. We have looked at his commandments and made them out to be harsh and burdensome when in fact they are holy, righteous, and good (Rom 7:12). We have looked at his providence in our lives compared to others and interpreted it as unfair to us, when in fact all we deserve from God is condemnation, and he has given us life and breath and every good thing.

 

But God has not quarreled with us. Instead, he has covered all the sins of his people. He has removed them all from our account and charged them to Christ, who then paid for them in full on the cross. The perfect demand of God’s justice against our sin has been satisfied in full by the death of the one perfect human who ever lived. You can try to cover your own offenses with your excuses, your resolutions to do better, or your good works, but the perfect judge sees through them all. Give it up, go to Christ, hide yourself in him, and your quarrel with God will be over.

 

To you do believe in him today, do you see what that means, then? Love covers all offenses, and if God has covered all your offenses, do you see what that means? It means he loves you. He really does! He’s not quarreling with you; he is at peace with you. Every day he sees a million ways you still fall short, and he’s condemning you for exactly zero of them. He’s not even confronting you about most of them! Instead, he is satisfied in the righteousness of his Son now given to you, and he is pleased with even the slightest bit of grace he sees at work in your life. He doesn’t look at you now and say, “Well let’s talk about the various ways I saw you falling short today.” He looks at you now and says, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Do you believe that? Do you believe the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is powerful enough to bring you into that position before God? Believe it today, and you can have confidence that however others offend, you don’t need to repay them, because in the end, he will deliver you.

 

If you’re received this kind of grace, why not extend it to others? Why not be hard to offend? Why not assume the best, overlook smaller offenses, forgive all offenses, and only confront gently when necessary for the good of the offender? Why not move on in love, and entrust yourself and your cause ultimately to the LORD who will always get it right, and deliver you in the end?