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Jeff

Jul 16

,2026∙

I cannot shake the conviction that much of the evangelical church has become embarrassed by Jesus Christ.

That is a staggering accusation, and I do not make it lightly. It is also not the sort of charge I would have made twenty years ago. I have spent enough time watching the direction of modern evangelicalism, listening to its conferences, reading its books, observing its church-growth strategies, and hearing the endless conversations surrounding “winsomeness,” “tone,” “contextualization,” and “missional engagement” to arrive at a conclusion I once would have considered unthinkable.

We have not rejected Christ outright. We still sing about Him. We still preach sermons in His name. We still place crosses on our buildings and print His words on our websites. Yet somewhere along the way, much of the visible church has tried to make Christ—the true Christ revealed in Scripture—invisible, and quietly decided that He is simply too abrasive to present to the modern world without first smoothing Him over.

Imagine for a moment that a priceless masterpiece has been entrusted to a museum. Generations of curators inherit the responsibility of preserving it, yet each one becomes convinced that the artist overlooked something.

One believes the colors are too dark, so he brightens them ever so slightly. Another thinks the expression on the subject’s face appears too severe, so she softens it. A third concludes that modern audiences will respond more favorably if a few unsettling details are painted over altogether.

None of them intend to destroy the masterpiece. Quite the opposite. Each believes he is making it more accessible, more relatable, more attractive to the people who will come to admire it. They sincerely believe they are helping.

After enough generations have passed, the painting still bears the same title, but the master’s brushstrokes have disappeared beneath layer after layer of well-intentioned revision. Visitors stand before it believing they have encountered the artist’s original work when, in reality, they are gazing at a counterfeit assembled by people who thought they knew better than the master himself.

I believe this is precisely what much of the church has done with Jesus Christ.

We have not denied Him outright. That would have been too obvious. We have done something far subtler and, in many ways, far more dangerous. We have become editors of the Son of God. We have trimmed His words until they no longer pierce the conscience. We have softened His warnings until they sound like gentle suggestions.

We have reframed His exclusive claims so they appear less confrontational. We have buried His calls to repentance beneath therapeutic language about healing, flourishing, and finding purpose.

We have wrapped the Lion of Judah in enough layers of sentimentality that He is hardly recognizable as the Jesus who dominates the pages of Scripture.

The result is a Christ who is always welcoming but never rebuking, always comforting but rarely confronting, always inviting but never commanding. He smiles constantly but never overturns tables. He welcomes sinners but never tells them to go and sin no more. He speaks often of love but almost never of judgment.

He offers encouragement without demanding allegiance and grants acceptance without requiring repentance. He has become the sort of Jesus who fits comfortably into the value system of a culture that despises biblical authority because every feature capable of provoking rebellion has been carefully filed away.

The tragedy is that many churches have come to regard this as faithfulness.

Pastors labor over sermon manuscripts wondering whether a particular verse might sound too harsh to a visitor. Church leaders hold meetings about creating environments where unbelievers will feel completely at ease. Ministry conferences dedicate entire sessions to communicating difficult truths in ways that minimize offense.

Social media erupts whenever a preacher’s tone is judged too sharp, his language too direct, or his application too pointed. Entire ministries now exist to teach Christians how to make Jesus more attractive, more compelling, more culturally intelligible, and less likely to provoke resistance.

I understand the concerns that often motivate these efforts. Scripture does not give Christians permission to be arrogant, rude, malicious, or unnecessarily combative. Our conduct matters and our speech should be gracious. We are called to love our neighbors, bless our enemies, and adorn the doctrine of God our Savior with lives marked by humility and holiness. A belligerent spirit is no badge of honor. Petty quarrels, fleshly outbursts, and self-righteous harshness have no place among those who bear Christ’s name.

That, however, is not the disease I am addressing.

The disease is far deeper because it touches the very identity of Christ Himself. Increasingly, the church seems convinced that if people recoil from Jesus, then something has gone wrong in our presentation of Him. If His words sound too exclusive, we rush to qualify them. If His demands appear too absolute, we soften the edges.

If His warnings about judgment unsettle the hearer, we quickly surround them with reassurances lest anyone leave feeling uncomfortable. We have come to assume that offense is evidence of ministerial failure rather than asking whether the offense belongs to the very Christ we claim to proclaim.

That assumption collapses the moment we open our Bibles.

The Scriptures never present Jesus Christ as a figure whose claims can be embraced without disruption. He did not merely challenge the assumptions of His generation. He shattered them. He confronted the self-righteous with devastating precision, exposing religious hypocrisy before crowds that admired it.

He looked into the eyes of the rich and commanded them to surrender everything. He declared that unless a man hated, yes hated, his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life by comparison to his devotion to Him, he could not be His disciple.

He spoke more frequently about hell than anyone else in Scripture. He publicly denounced false teachers as blind guides, whitewashed tombs, even brood of vipers. He watched entire crowds abandon Him rather than dilute a single truth to preserve their loyalty.

When His own disciples informed Him that the Pharisees had been offended by His teaching, He did not apologize, schedule a clarification meeting, or revise His message. He pressed forward without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

None of this should surprise us because God had already told us exactly who His Messiah would be.

Long before Christ entered the world, Isaiah declared that He would become “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” The apostles did not treat that language as poetic exaggeration. They repeatedly applied it to Jesus Christ, explaining that people stumble over Him because they refuse to believe and obey the Word of God. His offensiveness is not an unfortunate consequence of poor communication. It is woven into the very fabric of His identity as the holy Son of God confronting a world that loves darkness rather than light.

Perhaps the most revealing question facing the church today is not whether the world finds Christ offensive. Scripture has already answered that question. The real question is whether the church still believes He has every right to be.

It appears that most no longer do.

That is why we spend so much of our energy trying to rescue Jesus from the reaction He Himself promised His words would produce.

We act as though the greatest obstacle to faith is that Christ has been presented too clearly. We speak as though the Rock of Offense were a problem requiring our ingenuity rather than a glorious reality demanding our submission. We have forgotten that the gospel was never designed to flatter proud sinners into the kingdom.

The gospel was designed to crush our pride, expose our rebellion, strip away every refuge of self-righteousness, and leave us with nowhere to stand except at the foot of the cross.

I’m not arguing that the church simply needs more abrasiveness simply for the sake of being abrasive. God knows there are enough loud, quarrelsome men who mistake belligerence for boldness.

We need something far rarer.

We need to recover the confidence to proclaim the Christ of Scripture exactly as He has revealed Himself, refusing to apologize for His authority, His exclusivity, His warnings, His demands, or His offense. The church has spent decades asking how to make Jesus more acceptable to the world. The apostles never asked that question. Neither did Christ.

The church’s discomfort with Christ did not begin in the twenty-first century. It did not begin with the seeker-sensitive movement, the church-growth movement, or the latest conference promising to unlock the secrets of cultural engagement. The temptation is as old as Eden itself. Ever since man first exchanged the truth of God for a lie, fallen humanity has possessed an insatiable desire to reshape God into someone more agreeable.

Israel fashioned a golden calf and declared it to be the god who delivered them from Egypt.

The nations carved idols with eyes that could not see and mouths that could not speak because lifeless gods never interrupt the lives of the people who create them.

Every false religion throughout history has followed the same instinct. It creates a god who demands less, confronts less, judges less, and accommodates more. The sinful heart has never objected to religion. It has always objected to the living God.

That instinct has not disappeared simply because people gather beneath a steeple instead of an idol shrine. It has just become more sophisticated. Instead of sculpting Christ with chisels, we edit Him with sermons. We do not melt gold into the shape of a calf. We melt the sharp edges of His words until they no longer cut.

We have discovered that one can retain orthodox language while quietly evacuating it of its force. We can speak endlessly about grace while avoiding repentance. We can celebrate the love of Christ while passing over the holiness that gives His love its meaning. We can preach forgiveness while scarcely mentioning the wrath from which sinners must be forgiven.

Before long, the Christ standing in our pulpits bears only a passing resemblance to the Christ who walked the roads of Galilee.

Yet, Scripture refuses to permit such a reconstruction.

In Isaiah 8, Judah found itself surrounded by fear, political intrigue, and military uncertainty. The nation looked everywhere for security except to the Lord. Alliances with pagan nations seemed wiser than obedience to God and their human calculations appeared more dependable than God’s promises.

Into that climate of unbelief, Isaiah announced that the Lord Himself would become the great point of separation. For those who trusted Him, He would be a sanctuary. For those who rejected Him, He would become “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”

The same Christ who shelters His people also shatters those who refuse Him. Nothing about His identity changes. The difference lies entirely in the posture of those who stand before Him.

That truth ought to stop every pastor, elder, teacher, and Christian in his tracks.

Notice carefully where the offense originates. Isaiah does not say that God’s messengers accidentally become offensive because they lack tact. He does not suggest that the people stumbled because the prophets communicated poorly. The offense is bound up in the Lord Himself. His holiness collides with human rebellion the way granite collides with brittle clay.

One does not negotiate with the other. One breaks the other. Fallen man does not trip over Christ because Christ has somehow failed to make Himself sufficiently understandable. He stumbles because every claim Christ makes exposes the lie upon which fallen man has built his life.

The New Testament does not soften Isaiah’s language. It intensifies it.

When Paul explains Israel’s widespread rejection of her Messiah, he reaches back to Isaiah and places Jesus Christ squarely at the center of the prophecy. Israel, he writes, pursued righteousness “as if it were based on works.” They sought acceptance before God through law-keeping rather than through faith.

Then Paul reaches the unavoidable conclusion: “They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense’” (Rom. 9:32–33).

Think carefully about what Paul is saying. Israel did not reject Christ because He lacked sufficient evidence, because His message was poorly framed, or because His followers failed to create an inviting atmosphere. Israel stumbled because Christ Himself demolished every foundation upon which self-righteous people attempt to stand.

The Pharisee who trusted his morality stumbled. The zealot who trusted his nationalism stumbled. The priest who trusted his ceremonies stumbled. The scholar who trusted his learning stumbled.

Christ arrived as the living fulfillment of everything the Old Testament anticipated, and the very people who possessed the Scriptures found Him intolerable because He stripped away every human boast.

Nothing has changed.

The modern sinner may speak a different vocabulary than the first-century Pharisee, but the heart remains astonishingly familiar. People still cling desperately to self-rule. They still demand autonomy. They still crave a God who blesses without ruling, forgives without judging, and comforts without commanding.

The names of the idols have changed, but the instinct has not. Human beings still want a Christ who exists to affirm their dreams rather than crucify their pride.

Peter presses the matter even further.

Writing to scattered believers enduring hostility for their faith, the apostle describes Christ as the cornerstone chosen and precious before God. Those who believe find Him infinitely valuable. Those who reject Him encounter the very same Christ as “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.”

Peter then adds words that should permanently silence the modern obsession with removing every offense from Christianity: “They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do” (1 Pet. 2:8).

The apostle could not be clearer. They stumble because they disobey.

Not because the church failed to appear welcoming enough.

Not because Christians failed to master the latest communication strategy.

Not because the sermon lacked sufficient humor, authenticity, vulnerability, or cultural awareness.

They stumble because rebellious hearts collide with divine truth.

How much energy has the modern church spent trying to solve the very problem Peter never attempts to solve? Conference after conference promises to help churches become more compelling, more engaging, more accessible, more relevant, more attractive.

We analyze demographics, survey visitors, redesign sanctuaries, rework sermon series, refine branding, and scrutinize our online presence. Somewhere along the way we began to assume that if enough people continue rejecting Christ, the fault must somehow lie with Christ’s presentation.

That assumption borders on blasphemy.

It imagines that the eternal Son of God, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, somehow requires our expertise before His message can succeed. It subtly transfers confidence away from the power of God’s Word and toward the ingenuity of man.

Without ever saying the words aloud, we begin acting as though the obstacle standing between sinners and salvation is that Jesus has not yet been explained attractively enough.

The apostles never entertained such a thought.

They understood that the gospel possesses a built-in offense because it announces realities that fallen humanity hates.

It declares that man is not morally wounded but spiritually dead. It proclaims that our greatest problem is not low self-esteem but guilt before a holy God. It announces that no amount of sincerity, religious devotion, charitable giving, political activism, family values, or moral reform can reconcile a sinner to God apart from Jesus Christ. It demands repentance. It demands faith. It demands surrender. It demands that every rival allegiance bow before the risen King.

That message scraped against the pride of the first century like iron against stone. It has lost none of its sharpness two thousand years later. The modern church loves to quote John 3:16, but when is the last time you heard them preach the rest of that passage?

¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. ¹⁹ And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. —John 3:18-20

Perhaps this explains why so much preaching today feels strangely weightless. We have become remarkably skilled at talking about Jesus while carefully avoiding the very truths that made Him the Rock of Offense in the first place.

We gladly present Him as a friend, a healer, a comforter, and a source of peace. He is all of those things in glorious abundance. Yet the same Christ also arrives with a sword. He tears down every refuge of self-righteousness. He exposes every cherished idol. He lays His hand upon the throne of the human heart and declares that it belongs to Him alone.

That Christ has never been popular.

He was not popular when Isaiah foretold Him.

He was not popular when He walked the roads of Judea.

He was not popular when Peter preached Him in Jerusalem or when Paul proclaimed Him throughout the Roman world.

He has never depended upon popularity because He has never sought permission from rebels to reign.

The church would do well to remember that before attempting to make Him more acceptable to those who continue stumbling over the very stone that God Himself has laid in Zion.

If Christ Himself is the Rock of Offense, then the obvious question follows: how did He conduct His own ministry? Did He spend His days carefully managing perceptions? Did He labor to ensure that no one misunderstood Him?

Did He soften difficult truths whenever they threatened to reduce the size of the crowd? Did He recalibrate His message to preserve influence?

Those questions answer themselves the moment we open the Gospels.

One of the most revealing moments in Christ’s entire earthly ministry unfolds in John 6. The chapter begins with a multitude so large that the disciples are overwhelmed by the logistics of feeding them. Thousands follow Jesus. His popularity has reached extraordinary heights.

If modern ministry metrics had existed in the first century, His numbers would have been the envy of every conference speaker and church-growth strategist. Attendance was exploding. Crowds traveled great distances to hear Him. All this excitement surrounded His ministry. Every outward indicator suggested His movement had momentum.

Yet Jesus recognized something the crowds themselves did not. Many were following Him for reasons that had nothing to do with genuine faith. They wanted bread. Not the Bread of Life, but something to fill their bellies.

They wanted miracles. Sound familiar?

They wanted a king who would satisfy earthly desires while leaving their hearts untouched.

Our Lord could have capitalized on that enthusiasm. He could have ridden the wave of public approval. He could have carefully nurtured this growing movement until it became impossible for the religious establishment to resist. Instead, He did something that appears almost incomprehensible through the lens of modern evangelical pragmatism.

He preached a sermon that He knew would empty the room.

His language became increasingly offensive. He declared Himself to be the Bread of Life. He insisted that unless people ate His flesh and drank His blood, they had no life in them. He was not attempting to confuse His hearers with meaningless riddles. He was confronting them with the absolute necessity of union with Him by faith, exposing their superficial interest and forcing them to wrestle with the true nature of discipleship.

The crowd recoiled. Murmuring spread through the assembly. They complained that His teaching was too hard. It offended their expectations. It shattered the Messiah they wanted and confronted them with the Messiah God had actually sent.

Then John records one of the saddest instances in all of Scripture: “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66).

Pause there for a moment.

Many of His disciples.

Not His enemies.

Not the Pharisees.

Not Roman officials.

People who had identified themselves as His followers simply walked away.

What happened next should permanently reshape the way we think about ministry.

Jesus did not chase them.

He did not call them back for a clarification meeting. He did not issue a statement explaining that His words had been taken out of context. He did not gather the Twelve and ask whether perhaps His communication strategy needed refinement.

He did not wonder if His sermon lacked sufficient warmth or cultural sensitivity. He watched the crowd depart, turned to His closest disciples, and asked a question that still echoes across the centuries:

“Do you want to go away as well?”

Everything about that scene stands in direct opposition to the assumptions that dominate so much of contemporary ministry. We have been taught to interpret shrinking crowds as evidence that something has gone wrong. Jesus treated departing crowds as a means of exposing hearts. We instinctively assume that numerical decline demands methodological adjustment.

Christ allowed the truth itself to separate genuine disciples from superficial admirers.

The purpose of His ministry was never to collect the largest possible audience. It was to glorify His Father by gathering those whom the Father had given Him.

The same pattern appears again and again throughout the Gospels.

In Luke 14, Jesus finds Himself surrounded by “great crowds.” Every church consultant would have celebrated the moment. The momentum had arrived. The movement was growing. This was the perfect opportunity to lower barriers, strengthen relationships, and make discipleship appear as accessible as possible.

Instead, Jesus looked at the crowd and declared that anyone unwilling to forsake father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, possessions, and even his own life could not be His disciple. Then He instructed them to count the cost before following Him.

Imagine hearing that sermon at a modern ministry conference.

Many would call it insensitive. Others would insist that Christ was demanding too much too quickly. Some would argue that newcomers first needed to experience belonging before confronting such costly expectations.

Yet Christ deliberately confronted the crowd with the full weight of discipleship before allowing anyone to imagine that following Him could be accomplished on convenient terms.

He was never interested in consumers.

He sought disciples.

Those two are not remotely the same.

The same clarity appears in Matthew 15. After Jesus publicly rebukes the traditions of the Pharisees, His disciples approach Him with what they apparently believe to be important information.

“Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?”

The question itself is revealing. It reflects a concern that remains deeply embedded within the church today. The assumption is that offense represents a problem requiring immediate attention. Surely Jesus should know that respected religious leaders have taken exception to His words.

His response borders on shocking.

“Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides.”

No apology.

No clarification.

No effort to repair relationships for the sake of broader influence.

Christ was never indifferent toward people, but He was utterly indifferent toward preserving the approval of those who rejected God’s truth.

That distinction matters immensely.

Far too often we confuse biblical compassion with an unwillingness to confront rebellion. Christ possessed infinite compassion, yet His compassion never muted His words.

The same Savior who wept over Jerusalem also pronounced devastating judgment upon it. The same Shepherd who welcomed weary sinners publicly exposed hypocritical shepherds. The same Lord who received little children also fashioned a whip and drove money changers from His Father’s house.

Modern evangelicalism often behaves as though these scenes require explanation, almost embarrassment. We instinctively gravitate toward the passages that display Christ’s tenderness while quietly stepping around those that display His terrifying authority.

We preach the Jesus who says, “Come to me,” but speak far less frequently of the Jesus who repeatedly warned of hell, condemned hypocrisy with blistering precision, and declared eternal judgment upon those who refused to believe.

Yet these are not competing portraits.

They are the same Christ.

His love cannot be understood apart from His holiness. His mercy shines because His justice burns with perfect righteousness. His invitation carries immeasurable beauty precisely because it comes from the Judge before whom every creature will one day stand.

Perhaps nowhere does Christ’s holy severity erupt more forcefully than in Matthew 23. One scarcely reaches the end of the chapter without feeling the weight of His words. Eight times He pronounces, “Woe to you.” He calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, blind guides, whitewashed tombs, serpents, and a brood of vipers.

He strips away every layer of religious pretense before the watching crowds. There is no hint of hesitation in His voice. No concern that His language may be considered excessively direct. No attempt to cushion the blow.

Why?

Because false shepherds destroy souls.

Christ understood that deceptive religion is deadly poison. A physician who whispers reassuring lies to a patient dying of cancer is not compassionate. He is monstrous. A watchman who smiles while the city burns is not loving. He is faithless.

A shepherd who refuses to warn the flock about wolves because he fears appearing unkind has already abandoned the sheep.

The Lord Jesus never made that mistake.

He loved people enough to tell them the truth even when that truth provoked anger, resentment, abandonment, and ultimately His own crucifixion.

That reality ought to sober every pastor who feels the constant pressure to soften hard truths for the sake of broader acceptance. Christ’s faithfulness was measured by obedience to His Father, not by the applause of the crowd.

Peter stood before the very people who had demanded Christ’s execution and declared, “This Jesus…you crucified.”

Stephen confronted the Sanhedrin by calling them stiff-necked men who resisted the Holy Spirit just as their fathers had done.

Paul reasoned with Felix concerning righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment until the governor became frightened.

None of them mistook conviction for failure.

None of them interpreted offense as proof that the message required revision.

They understood what the modern church desperately needs to recover, that when divine truth collides with human pride, sparks will fly. The question has never been whether Christ’s words offend. The question is whether His church still possesses the courage to proclaim them without apology.

If the Gospels leave us with the unmistakable impression that Christ never attempted to soften His own claims for the sake of wider acceptance, then we are confronted with an uncomfortable question.

Why are we so determined to do what He never did?

I am convinced this question cuts to the heart of one of the greatest crises facing the evangelical church today. We have inherited an entire ministry philosophy built upon the assumption that the greatest obstacle to conversion is that people find Christianity difficult to embrace.

From that assumption has flowed a river of books, conferences, consulting firms, branding strategies, sermon series, demographic studies, communication models, and church-growth methodologies—all devoted, in one way or another, to making the Christian message feel less confrontational and more inviting.

To be fair, not everything born from those efforts is inherently wrong. Churches should strive for excellence. Buildings should not be filthy. Sermons should be understandable. Visitors should not be ignored.

Christians should speak plainly, love sincerely, and remove needless distractions that obscure the gospel. But that’s the key word—needless. Scripture itself commands us to conduct ourselves wisely before outsiders and to season our speech with grace.

Yet somewhere along the way we crossed a line that many no longer recognize.

We stopped asking how to remove unnecessary obstacles to hearing the gospel, and we began trying to remove the very offense that God intentionally built into the gospel itself.

That distinction changes everything.

There are obstacles that have no business standing between a sinner and Christ. Pride in the preacher is one. Hypocrisy in the church is another. Worldliness, carelessness with God’s Word, shallow preaching, entertainment masquerading as worship, coldness toward visitors, sectarian arrogance, unnecessary traditions elevated to divine commands—those things deserve to be swept away without hesitation. They dishonor Christ because they belong to us.

Christ does not.

When every unnecessary barrier has been removed, one obstacle still remains standing exactly where God Himself placed it.

Jesus Christ.

His authority remains.

His exclusivity remains.

His demands remain.

His call to repentance remains.

His declaration that no one comes to the Father except through Him remains.

His warning that broad is the road leading to destruction remains.

His promise of judgment remains.

His insistence that every knee will bow remains.

Those are not unfortunate features of Christianity waiting for better marketing. They are the very glory of the gospel because they reveal the true identity of the King whom God has enthroned over all creation.

And until we recognize that reality and embrace it without shame, we are the ones offending the gospel itself.