A Gentle Answer: Our 'Secret Weapon' in an Age of Us Against Them

by Scott Sauls

While true faith is filled with holy fire, it is a fire that is meant for refining and healing, as opposed to dividing and destroying. If our faith ignites hurt rather than healing upon the bodies, hearts, and souls of other people—even those who treat us unkindly—then something has gone terribly wrong with our faith.

Because Jesus has covered all of our offenses, we can be among the least offensive and least offended people in the world. This is the way of the gentle answer.

The scandal around Jesus is a reality that distinguishes Christianity from every other world religion, as well as from all forms of human philosophy and politics: Jesus and Christianity do not discriminate between good people and bad people. Instead, Jesus and Christianity discriminate between humble people and proud people. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

This is the fundamental difference between human religion and Christianity. Whereas human religion puts the likes of Zacchaeus, the greedy CEO, and others like them into the category of “them” or “the bad people,” Christianity says that we are all the same. All of us, without exception, are hopelessly stuck and isolated in sin and selfishness—unless and until Jesus looks up at us in the tree, calls us by name, and tells us to hurry up and come down to him because he is coming to our house today. Understanding this humbling reality, and letting it get massaged deeply into our hearts so that it reorients our posture, is an essential key to becoming instruments of God’s grace, peace, and gentleness in a culture of outrage.

“No one does good. But all is well nonetheless, because Jesus did not come for the righteous, but for sinners. He did not come for the good people who feel no need for him, but for humble people who know that without him, they are sunk. For those humble people, the reward is not given at the finish line, but rather at the starting line.” Whereas religion presumes to work for the favor of God, life in Christ works from a favor that’s already been given by God freely in Christ.

If you reverse the order of these two sentences, if you say, “Leave your sin” before you will consider saying, “Neither do I condemn you,” then you have ceased to speak the language of Christ, and you have ceased to reflect the heart of Christ. With Christ and with Christ-attuned Christians, belonging comes before believing.

He does what the theologians call putting the indicatives (statements about who we are by virtue of whose we are in Christ) before the imperatives (statements about what we must become, and how we must now live, in light of who and whose we are).

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently.

When Jesus comes to our house, he doesn’t do so merely to take our side. He does so in order to take over.

His “I do not condemn you” always leads to the imperative, “Now leave your life of sin.” He is not our consultant or adviser. He is not our personal assistant. He is our Lord. He has come to save us, and in saving us, to rearrange our furniture, to turn our house into his house, to become the interior and exterior designer of our lives, for the rest of our lives.

It turns out that the power of Jesus’ gentle grace, which includes receiving a new name and new identity and new way of life, turns away not only wrath but also so much more.

The gentle answer of Jesus gives us the power not merely to turn over a new leaf, but to have a new life.

By our own merit we are by no means his choice people, but by faith we are his chosen people—known and loved, exposed

Those of us who measure a person’s worth by dollars instead of dignity would do well to remember that Jesus couldn’t afford a place to live (Matt.

As it is with Nathanael and the others, so it is with us. When those he has called to himself fight against him, he responds by fighting for us . . . and for our hearts. His chief strategy is to return our insults with his kindness, our persecution with his prayers, our dismissive attitudes with his attentiveness, and our brashness with his kindness. As the Proverbs make clear, “A gentle answer turns away wrath” (Prov. 15:1 NIV).

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”8 This is a gift of love packaged in a gentle yet powerful answer.

It’s also worth noting that others may insult or slight us for reasons having nothing to do with our faith. Because we live in a broken world where relational tensions abound over all sorts of things, we should expect interpersonal challenges to be part of the picture. Likewise, it is possible to stir up dissension and pushback when we aren’t acting in line with the righteousness of Christ, but are instead acting like “jerks for Jesus.” Being persecuted is not the same as being criticized, disliked, or overlooked because of our own judgmental and offensive postures toward our nonbelieving neighbors and the world. If our messaging and not our message is causing turmoil, we need to examine ourselves and question whether our ethics and demeanor line up with our faith.

The persecution about which Jesus spoke, and which all Christians everywhere should be prepared to endure, is the kind that happens because we have been loyal to Jesus, his truth, his grace, his love, and his mission.

The expressions of anger contained in these biblical prayers give vent and voice to pain. God knows we need a safe and nondestructive outlet to let out all the hurt we feel. He gives us an emotion like anger as a vehicle of protest in a world that has gone wrong. Shouting our pain to God is one of the most reverent things we can do. It reveals that we recognize a God who is there, a God who cares, a God who can take action on our behalf. Venting reveals hope, yet it is also important that we vent our anger first to God. Only then will we gain the proper perspective on how to take the same anger to those who are the source of it. Rather than striking back to even the score, the spiritual person prays his or her hurt and angry feelings directly to God.

When Jesus expresses anger, it is always with a view toward defending and protecting something good or someone he loves.

To sin against the law of God is to sin against the love of God. Therefore, every time we sin against God, we also sin against ourselves. We cannot be happy and healthy and whole outside the blessed boundaries of God’s law any more than a fish can be happy and healthy and whole outside of water.

As those created in God’s image, his law is our roadmap for how to “image” him. His law is our design and our most natural habitat. Eugene Peterson captures this truth well in his translation of Matthew 5:19: “Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself” (MSG).

There are many things we can learn from the life of David. One of the most important things is how essential it is to position ourselves to regularly receive critique from those around us—especially those who know us best, such as colleagues, friends, and family members—and also to receive it humbly, with gratitude, and with resoluteness to change. Our character must matter more to us than our reputations. We must learn to love the light, even when it exposes the darkness in us, as opposed to hiding from the light and shielding ourselves from exposure. We must pay careful attention to those parts of the Bible that we underline, but also and especially to those parts that we don’t underline. We need a gentled posture before the Lord, his Word, and his truth-telling messengers, to become the people he desires for us to be.

even unfair criticism calls for careful consideration and a gracious response. Even unfair criticism should be examined for kernels of truth that present new opportunities for repenting and drawing near to Jesus. And often both unfair and fair critiques can come together, bound up into one.

Because Jesus Christ has instituted and sealed this love relationship with us, his former enemies, we are able to navigate the world in the same manner as our Lord. Only when we embody a bold gentleness will our outraged world begin to notice that we are distinctly his disciples (John 17:1–26). When we do this, and only when we do this, an outraged world stops identifying Christians as a core part of the problem, and instead begins believing that Christians are a most necessary part of the solution.

In his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that Christians are a light to the world only to the degree that they stand out as different from the world. The world does not thirst for a religious imitation of its often-outraged self. Instead, the world thirsts for a different kind of neighbor, the kind that embodies in a most life-giving, countercultural fashion the following “Peace Prayer” from Saint Francis.