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The freedom of not being easily offended

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

There is a cultural phenomenon that Proverbs 12:16 anticipated with remarkable accuracy. In our present moment, offence has become both a currency and a condition. People are offended quickly, loudly, and in large numbers. A thoughtless word, a clumsy phrase, an opinion that fails to align with the expected position, and the response is immediate and often disproportionate. We have, it seems, produced a blizzard of thin-skinned responses to a world that is undeniably full of careless words.

Let us be clear: genuine offences matter. There are real wrongs that deserve to be named and addressed. This is not a counsel toward passivity in the face of injustice.

But Proverbs names something different here. The prudent person is capable of absorbing an insult without immediately responding to it. This is not weakness or resignation; it is a form of strength.

The person who must respond to every slight, who measures their own dignity by how quickly they can defend it, has become a prisoner to the very thing they are fighting.

He will set right what has been set wrong. He will comfort those who have been genuinely hurt. Our role is not to manage every account; it is to trust the One who manages them perfectly.

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

Romans 12:19

Laying aside what no longer belongs to you

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

There is a recognisable ritual in every household: the clearing out of things that no longer fit, no longer function, no longer belong to the life one is now living. The coat from a decade ago that sits unworn at the back of the wardrobe. The appliance that has not worked in years. These things accumulate quietly, occupying space that might otherwise serve the present.

First Peter 2 calls believers to a similar clearing out, but of a different and more consequential kind. The list Peter provides is precise: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. These are presented not as exotic vices belonging to extreme cases, but as familiar tendencies of the unrenewed heart. And the instruction is as direct as a cleared wardrobe: put them aside, renounce them, be done with them.

Each item on the list deserves honest examination. Malice is the settled desire to cause harm to another without any just cause. Deceit encompasses the many forms of dishonesty, large and small, that corrupt our dealings with one another. Hypocrisy is the adoption of a false appearance, presenting to the world a person we are not. Envy is the quiet bitterness that rises when another person achieves what we wanted. And slander is the willingness to damage someone’s name with our words.

These are the garments of the old life, and Peter’s counsel is not to modify them or wear them less frequently. It is to lay them aside completely.

What we once were, we need not remain.

 that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,

Ephesians 4:22-23

Wisdom speaks, but are we listening?

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

Proverbs 1:20 paints a remarkable picture. Wisdom is not a rare commodity locked away in libraries. She is crying out in the streets, raising her voice in the marketplace, calling from the city gates. She is, in every sense, available to all. So, what does this mean in an age of unprecedented information?

We carry in our pockets access to virtually every documented fact in human history. Search engines answer questions in fractions of a second. And yet, foolishness has not retreated. If anything, it has multiplied. It’s not a cognitive problem, it’s a heart issue. To be clear: Our resistance to wisdom is not fundamentally intellectual; it is moral and rooted in stubbornness.

God’s wisdom surrounds us. It speaks through scripture, through the created order, through the consequences of choices made and unmade. The question has never been whether wisdom is available; the question is whether we are willing to humble ourselves enough to receive it.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.

James 1:5

The dead don’t watch the news | Releasing our grip on the world

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TEXAS GOSPEL CANADA VOLUNTEER

Those who rest in cemeteries hold no opinions about the season’s trending content. They are not concerned with the movements of financial markets, indifferent to the fortunes of sports franchises, and entirely unaffected by the latest shifts in fashion. Death has done what nothing else could: it has severed the connection between those souls and the world that once occupied so much of their attention.

First John 2:15 presses this image into the life of the believer: do not love the world or the things in the world. If the love of the world occupies the heart, the love of the Father cannot. These are not compatible allegiances.

The reasoning behind this command is not that the created world is evil in itself, but that the world as a system, with its values, its powers, and its appetites, is passing away. It is a temporary arrangement, already under judgement, already in the process of dissolution. To invest one’s deepest love in what is passing is to build one’s life on something that will not hold.

The believer has been crucified with Christ. This is not a metaphor for mild detachment; it is a description of a real severance. Reckoned as dead to this world’s systems, we are simultaneously alive to God in Jesus. That life does not compete with the world; it simply belongs to a different order entirely.

The invitation, then, is not primarily about what we give up, but about what we are freed to embrace. Release the grip on what is fading, and find in Christ something that does not fade. Let the world go. Concentrate on Him.

The world is passing away and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God continues to live forever.

1 John 2:17

The death that could not hold him

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JOHN COPIC

Consider the audacity of Peter’s sermon. Standing before thousands, he reaches not for flattery or careful diplomacy, but for the ancient scriptures, and he makes a declaration that would shake the foundations of everything his listeners assumed they understood.

David, he argues, was not writing about himself. How could he be? His tomb was visible, his body long since given to corruption. When Psalm 16 speaks of a Holy One who would not see decay, it reaches past David entirely, pointing toward One whose death could not hold him, whose resurrection would vindicate every promise God had ever made.

This is the breathtaking logic of Peter’s preaching: the resurrection is not a surprise ending. It is the fulfilment of a plan laid before the foundation of the world. What appeared to be Rome’s victory, what seemed like the triumph of jealousy and lawless hands, was in truth the sovereignly ordained moment around which all of history turns.

And here is where it touches us, wherever we stand today. Some in that Pentecost crowd had cried “Crucify him” with genuine hatred in their hearts. Yet mercy was offered freely. Guilt does not disqualify a soul from grace; it simply reveals how desperately grace is needed.

The question Peter’s sermon always asks is the same one that echoes still: knowing what you now know about this Jesus, what will you do?

He who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification.

Romans 4:25