How the Bible Teaches Us to Overcome Offenses with Compassion 

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“Love one another.” In John 13:34, Jesus offers this not as a suggestion but as a command. “A new command I give you,” He prefaces the imperative statement. Often we think of love as all rainbows and flowers, but loving isn’t always so easy. If it were, Jesus wouldn’t have issued the command. The fact is, people can be exasperating, annoying, obnoxious, and downright unlovable—a fact God knows only too well. Just a few chapters into the history of man, “the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6, ESV). If even God can get sick and tired of the behavior of His own children, it’s no wonder that we can at times have it absolutely up to HERE with our fellow man. So then how can we possibly overcome offenses with compassion, as Jesus seems to be asking us to do? 

People who don’t follow Jesus may think of Christianity as a set of rules about what not to do, but honestly, the really hard part about following Jesus is to love when we don’t feel like it. We are not called just to have good manners and be polite, to live and let live, or to tolerate. We are called to have so much love that it “overflow[s] for…everyone” (1 Thessalonians 3:12, NIV, with my own edit). Overflow with love. For everyone. All the time.  

That’s like…crazy hard.  

And without God, impossible.  

Doing the Impossible 

But as we know, “With God, all things are possible.” 

Jesus modeled for us how to love people even when they are unlovable. To overcome offense with compassion. Imagine having the power to call down ten thousand angels (Matthew 26:53) to destroy the world and not using it when people are mocking you, torturing you, and spitting in your face. Had we that kind of power, none of us would even be here; one of our ancestors would’ve cracked long ago over the ancient equivalent of standing in line at the DMV.  

In the personhood of Jesus, God gave us a Savior who understands how hard it can be to overflow with love, to overcome offenses with compassion: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15, NIV). Christ first gave us the example and then gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit to help us love the way we should. When we glorify God through worship, prayer, and study of His Word, our lives bear witness that the Spirit lives in us; we produce the “fruit” of the Spirit, as Paul describes it in Galatians 5:22-23: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (NIV).  

Not Just Ordinary Patience 

Notice that rather old-fashioned word “forebearance.” It’s sometimes translated as “patience,” but it goes beyond that. Forebearance means being patient not just in general, but when provoked to wrath (makrothymía in the Greek). It means you put up with a lot and still love. Most parents have learned forbearance, especially when our precious little children turn into sulky, know-it-all teenagers. In spite of how they act, we still love them. In fact, we overflow with love for them because we still see our beloved children underneath all that attitude.  

The Holy Spirit will help us to forebear—to overcome offenses with compassion. The Spirit will help us see beyond someone’s offensive behavior to find the soul for whom Christ died—and help us to love that soul even as we dislike the person’s actions.  

This is a radically different way to live than what we generally see in our society. Forbearance is mistaken for weakness when, in fact, it is one of the highest markers of strength. Stories of snarky comebacks to offenses are generally met with laughter and approval from others. Meeting offense with love and compassion lacks the zinger of a punch line. Forbearance won’t give you a great story to tell at parties, but it will please God. 

Overcome Offenses with Compassion with God’s Help

So how do we resist the temptation to be the “hero” of the story with the perfect line that puts an offensive person in his or her place? Only through the Spirit of God. 

As Francis Chan explains in his book Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, “I don’t know about you, but I cannot simply muster up more love. I can’t manufacture patience just by gritting my teeth and determining to be more patient. We are not strong or good enough, and it doesn’t work that way. None of us can ‘do goodness’ on our own, much less all the other elements that make up the fruit of the Spirit” (Forgotten God, David C Cook; March 1, 2010; p. 148) .

We need God’s help. Listen to a short segment of this meditation from Abide based on John 13:34. Let God speak to your heart about loving others.

Let us invite the Spirit to dwell in our hearts so that we may produce the fruit that pleases the Lord and start overcoming offenses with compassion instead of reacting with malice. Let Abide help. Download the app and start a premium subscription. This will give you access to our entire library of content, including the full-length version of the above meditation. Here’s 25% off to get you started.

Ginger Rue is the author of nine books for teens, tweens, and children and is a contributing editor for Guideposts magazine. She lives in Alabama with her husband and children.