Brutal Honesty Could Change Your Life
Are You Offended By The Brutally Honest Words Of Jesus?
Being confronted with the straightforward truth often seems offensive, insulting, and brutally wrong. We can become upset, angry, and resentful toward the person who is honestly telling us what we need to hear. We may perceive to be unfairly under a personal attack for our positions, views, values, choices, principles, philosophy, or behavior. Because of our unwillingness to receive the truth, the truth can become toxic. This untreated toxicity disrupts our spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being. It erodes intimacy between friends and family. It destroys relationships. We hate the truth and we hate the person who confronted us with the honest truth.
Before we move forward, let me clarify the difference between telling someone the honest straightforward truth and someone who goes around insulting, criticizing, and attacking people because they themselves are unkind, ill-mannered, or egotistical. This inappropriate and insulting behavior flows from a spirit of self-righteousness and hypocrisy. Those who behave in such a way need to spend more time in the mirror.
There is a place and time to be brutally honest because all other attempts have failed to capture our attention. Sometimes the necessity of knowing the truth is greater than the offense that may arise from sharing the straightforward truth. The truth is not a club to beat people down, it is a fact, a reality that is used to liberate and free people from deception. We find no greater example of this than the words of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus spoke in kind, loving, and gentle words while other times with great authority. However, on some occasions, nothing would suffice but brutally honest language to communicate the truth.
In John 8:44 we read “you belong to your father, the devil.” In Matthew 23:13 Jesus confronts the Pharisees, “you hypocrites.” The apostle Peter is told by Jesus, “get behind me satan” (Matthew 16:23). Luke 13:3 records the blunt truth, “But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” In John’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again” (Jn. 3:3). In Revelation 20:15 we read the brutally honest truth: “Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Most often truth seems offensive when we find ourselves on the opposite or wrong side of it. We are insulted by the truth because we believe we are right and the truth is wrong. We are highly defensive of our views, values, choices, principles, philosophy, and behavior. We believe that no one has a right to dictate or tell us how to live our lives. However, this attitude or belief is wrong. God has the right to address every aspect of our lives as He determines. If God says we are wrong, we are wrong and no reasonable argument can be made otherwise.
The brutally honest truth Jesus used with people pretending to be in a right relationship with God was to tell them they were “hypocrites.” Moreover, Jesus took it a step further and told the Pharisees their allegiance, their lives, and their views were of their “father, the devil.” Instead of receiving the truth and repenting, they were filled with anger and plotted to kill Jesus.
Whose Truth?
Jesus declared in John 14:6, “I am the way the truth and the life,” but we humans have gone our own way, we have manufactured our own truth and we have chosen to run our own lives as we desire. We have rejected God’s truth and replaced it with our own deceptive truth—a lie. What the world markets as truth, God calls a lie, and from this lie we must turn (repent) to the truth, God’s truth. My way, your way, her way, his way, and their way are all the wrong way. God’s way is the only way to eternal life.
God’s word confronts us with the brutally honest truth. Either we are repented, born again followers of God with our name written in the book of life, or we are of our father the devil, hypocrites pretending that all is well between God and us.
The choice is ours to make. There are two paths from which to choose, but only one leads to eternal life.
Perhaps at this very moment, you have realized that you need the Lord in your life. Maybe you drifted away or need to be been born again? If so, you can stop right now and begin talking to God. Ask Him to forgive you for being a sinner and the life you have been living outside of His love. Surrender your life to Him, unconditionally. Call Him Lord and make Him Lord over every thought, attitude, and action. You can say, Lord Jesus, forgive me for all my sins and come into my heart and take full control of my life. I am your child from this day forward. Change my heart and mind to be Christ-like in every way. I confess Jesus as my Lord and Savior forever.
If you prayed that prayer we would love to hear back from you.
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