The Spiritual Progression of Offense – Sunday Service
Understanding and confronting offense is critical to spiritual health, purpose, and abundant living. Offense is an insidious force that the enemy uses to manipulate and derail believers from God’s assignment and finished works. Jesus stated that offense is inevitable, but believers do not have to receive it.
This process follows a clear spiritual progression, starting with receiving a wound and potentially ending with abandoning the will of God.
Phase 1: Offense Turns into Hurt and Disappointment
The first step in the spiritual progression of offense is when the received offense turns into hurt and disappointment.
Offense begins as a wound—a moment when expectations are not met. This occurs when someone’s words or actions strike a sensitive place. Examples include a pastor forgetting to acknowledge a contribution or a friend failing to show up when needed, especially when the expectation was that the friend should have known they were needed.
The Role of Insecurity and Walls
When a person is touched in a sensitive place, the Hebrew language implies that the hurt or disappointment becomes fortified like a city under siege. This hurt begins forming walls around the heart. Many people, especially men driven by pride and ego, build walls to hide the hurt rather than confronting it.
Offense happens when we interpret others’ actions through the lens of insecurity instead of our identity in Christ. People who are insecure will allow the walls to be built, tucking the hurt behind them. Some believers store all their pain in a “storage closet” of the soul, which is dangerous, as eventually, the stored emotions will start spilling out, leading to emotional outbursts.
The key defense against this initial stage is filtering every action through your true identity in Christ, declaring, “That’s not me anymore”.
Phase 2: Hurt Turns into Bitterness
If hurt and disappointment remain unprocessed and stored, they become bitterness.
Bitterness is defined as hurt that is marinated in time. The longer you allow time for the hurt to sit, the more it marinates and turns into bitterness. Internally, this involves constantly replaying the offense.
The Danger of a Bitter Root
Bitterness is described as a “root of bitterness” that springs up, causes trouble, and defiles many. Bitterness contaminates not only the individual but also the lives of those around them.
Bitterness always spreads, manifesting in three main areas:
- Attitude.
- Conversations (listening to bitter people talk).
- Relationships (causing them to fail).
You can recognize the presence of bitterness when you:
- Retail the offense to others, even when they didn’t ask to hear it.
- Rehearse the hurt internally—nursing it instead of dispersing it.
- Feel the pain even when the offending person is not present.
Bitterness blocks believers from embracing and receiving the grace of God. To avoid this, believers must set their will to forgive quickly. Forgiveness is not about waiting until you feel like it, but deciding to forgive right away, preventing the hurt from finding refuge behind the walls of your soul.
Phase 3: Bitterness Turns into Resentment and Division
The continued fermentation of bitterness leads to resentment and division.
Resentment is bitterness that takes the added step of assigning motives to the offense and justifying separation. For example, instead of accepting that someone forgot you, resentment assigns the motive: “He doesn’t value me”. This process slowly works its way toward justifying division.
Justifying Separation
Resentment leads to statements like: “I can’t trust them anymore,” which often expands to include groups of people, such as “church people”. This broad generalization is used to justify division and avoid having to engage with the church or others.
Sometimes, what is perceived as rejection (like a relationship ending) may contain a blessing in disguise, saving one from a situation that would have led to greater trouble, but resentment prevents seeing this potential good outcome.
The spirit of division does not just appear; offense is the beginning of division, resentment, racism, and sexism. Resentment opens cracks that become floods, and the enemy inflames what the believer refuses to release.
Phase 4: Resentment Turns into Cold Love and a Hardened Heart
If resentment is left unmended and unended, it causes love to cool and the heart to become hardened.
A cold heart is less responsive to God and people, leading to an “I don’t care” attitude. This aligns with the biblical prophecy that because lawlessness will increase, the love of many will grow cold. Law-based living—striving to receive what God has already done—causes love to wither and compassion to evaporate.
Defending the Offense
In this stage, resentment justifies lovelessness. Instead of pursuing reconciliation, the heart begins defending its right to remain offended, arguing that the egregious nature of the act justifies the coldness.
A person carrying offense becomes miserable; it makes it hard to feel compassion, joy, or trust again, effectively turning control over to the offense. The offended person may physically leave a relationship (like a divorce), but if the offense remains, the former spouse still has control over them because they are not free from the offense.
Phase 5: Cold Love Turns into an Open Door to the Enemy
The hardening of the heart and the cooling of love give Satan an advantage or a foothold into the believer’s life. The devil uses this open door to manipulate and derail.
The Apostle Paul advised forgiving quickly “lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices”. When unforgiveness is present, believers are giving Satan the advantage to make them lose sleep, get sick, die before their time, or miss the benefits of God’s grace.
Anger and Opportunity
The Bible instructs believers to “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil“. Anger often stems from fear. Unresolved offense creates a legal access point for accusations, confusion, deceptions, and divisions.
In this stage, the enemy whispers things like: “You should pull back,” “They don’t deserve forgiveness,” or “You know you can’t trust people”. This is where offense escalates into spiritual warfare.