Encountering the God We Did Not Expect: The Beatitude We Forgot

Scripture — Matthew 11:2-6 (NRSV)

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Devotion

Most of us who have spent any time in church are familiar with the Beatitudes in Scripture. Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those hungering for righteousness, the merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and those persecuted (Matt. 5:3-12). But did you know there is one more that rarely, if ever, appears on the list? Jesus pronounces it from a different mountain, at a different time, and to a different audience. Many leaders I know need to hear it too, because it strikes at the core of where many faith journeys quietly falter.

John the Baptist is in prison when he sends a question that prompts Jesus to respond in an unexpected way and deliver an often-overlooked beatitude. This is the John who saw the heavens open at the Jordan, who heard the Father’s voice declaring Jesus to be the beloved Son, who pointed to Christ and said, “Behold the Lamb of God.” This is the prophet who, more than any other, knew exactly who Jesus was. And now, with chains on his wrists and a death sentence looming, he sends word through his disciples, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This is a stunning question from the one Jesus said had no equal (Matt. 11:11). I encourage you to reread the question slowly enough to feel John’s desperation. The forerunner of the Messiah, the cousin who leaped in his mother’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice, the man who baptized the Christ, is asking whether he had the right Christ all along.

Why? Because Jesus was not doing what John expected the Messiah to do. The Baptist had preached an axe laid to the root of the trees, a winnowing fork, fire, and judgment. He expected a kingdom that would overturn the political order and rescue the prophets from prison. Instead, the Messiah was eating with sinners, healing strangers, telling parables to fishermen, and leaving John where he was. And, at the moment John needed rescue, the rescue was not coming.

John was not faithless in the face of the unexpected. John was offended.

Consider what may have been going through John’s mind. He had lived his whole life to prepare the way for the Messiah and the Kingdom of God, only to find himself in prison facing death. Jesus did not visit him or do anything to rescue John from his circumstances. Further, Jesus did not appear to be doing anything to advance the Kingdom of God. No army. No heavenly host. No revolution. John’s understanding of Scripture and who Jesus was did not align with what was foretold by the law and the prophets.

Nevertheless, Jesus answers the question gently, almost tenderly. Jesus’s encouragement to John was to remind John of who the Messiah was through the work being done. Jesus was increasing, while John was decreasing, and as a result, the blind were being given sight, the lame were walking, the dead were raised, the gospel was being preached to the poor, and the kingdom of God was advancing. Jesus does not justify Himself further. He does not explain why John is still in prison. He describes the kingdom as it is actually arriving, not the kingdom John had imagined.

And then, he says, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

While originally spoken to John, this is a beatitude leaders should commit to memory. It is the beatitude for anyone whose business has not gone where they prayed it would. It is the beatitude for anyone whose career detoured, whose health failed, whose family fractured, whose ministry contracted, whose plans fell apart in the very season they had committed those plans to the Lord. It is the beatitude for anyone who has caught themselves wondering, in the quiet hours, whether they had the right Jesus all along.

There is something this forgotten beatitude is calling us out of, and something it is calling us into. It is calling us out of a transactional faith and calling us into a transformational faith that perseveres through confusion, embraces divine paradoxes, and finds rest in trusting God’s character even when his ways perplex us.

Most of us were sold a Christian life that does not exist—a life in which obedience produces predictable blessing, faithfulness yields measurable success, and prayer secures the outcomes we ask for. However, the Gospels and apostolic letters describe a different life. Paul speaks of suffering that produces endurance, of being treated as the refuse of the world, of a thorn that did not come out despite three earnest requests. Peter speaks of fiery trials. James speaks of testing as the path to maturity. The honest portrait of the Christian life in the New Testament is full of moments when God did something we did not expect, did not want, and could not understand.

The forgotten beatitude reminds us that the “blessed” are not those who never face such moments. The “blessed” are those who, when those moments come, do not stumble. They keep trusting the Lord, whom they cannot fully understand. They keep walking with the Friend whose ways have momentarily perplexed them. They refuse to take offense at the kingdom they had imagined differently.

If the Lord has done something in your life or your work that has offended your sense of how things should have gone, you are not the first. You are in the company of the greatest prophet who ever lived. In his book God’s Favorite Place on Earth, author Frank Viola addresses the forgotten beatitude and exhorts us that, “Being offended by God is a choice_._ You can choose to take offense at the Lord and stumble over that which you don’t understand. Or you can ‘trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding’(Proverbs 3:5).”

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: When the Messiah Is Not Who You Expected.