Was Jesus unloving and without compassion when He publicly denounced Herod as a “fox”? The culture of the day would have thought this crude and even sarcastic, and it certainly was a public embarrassment for Herod! There were at least a dozen ways to point out Herod’s errors in a “nicer” way?

Of course, this is absurd! The problem is our flesh longs to take the sharp edge off of the glaring wickedness of sin. Those who blatantly reject the authority of scripture over their lives are already convicted (Romans 1), and they demand we help relieve their burden with anything but repentance! They first strive to get us to soften our verbiage. All confrontations of sin are potentially deemed invalid according to the sinner’s judgment of our tone and wording. Then they will press to re-examine the doctrine, and ultimately reject the doctrine altogether. Finally, Jesus becomes a “sweet person” who would only bless us in all our lust and sin. Scripture shows this scenario playing out throughout time.