Please read “love, sin (part 1)” first

I’m a sinner. I don’t somehow qualify to talk about other peoples’ sins because I believe I’m immune. Do I have contempt for my sin? yes, because I have contempt for sin. So when I hear “love others as yourself,” I don’t believe the Word is speaking of worldly love, but of love that flows from Truth.

As Christians, our desire should be for truth regardless of what feels good or sounds right to us. We can show love to people with tolerance and acceptance, however, it is when that tolerance and acceptance no longer reflects the character of God, that we are no longer showing God’s love and are now participating in worldly love. Two very different things.

To the world, if something I say offends you, then I am not showing you love. In fact, you might even call it “hate”. But if what I said agrees with God’s Word, and it is said with as much gentleness as possible, what should I do? The worldly Christian’s answer might be to choose the pleasure of you over the pleasure of God. That feel-good love is all they know, and the world has taught them that it is the right thing.

The world does not acknowledge sin as sin. The world thinks that the message of the cross is offensive because it exposes sin. The world thinks that the Bible is all about peace and acceptance. The world doesn’t know God and therefore does not understand His love.

All sin of every sort can be forgiven. But God’s Word tells us that we must confess our sins and repent. So where does that leave the person who we’ve left believing that we accept their sin, and in fact support and rally behind their sin?

Robbed, by us, of the Truth.

Showing love (God’s, not the world’s) and gently exposing sin are not mutually exclusive or opposing activities. In the case of worldly love, they are polar opposites. “If you love me, you will accept and support everything about me” is a worldly distortion of love that Christians have bought into. The Biblical Truth is “if you love me, you’ll tell me the Truth.” We see that lived out in letters that the original Christians wrote to believers; showing love through encouragement as well as conveying truth about specific sin.

It is not new that the world attaches themselves to their sins so much that, at times, it seems to be a part of their identity. Shall Christians then embrace sin for fear that the person will feel unloved? No, but we must be gentle. But let us not confuse gentleness with an acceptance of sin, and let us not lie to people about sin and forgiveness.

Satan has accomplished an extraordinarily evil feat if the Church becomes neutral towards sin and forgiveness. Let’s stop helping him.

God’s Word is very clear that Christians should, in fact, deal with sin in the Church (other Christians) ideally after personal confession of those sins, but in some cases where sin is being exalted or hidden, through confrontation.  While reading letters in the New Testament that identify sinful behavior, ask yourself, what is your reaction to fellow Christians who identify specific sins in the same way?  Do you say things like “let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”  Are you aware of what passage you are referring to or is it just a cliche?  If you do, then you will understand that making a correlation between identifying sin and raising a stone, weapon, or fist to kill or physically hurt somebody who sinned is indeed a silly and inaccurate and naive correlation for a Christian to be making.  Clearly violence against some person because of their sin is unacceptable and unnecessary in the eyes of God – as the passage actually portrays.

So what am I saying?  That Christians should be going around pointing out people’s sin? No, not at all. But let’s stop going around supporting sin in the name of worldly love.  Let’s stop selling a watered-down gospel that omits the purpose of the cross.  Let’s stop believing that sin is defined through the subjective filter of our own life experiences, our current time, or our own rules.

The world prefers that we don’t talk about sin, the reason the gospel is important. Unfortunately, it’s a subject that cannot be avoided but should be handled with gentleness, in Truth.