Does Grace Mean I Can’t Judge?

As a Pastor I often hear two statements said, sometimes to me, sometimes just in general. First, “who are you to judge?” The assumption of this statement is that since we are all sinners, we have no right to confront another about their sin. Second, “You should just love people for who they are.” The assumption of this statement is that love means that I am happy for you to be just the way you are, no improvements needed.

Let’s look at each statement individually.

“Who are you to judge?”

I would agree that we are all sinners, but that doesn't exclude us from being able to evaluate other people’s actions in light of the Scripture. I Corinthians 5:12 lays out the command for the church to judge other Christians. (A quick note about judging: nowhere in scripture are we allowed to assess motives. I don’t know why you did what you did, and you don’t know why I did what I did, but we can both see what the other is doing. So judging someone is simply looking at their life through the lens of the Bible.) We are responsible to keep each other accountable and to lovingly confront those who are in sin.

“You should just love people for who they are.”

Once again there is some truth in this statement. I am to love others as Christ loved me. In Romans 

5:8 we find that God loved us while we were still sinners. But the amazing thing about God’s love was that He doesn't desire for us to stay as sinners. He wants to sanctify us and make us into the image of Christ. I love my boys, with all their faults, but I don’t desire that they remain with those faults. I desire that they be corrected and molded into a better person that more accurately represents Christ.

Why Judge?

We judge because the testimony of Christ is at stake, the reputation of the church, and our progressive sanctification. Judging is hard, but necessary. It is imperative that as we judge we realize that we are capable of falling into the same sin (Gal. 6:1) and that we have the goal of restoration always in mind. Judging isn't winning, or being better, it is recognizing that another person has an area of struggle. They may struggle in a different area than me, but their flesh has a stronghold and I am commanded by God to help, so are you.

When to Judge?

Here is the where the real difficult parts start to weigh on us. How big of an issue does it have to be before we confront? How often should we confront? Where is an appropriate place to confront? These difficult questions really have simple answers if we follow Matt 18. If you know someone overtaken in a sin, confront. You notice a pattern developing, or you see an action that is an affront to the Gospel, confront. You confront one on one. Don’t start with an attack, don’t assume motive, simply state what you have observed. Ask them to pray with you about it. Tell them you would love to keep them accountable. Minister with as much grace as you would want them to do when they confront you (this is going to happen unless you never sin =).  Never confront in public if at all possible. There is always an exception to the rule, but normally make it a private matter. Public confrontation make the person extremely defensive, confrontation is already hard to take, do it in public and it is almost impossible to take.

There are tons of great resources out today about this topic and I encourage believers to spend some time praying about this specific role they have in the health of the church. Proverbs 27:6 “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

Next post: When we love confrontation too much! 

Do We Really Forgive?

The end of Jeremiah 31:34 says, “For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Can we be brutally honest with ourselves? When was the last time we forgave like that? When, after we have been wronged, have we never thought of it again. I know my tendency is to keep detailed lists of the wrongs people have done to me. It is not part of our normal nature to forgive like this; in fact it requires a divine nature that only God can give.

As we live in a “religious world” full of rules and expectations, we become masters of following the rules so others see us as Spiritual. Then their positive view of us leads us to assume that we are more spiritual than everyone else, or that we deserve to be treated better than everyone else. I was having a conversation about this topic with my brother-in-law, Joe Henson, and he mentioned a saying that has stuck with me over the last few weeks. Here is the saying, it was from Chris Anderson: “We want to be a church in which everyone is more aware of his own sins than the sins of others, and more aware of God’s grace than either.” My heart desire is to be a part of church like that, but too often I am far from that goal.

How much time do you spend focusing on God’s grace compared to your sin and the sin of others?  How often does the church, which is us, struggle with the right focus? We turn on backs on hurting people because they have wronged us. We are quick to remember the faults of others, and slow to forgive. We want others to prove they are really sorry before we accept the apology and forgive. 

I am so glad that our Heavenly Father doesn't forgive as we forgive. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were still sinning and in no place to even desire repentance, Christ died for us. He did not wait for us to come to Him groveling and begging for forgiveness, He just gave it. He forgave before we even asked for it.

In Jesus' example prayer he prayed that God would forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. How much would we be forgiven if our forgiveness was based on how well we forgave? 

Imagine how different church would be if we started forgiving before we were even asked. Imagine if we lived like we were forgiven of more than everyone else, imagine how God’s grace would shine like a beacon of hope to those who are lost in sea of darkness. If the church has any hope of reaching the surrounding world with the Gospel, the Gospel must first shake us to the core and transform us to people who live like Christ lived. May we make much of Christ by forgiving as He forgave!

Next Post: Does Grace Mean I Can’t Judge?

Celebrating Guardrails- Part 2

Why is it that we have a love-hate relationship with rules? On one hand we love the ones we like, and on the other hand, we hate the ones that seem to restrict or inconvenience us.  We tend to promote the rules we don’t have any trouble following, and ignore the ones we daily struggle with.

When Jesus was interacting with the adulterous woman, he wasn't working on the rules; He was working on her heart. In a culture today (esp. in our present day churches) we are struggling with the balance toward heart and rules. Rules produce quantifiable results, and we like that, heart changes are much harder to see and count.

How do we balance enforcement of rules with a desire to see heart change? Regrettably much of church history is a story of imbalance. At points we can see the tendency towards loving rules, and then the pendulum will swing to the other side of we aren't about rules we are about hearts. Where is the middle ground of such a difficult topic?

It starts with understanding forgiveness. In verse 12 after Jesus tells the woman that He doesn't condemn her and that she should go and sin no more, He turns and says, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”  Salvation brings forgiveness and forgiveness brings light. The purpose of the light is so that we no longer walk in the darkness. This doesn't mean that we don’t have rules; it means that we don’t love the rules more than the Savior.

I have had the opportunity to be involved with many people getting married and I have yet to hear the future couples say, “I can’t wait to be married so I can have some more rules and obligations.” They are excited about marriage because of the relationship not the rules. That doesn't mean that there are no rules. Each marriage is unique and so will be how that relationship works, but it has rules. In our relationship with Christ, we are unique, and so are the rules.

I think the church today is hurting, mostly behind closed doors. We have forgotten what forgiveness looks like. We have forgotten why we have been given rules. We don’t forgive others as we have been forgiven. We judge people, without judging ourselves. We lack grace, not because we haven’t been given enough, but because we refuse to allow it to transform us. We love the rules more than the relationship and that means disaster will come (or in many cases, it already has).

Next Post: How do we get back to forgiveness and grace? 

Celebrating Guardrails- Part 1

I don’t want to pretend that I am some master of church history or have some special insight into culture that others do not have. Yet, it seems to me that over my lifetime I have watched some well-meaning people confuse some really important concepts. One of the concepts is the basis for the name of my blog.

Rules are essential to healthy relationships. They guide us, inform us, motivate us, even correct us, but it is also essential to remember that rules aren’t the purpose of the relationship. The relationship is the goal, the rules just help that relationship work better. Using the analogy of the guardrails, they are there to keep you on the road, to make the trip safer. Most of us don’t drive through a new area and say, “Wow, did you see that guardrail? That was the most spectacular guardrail I have ever seen.” We focus on many other things. But if we lose control of our vehicle the guardrail is there to stop us from going over the edge.

As I watch conservative Christianity (this is where I live and Pastor) struggle with cultural challenges I have noticed a couple of responses:

1. On one hand some will celebrate a certain guardrail. They pose for pictures next to the rail, they get others to commit to loving that rail, and anyone else who isn’t at the same rail is heading down the wide path to destruction. This position is extremely vigilant in one area, and the other areas are of little significance.
2. The second view thinks that we should remove all guardrails. Everything is good and fine and we won’t fail so we don’t need any rails to protect us.
3. A third view would be one of making as many rails as possible. If it is good to have one rail, it must be better to have 10,000 of them. The rails don’t even have to be found in the Bible, they can be extra, as long as we have a lot of rails we are going to be just fine.
4. A fourth view is rail smashing. The goal of this view is to find as many rails as possible that others have and run them over just to prove they didn’t need the rail anyway. It isn’t good enough, according to this view, to have freedom, I must make you know my freedom as well.

There are some many other views that I can list here, but that is the major ones. Although they are all vastly different than each other, they all have at least one thing in common: they all make the rail the goal.  

Let’s take a look at a biblical example of this in John 8:1-12 (click the reference to read the passage).

Here in the passage, we find a group of religious leaders celebrating a rule. It is a good rule, it is a healthy rule, but they have absolutely no concern for the woman, just the rule. They aren’t pleading with her to let God change her life, they just want the rule enforced.

In their attempt to enforce the rule, they also want to see how Christ will respond. After asking a few times, Jesus responds with, “the person without sin should cast the first stone.” Notice Jesus didn’t even mention the rule, He simply pointed out that everyone there was a rule-breaker. That phrase has been repeated much in the defense of the no guardrail position, but Jesus did not remove the requirement to obey God’s rules. He says to the woman, “go and sin no more.” Jesus puts the focus on her changing. There is much to be said on this topic, but I save it for the next post.

Part 2 will be coming soon!