Yesterday at Living Hope a dear brother and fellow servant in Christ stood before our community of faith and confessed that he’d been intimately involved with a woman that was not his wife. He shared that his behavior had disqualified him from ministry and asked the church to pray for him, his marriage, and his family. He is now seeking restoration under the direction of the church elders, seeking a new job, and seeking to find his place in the new reality he lives in.
The church responded as I hoped she would. People wept with and for him and his family. They prayed for him and the church is committed to supporting him spiritually, emotionally, and financially to get him through this painful season.
At the end of one service a dear brother hugged my neck and thanked me for handling the situation according to Scripture and with the grace of Christ. He shared how he’d seen a church kick a minister to the curb and turned their backs on him, when he shared a similar sin. That makes no sense to me. It just doesn’t register on my grid of grace.
Jesus said in Luke 17:1-4 “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. 2It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. 3So watch yourselves. “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. 4If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
This tells us everything we need to know about how to deal with those who sin. We should do three things.
One, “watch yourselves.” The first thing any of us should do is realize that “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come.” People are going to sin. Hopefully, as believers grow in their knowledge of the grace of God their personal holiness becomes such that they can serve as examples of how to live. But even those that are to be examples fall and the right response from those of us who believe is to first examine our own lives and make sure that we are living “a life worthy of the calling (we) have received” (Eph 4.1).
Two, “rebuke him.” Call sin what it is. It is an affront to God. It is treason against the King. It is telling God that He is in error and that an action that He has deemed to be detrimental to a person’s life is not wrong, but right. This statement of fact must be based upon the Word of God and clearly defined as sin.
Three, “forgive him.” Give what God has given to us. There may be a cost to it. It may be painful to forgive. God’s forgiveness for us was expensive. It cost God His Son’s death on the cross. Because God has forgiven us, we can forgive others. We can give what we’ve been given.
This week I hope to share more about this to help us understand the power of the Gospel and give glory to our God. We serve a merciful King who loves us and His redemption gives us a unique way of life. My hope and prayer is that we can experience renewal in the grace of God as we see how it works in the real world.
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