Rebuke And Reflect

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!

WE LIVE IN a day when it’s easy, popular, and even preferred for people to sit back and say, “Well, what other people do is between them and God. Their sin is their life, their decision, and their responsibility.”

But aren’t you glad this isn’t how God responds to us? Aren’t you glad he pursues us despite our sin and pulls us away from that which would destroy us? And don’t we want people in our lives who will love us enough to look out for us when we begin to walk down a road of sinful destruction?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin.”^a

God is a gracious Father who seeks after his wandering children, and we reflect his grace when we care for brothers and sisters who are caught in sin. Obviously, God alone has ultimate authority to judge. Yet, in Matthew 7:5, Jesus tells his disciples to remove sin in their own lives and then help others remove sin from their lives. The last thing we need to do when a brother or sister is continually walking into sin is to say, “Well, it’s not my place to judge.”

Being a member of a church means so much more than standing next to someone and singing songs together once a week. Being a member of a church means realizing that we are responsible for helping our brothers and sisters in Christ to grow as disciples of Jesus. In the same way, they are responsible for helping us.

We desperately need each other in the daily fight to follow Jesus in a world that’s full of sin. For as Christians lock their arms and lives together with one another in local churches, nothing has the power to stop the global spread of God’s gospel to the ends of the earth.

Thank God for the gift of brothers and sisters in Christ in the church. Ask him to give you a willingness to receive rebukes when necessary.