Confrontation. Good or Evil?

Christian Brothers/Sisters don’t let other Christian Brothers/Sisters continue in sin.

Confrontation.

A word which most people hate and even think it to be sinfully wicked. But I have been persuaded otherwise by God’s words in scripture.

Our culture says that to truly love someone is to let them live their life and you live your life. So the individual has say over his own life and no one can say anything against his decisions or force their opinions upon others.

I believe this attitude has crept into our churches and has been dealt with in two main ways:

1.) People come to church and act like everything is okay so that no one has to deal with each other’s baggage.

2.) People call each other out to show spiritual superiority or to shame the other person and to get them to step back in line and act perfect again.

By God’s standard both of these responses are wrong/wicked and even sinful.

The first response is one which totally contradicts Gods ways for his followers and just neglects His word totally. Here is one we can examine:

Mat 18:12-20 what do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them."

The reason I put verses 12-14 in as well was to give context and to show you that Jesus’ heart is for People, his desire is not for them to go astray into sin. Now when he starts talking about a brother, it is true that this passage specifically is talking about when a brother sins against you and not directly talking about confrontation in any other instance.

But one can see in the section that begins “truly”, that the power of people to overcome sin is stronger when more than one Christian is gathers to overcome it. If you look at the passage that way, to say that when you are confronting them you are desiring for that brother to be restored you can truly see how this passage shows that confrontation is really love and not hate and that love must be in Confrontation.

Another reason that I believe Confrontation is truly loving is shown in an example:

“Thoughts flooded the man’s mind as he walked down the musty road. Contemplating whether to just finish his life or not. His life had come crashing down the last couple of days and the weight had brought him to this point, where he thought he could never go again. See he had been through counseling and tried to help himself past this depression many times before. But now he was in this same familiar place again. He flashed back on his life and felt no worth in it. He saw no real reason to live. But yet his feet continued to walk down this back road. He was in a constant state of daze just walking with no real purpose and constantly fiddling with the knife in his pocket.

But suddenly, as he walked he snapped back into reality and realized he smelled smoke. He looked up and saw a trail in the sky and as he listened he heard people screaming for help. He wondered how a house could be out here in the middle of nowhere. But he couldn’t even help the screaming people if he wanted to. See he couldn’t even help himself how could he ever help those people?”

I believe most Christians are much like the suicidal man. They commit constant spiritual suicide and they have lost hope, they have tried to fix themselves to make themselves pleasing to God but all the time they have forgotten that Jesus is the only way and he paid it all and He is who they pursue. But they just wallow in self pity and guilt all the while Jesus is standing their waiting to take the chains off of them. Since a lot of Christians are like this they are also like the man in another way in that they see so much sin in their lives and see no hope so why should they call out anyone else? And I understand because there is a scripture that says:

Luke 6:39-42 He also told them a parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother's eye.

So you shouldn’t call out people’s sin if you aren’t dealing with your own. This is true. But why should we hesitate to deal with our own sin? Do we love our sin more than Jesus? Do we truly believe that Jesus dies to save us from them and he can give us victory over them? If we take sin seriously as Jesus did when he died on the Cross we will first take care of it in our own lives then we will lovingly take our brother aside and help him be restored to the freedom of the cross in a pursuit of the God.

So now that we have seen the reason why reaction 1 is wrong now we can examine reaction 2:

First let’s take a look at that verse in Luke above. In this verse we see that you shouldn’t arrogantly call someone out on anything. You should first look at the sin in your own life.

Second from the passage we also looked at before with the sheep and the shepherd, We see that we must confront in love and that isn’t shown in just confronting someone and leaving them their but leading the towards Christ and helping them!

I believe as we have looked at the word we see Jesus was serious about sin being taken care of first in our own lives and then lovingly in the lives of others. Jesus took sin so seriously to go on the cross for it and die to defeat it that we may live thru Him. Will you take sin seriously and live like Jesus? Or will you not truly love people and live an independent life away from God?

Here are some more verses for you to check out. 1 Cor. 5,

Heb 3:13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.