“Don’t judge, lest you be judge with the same measure.”  Jesus said it and we believe it.  But when we see our beloved believer live a life that is contrary God and what He says, as along with evidence that their lives are hurting them and others; it breaks our hearts and we cannot ignore it. There is a fine line between judging each other and caring enough to confront each other. 

The love of God in us has everything to do with knowing how to confront prayerfully and carefully.  We must pray for God’s wisdom in all of life but especially for His words to say to a brother or sister who are doing things that are hurtful.  It is not the goal to hinder another person’s faith but to help by come alongside beside them so they may thrive. God does the growing, but as Paul said earlier in his letter to the church in Corinth, we are His fieldhands who till the soil and waters the seedlings.

I am grateful for the loving people in my life who confronted me at pivotal times in my growing faith with God. Without them, I would have taken different paths and struggled longer and harder on my journey.  God put people in my life at just the right time to help me because I knew they loved me with the love of God.  They spoke God’s Truth in love.

So, The difference between judging and confronting has everything to do with our inner motives.

Judging is evaluating someone simply by how they appear to your first impression of them.  Thinking you have the right to judge because of position and rank is dangerous.  Coming to a conclusion about someone without reasonable evidence is judging.  Arrogantly setting people up to fail by your measuring stick of behavior, expecting others to be like you in all their ways, is judging.

Confronting is watching one you love walk to the edge of a dangerous cliff.  Your heart skips a beat in fear for them.  Your first thought and goal are to reach out to grab their hand before they slip and fall because you love them!  Confronting is loving and caring enough to help them see how much God loves them and wants His best for them.  Careful and prayerful confrontation, with God helping us, could save a brother or sister’s life!

1 Corinthians 5, The Message

The Mystery of Sex

^1-2 I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn’t be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you’re so above it all that it doesn’t even faze you! Shouldn’t this break your hearts? Shouldn’t it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn’t this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?

^3-5 I’ll tell you what I would do. Even though I’m not there in person, consider me right there with you, because I can fully see what’s going on. I’m telling you that this is wrong. You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own. Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community—I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny. Let him defend it if he can! But if he can’t, then out with him! It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you. But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation. You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.

^6-8 Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that. Yeast, too, is a “small thing,” but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this “yeast.” Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient. The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread—simple, genuine, unpretentious.

^9-13 I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with criminals, whether blue- or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I’m not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don’t we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

When God leads us to confront a brother or sister in Christ, we can be sure His Holy Spirit will give us the tender words of compassionate correction delivered in His love in the Name of Jesus.  But prayer comes first.  Pray for wisdom. Pray for opportunity. Pray diligently for the person you are about to confront to be receptive to the love you have for them. Pray for our motivations to be “simple, genuine, unpretentious” wanting only what God wants in this person’s life—His best!

Judge less—love more.  Confront more with love and care, ignore less. 

I am reminded of my teaching days. I cared greatly for each child in my classroom and prayed for them daily.  My desire was for each child to succeed at their rate of learning in the best way possible.  My work as their teacher was to provide a safe, loving, accepting, and caring environment for learning and maturing to happen.  But what if I never confronted or corrected them when that environment was threatened by their behaviors?  What if I never helped them with what I was taught through some of the tests of life they would endure?

TESTS—we all have them.  Caring people will help us learn from them.  And God cares the most!

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4

EXAMPLE: Consider the spelling lesson.  As students we all had the weekly list of words to learn to spell with the phonics and grammar lessons that accompanied each word, right?  What if the teacher put the list on the screen and said, “Well, here’s some more words that will help you learn about life.  Study them however you want in whatever way you want.  Do that this week, but not to worry, I have decided that there will be no test on Friday.

Question:  How many of us as students would be disciplined enough to bother to study what we needed to know—knowing there would never be anyone who cared enough to evaluate, confront, and correct our learning? Mm…not many.

Be simple, genuine, unpretentious.  Trials and tests grow our faith.  Evaluation of our behaviors through confrontation by others who have already been tested and have learned well and love greatly are a must!

Paul is one who cares enough to confront because of His love for God and His church.  Paul never permitted sexually immoral behavior in the church. The environment for learning and growing in Christ as His Body was threatened and no longer safe. Yet he remained compassionate when dealing with people.  Our bodies are God’s instruments, intended for his work and for his glory.  The Corinthian Christians had serious trouble with this. When it came to the body, they insisted, “I have the right to do anything.” Their philosophy conveniently separated flesh from spirit. Have fun with the flesh. Honor God with the spirit. Wild Saturdays. Worshipful Sundays. You can have it all.

Paul disagreed because this was not of God. He cared enough to confront and reminded his brothers and sisters that God interwove body with soul, elevating them to equal status. Your body is no toy. Quite the contrary. Your body is a tool. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?”

Greater still, Jesus lives in you and me. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you” (1Corinthinas 6:19). Paul wrote these words to counter the Corinthian sex obsession. “Flee from sexual immorality,” reads the prior sentence. “All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”  What a salmon Scripture! No message swims more upstream than this one. You know the sexual anthem of our day: “I’ll do what I want. It’s my body.”

God’s firm response? “No, it’s not. It’s mine.”

Lord,

You are my God and I am your beloved.  What a pure, holy relationship that you have provided by paying the price to redeem us from the world and give us Life forever.  You gave us a life attached to you.  You are the One to cling to on this journey of tests and trials along with the gifts of joy and peace!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

In Jesus Name, Amen