Transcript

Grab your Bibles and let’s go to the book of James, James 4 as we continue through this exceedingly practical book. Now these exhortations tonight from the Scripture are gonna be very very applicable to your personal life, your relationship with your spouse, your friends, your children, your parents, relationships at work, ah, wherever you may have relationships. Now of course, the, the context is God’s family but nevertheless these will carry over to anywhere, but obviously God’s truth doesn’t work with the unregenerate but we can carry the Spirit of Christ with us in all of these ways.

Now we’ve already seen in chapter 4, verses 1 through 5 the, ah, truth of humility and how we need to walk with a Gospel humility and he talks about the fact that they have wars and quarrels and, ah, lots of problems and strife one among another because they’re not walking in that humility. Now he continues on in that flow as we come to verses 11 and 12 and he says there, this is James 4:11-12,

11 Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?

So I want to talk about “Humility in Judging.” Humility in judging. Now first of all, the first main point will be perverse judging. There is a judging that’s wrong. There’s a judging that is a perversion of the biblical understanding of judging and let’s talk about that. Two main thoughts here under perverse judging. Number one would be it exalts self. Perverse judging is that judging of another when behind the judging our motive is to make ourselves look elitist or to make ourselves look superior to the one we are judging, and that’s exactly what he’s talking about in verse 11 when he says, “Do not speak against one another.” Now again, the flow of the context makes it very clear that these were people he’s correcting because they’re consumed with their selves, their own joys, their own pleasures, getting their own way. So when he comes over into judging, obviously that’s what he’s addressing here, “Do not speak against one another.”

Now again, this was what was the hallmark, um, characteristic of the Pharisees that Jesus confronted in the New Testament. It would be hard to come up with more scathing, cutting, public rebuke than our Lord did when he rebuked the Pharisees and he did it publicly. Ah, he called them a brood of vipers. He called them white-washed tombs. Now to a Jew to be called a white-washed tomb was about the deepest slam you could get because to them a dead body was the depth of spiritual defilement. So he’s saying, “You are the depth of ungodliness. You’re a white-washed tomb.” And he goes on and on rebuking them, but what was the purpose? Here’s the purpose, he says, “Because you have a perverse judging. When you bring the law to bear and you judge one another,” actually the Pharisees didn’t judge one another, they judged others, they actually came up with over 300 extra-biblical laws that they would put these heavy weights of all these laws on the people and they did it so they could strut around with their chest swelled up and their head held high as if they were superior and they were judging the others. Now that’s what’s being rebuked here, that kind of self-exaltation.

So when we’re running another brother down or sister down and we’re doing it out of fleshliness, out of jealousy, perhaps out of envy, whatever we’re doing, we’re doing it, if we’re doing it, that is, if the motive of exalting ourselves, then it is a perverse judging. Christianity knows nothing of that. Now just like we said at the end of the message this morning, brothers and sisters, in Christianity the heart condition is everything. The heart condition is everything. Ah, you gonna have to grow as a Christian as I have had to, and we’re all hopefully still on this growth track, this sanctification progress, where we get away from the cold, sterile letter of the law and we walk in love and in the spirit of the law, and I think that’s where James is getting to. Get out of this cold, harsh judging. Now again, James is writing to Jewish converts and like the rest of us, they had brought over into their Christianity a lot of this cold, harsh legalism and judgment one or to another and he uses the phrase, if you’re doing this, you’re judging your brother.

Now here’s what they’re doing. They’re actually setting themselves up as the standard of truth and so they set themselves up instead of God as the standard of truth and then they pronounce the verdict on the behavior of others, and that’s why he says in verse 11, “When you do that, you speak against the law and you judge the law.” In other words, you’re basically saying God’s law’s not sufficient, I’m the sufficient one. God’s law’s not absolute, I’m the absolute one and I will denounce and condemn and correct instead of letting God be the one who actually does that. So here’s the point: if you assume that above position, that you yourself are the standard, then you’re putting yourself above God’s law and you judge that you, not God’s law, is the final standard of truth. And by the way as a side note, that’s exactly what the liberal theologian and the liberal pastor does when he comes to the Bible and instead of submitting to the Bible and interpreting it in the flow of the context and its grammatical, historical, exegetical context, then he brings into the text all of these, ah, ah, clever ideas from psychology and psychiatry and sociology and all this new social justice movement. What he’s actually saying is, is I set myself up as authority and the Bible will serve me, and that’s the same notion that James is speaking against here.

So he says in verse 11, “You’re, you’re not actually a doer of the law, you’ve become a judge of it. You’ve set yourself up as the final authority even over God’s truth, God’s law. You yourself by judging another are in that act judged by the law and stand guilty.” So in other words he said when you set yourself up and you feel like you’re the final authority and you’re condemning others, actually the law stands up against you and says, “Aha, by that very notion you’re condemned by the law!” Here, here’s one thing you need to understand: when we judge a brother or sister with that kind of self-exaltation, that purpose of putting them down that we might feel lifted up, then we are acting as if we don’t even know Christ. We’re acting as really in an antichrist spirit. We’ve left the warm brotherhood of the Christian church for the cold, arrogant legalism of the Pharisee and that makes us a chief law-breaker. The person that you’re talking about may literally be in sin and need correcting but if you judge them exalting yourself, you may be the very biggest sinner in the, the, the relationship at that point and that’s where James is coming from.

Ah, James 1:25 is, is a verse that we can look at and get some, ah, cross reference here that helps us, ” But one who looks intently at the perfect law,” now what’s the perfect law? It’s not the moral law of God, it’s “the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man is blessed in what he does.” The law of liberty. In other words, as Christians we’re not under the strict, cold letter of the law. That’s not what condemns us. That’s not what saves us. It is Christ that cleanses us. It is Christ that makes us righteous. In Christ we become law-keepers. So we’re not about laws in Christianity though they are helpful in our Christian conduct. We’ve got to keep that balance there.

Now look at verse 12 in the text here. He said, “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy; but who are you who judge your neighbor?” Now he’s saying that, um, since the law is from God, the law emanates from God’s very being and he’s the only one who can rightfully judge and he’s the only one that has the power and the authority to judge, and so therefore you are nothing in comparison. So he’s saying who are you to come up with something to condemn another? And so evidently, again, this was a common thing that bled over from their old Pharisaic teaching from their life in Judaism and that as all these extra-biblical rules and laws and convictions that they would dump on one another.

Now we don’t have to think very far, or very long rather or maybe go very far to think about groups that have made something of a structured religion or art form of going outside of the Scripture and coming up with a list of rules or laws and you have to do these certain things to be pleasing to God. We have whole supposed Christian denominations built on a list of laws. They just took the Old Testament law, set it aside and came up with a New Testament set of laws, but it’s still laws. But the point behind what James is saying so far is, we’re not to set ourselves up as an absolute authority. We are not the divine standard for conduct whereby we can pronounce others either saved or unsaved or righteous or unrighteous based on our subjective understanding. Are you judging with a thought to making yourself look superior?

So exalting self is a perverse approach or exercise of judging another. Secondly, to excuse sin. That’s something else that, ah, comes up in this whole concept and that is people use this section of James as an excuse to sin. It says, “Hey, ah, ah, who are you,” last part of verse 12, “who are you who judges your neighbor?” And then often we hear Luke 6:37, “Do not judge and you will not be judged, and do not condemn and you will not be condemned, pardon and you’ll be pardoned.”

I haven’t heard this in quite a while but, man, in the first few years after I was converted, I bet you I heard, ah, once or twice a week somebody say, “Well, you know the Bible says do not judge lest you be judged,” and basically what that was is their attempt to say, “Leave me alone in my sin. Don’t point it out to me. Don’t bring it up.” It’s just sort of, ah, it’s like having the Rook card in the game of Rook. Any of y’all play Rook? You throw the bird out there, you win, and that’s the way this was used. I mean no matter what they, “I just murdered three people and, and, and did all, but don’t judge lest you be judged.” I mean, that’s an absurd illustration but that’s the kind of thing that you run into in very shallow and carnal settings and so that, that’s a very perverse view of judging when you use the refusal of all judging to be an excuse for sin. You’ve just gotta be honest before God. Are you prone to that approach? Are you prone to exalting yourself? Are you prone to excusing your sin?

So what we find is that the word “judge” or “judging” is a word that’s used in two very different ways in the Bible, and one way it is sin, it is wrong, it is rejected, it is not part of the Christian community at all, when you judge with those motives of self-exaltation or to excuse sin, but then there is a proper judging and what we have to do, we have to balance the truths we’re looking at in James and the verse we looked at in Luke, “Do not judge lest you be judged,” with the truth in 1 Corinthians 5:12-13. Now it may be on your screen but turn there, if you would. 1 Corinthians 5:12-13. Now Paul writing to the church at Corinth says, and this was an immature church that would certainly be one to get, ah, ah, the biblical concept of judging and reproving one another out of balance, to say the least. He says, “what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?” He said, “Christian, by the way, all of those who don’t know Christ are already under the judgment of God. What, what are you gonna pronounce a judgment on them for they’re already under wrath. They’re condemned already,” the Scripture says. But once we’re converted and we’ve joined the covenant community of a local church, then there is a proper judgment of one another. He says, verse 13, “But those outside the church, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.” So there’s a professing Christian in the Corinthian church who was living in gross, open, scandalous sin and he says, “You have a responsibility to judge that.” But now what does he mean by that? Well, that’s what I’m gonna try to explain under the second Roman numeral and that would be proper judging. We’ve talked some about a perverse understanding of judging, let’s talk now about proper judging and we’ll pull this out of 1 Corinthians 5:12-13.

Now two main thoughts and several subpoints under the second one. Number one under proper judging is you must humble yourself to the word of God. In other words, when I come to judge and sometimes I like to use the word “evaluate,” if you’re evaluating another brother or sister’s behavior, are you lashing yourself to what the Bible says, not to what you feel like? Not to what you think? What does the Bible say? And you use the Bible to identify sin and you use the Bible to correct sin. For example, the Bible talks a lot about we bring reproof to a person and reproof means to bring to light. That’s a proper thing to do from time to time, bring to light when somebody, maybe it’s a word they said, maybe it’s a, a, a, a discussion they had with someone that wasn’t kind or wasn’t proper. Whatever it is. And can I say this? It’s not in my outline but I would say the great great majority of times when you find a sin in a brother or sister’s life, what you need to do is put it on a shelf and say, “God, if this is a pattern that’s really grievous to Your honor and hurtful both to this person and to others around them, then, then bring it up to me several times because I’m just gonna forgive it and forget it to right now.” But I exhort you to make that your common approach, I’m just gonna put it up and trust that they know God, they’re under the word, they read their Bibles, they have the conviction, convicting power of the Holy Spirit and 97.3 times out of 100 God will take care of it. But there are times when we’re to deal with things and that’s why the word “reproof” is in the Bible. We’re to reprove. Of course, this is a heavy responsibility of the preacher of the church but it’s all of our responsibility also.

The Bible uses the word “rebuke one another.” Rebuke is a lot stronger than reproof. Reproof is just shine the light on it. Rebuke is a, is to charge on the pain of penalty. Ah, rebuke would come about when you’ve tried reproof and you’ve tried gentleness and now you come to the point where you have to get firm. It’s, it’s a lot like a parent to a very disobedient child. You have the threat of penalty. Then we have the word “exhort” that we’re to do for one another. Exhort has literally the idea of calling one alongside to encourage them and to urge them on in the proper behavior.

So in other words, we go to the word of God to understand what is wrong and to understand how to judge or correct the person who is wrong. Now the Bible’s our only authority. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.” Someone needs reproving when the Bible says they need reproving. Someone needs rebuking when the Bible says they need rebuking. Someone needs exhorting when the Bible says they need exhorting. And someone needs correcting when the Bible says they need correcting. So we humble ourselves to the word of God.

Now listen, things that are not clear in the Bible we always have grace on those things. You may not go to a certain movie, another brother or sister may feel like they can go to that movie. You may not can do a certain thing or certain recreation, another brother or sister may feel like they can’t. If the Scriptures are not clear, we have grace on one another. Now if you know somebody well enough, you might challenge them in love to, “Hey, brother, you might want to pray about that.” But let’s never become a legalistic people about things the Scriptures are not clear on.

So A under proper judging is we always humble ourselves to the word of God in both identifying the sin and in the way we correct the sin. Secondly, and this is the big issue, proper heart motive. You can do everything biblically, you can dot every I biblically and cross every T biblically but your heart motive be wrong in everything you do and your correction or judging is wrong.

Now first of all, your motive must be the glory of God. Number 1, the glory of God. You must say to yourself and it must abide in your heart, “This is dishonoring Jesus Christ. This is hurting the reputation of Christ and so I want to see this corrected. Not to exalt myself, not to say I’m holier and spiritual and I can correct you. I want this done because I don’t want our Lord dishonored.” The glory of God, because the reputation of Christ is always at stake when a Christian is living in sin.

Remember, um, Nathan confronting King David? The notorious, scandalous sin of David taking another man’s wife, Bathsheba? Taking her to his bed? Having her husband, Uriah, murdered, killed? Nathan the prophet comes to see David, knocks on the door. David, though very sinful, respected the man of God. Nathan begins to tell David a story about a man who had a little pet lamb and it was precious and just, just precious to the whole family, and a more wealthy man beside him went and took that man’s lamb and slaughtered it and fed it to guests that he had coming over, and David said, “Well, that man outta be punished severely.” And I forgot what the text says exactly. “He ought to be, he ought to be just killed,” or whatever David said. And then when David said that, Nathan looked at David and said, “Thou art the man.” And then the prophet said something very interesting, he said, “Because of this, David, you’ve given an occasion for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. You’ve given a reason for those who hate our God to talk ill against the character of our God because you’re supposed to be the great king under Jehovah God.” And David was broken and David was repentant. But what’s the point? Nathan came in there because the reputation of God was damaged. Nathan’s motive was the glory of God.

Over in our chapter that we’re looking at in 1 Corinthians 5 beginning in verse 1, he says, ” It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.” Paul is writing to the Corinthian church and says, “Don’t you understand that even the pagans are saying that’s not right? You can’t let that go on in your church, the reputation of God is at stake, the glory of God is being harmed by this open sin.”

1 Timothy 3:7 reminds us, “And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” Of course that’s talking about the qualifications of an elder, but that’s a principle that all of us should hold dear, and that is that we don’t have any reproach brought to the name of Christ by our conduct outside the church.

But let me challenge you as I challenge myself, if you’re going to correct someone, and moms and dads, absolutely for your children, you don’t correct your children for you, you don’t correct your children that you might have a more civilized and sane household, that’s a nice byproduct, you correct your children for the glory of God. You want to train your children so that they might be brought to the Christ and, and repent and, and welcome the Gospel and be converted and be young men and women who would honor God in this world and bring him glory. You want God to back up your parenting? Let God know your motive is his glory. I’m gonna tell you, you make a lot of mistakes as a parent if your motive is the glory of God and God will help you and he’ll bless your efforts.

Well, secondly under proper heart motive, not only the glory of God must be our motive, the good of the church must be our motive. Our desire can be no less than the desire of the heart of God. Do you know what God cares deeply about? He cares deeply about his church. You know who Jesus died for? He died for his church. You know who Jesus is in heaven interceding for tonight? He’s in heaven interceding for his church. And the Bible tells us in many ways that we’re to care for our brothers and sisters in our church, even to any extreme measure. 1 John 3:16, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us,” now he’s talking about a local congregation here, “and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Now certainly for Christians in general but more specifically for those that we congregate with in local churches. The church and the good of the church is very important.

Ah, 1 Corinthians 5:6-7, he says, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may become a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” He’s talking about dealing with known scandalous sin in the church and he’s saying clean that up. A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough. Don’t you know that this gonna damage God’s church. You’ve got to deal with things you know to be open, brazen, unrepented of sin. So look, folks, we’re all sinners and we’re all repenters but if someone walks in open callous sin without repentance, it must be dealt with because the good of the church is at stake. It’s a, and I’m telling you this is so rampant in our churches today. There are people all over membership rolls in our churches today who are living in all kinds of scandalous known sin, and we ought to care. If you don’t get the importance of the local church, would you ask God to help you? I’m telling you, that’s why I live is the importance of the local church for the glory of God, that I want to see God’s church represent him the way he ought to be represented.

So when you think about correcting a brother or sister, ask yourself, “Is my motive the good of the church or am I just about me putting him down, or me putting her? I’ll put her in her place.” That’s not what you’re to do as a child of God. Your motive’s the glory of God and your motive is the good of the church. I won’t even read Hebrews 10:20-31 that lays out for us what a much greater and awesome, ah, ah, entity, you would say, is God’s local church over the old dispensational through Moses and, ah, the rules and the laws of Judaism. So my point is how much more careful should we be about the health of God’s church.

Well, the glory of God, the good of the church and, thirdly, our motive must be the good of the brother or sister in sin. Are you really concerned about what the sin’s doing to them? Are you really concerned about their… Notice in all of this you’re not thinking about yourself. I think some of us, it might be the way we were raised but some of us walk so much in self-consumed thinking it’s hard to think this way but if you’re a child of God you can think this way. If the Spirit’s changed your heart, you can think this way.

Do you really, are you really doing it for their good? Romans 6:23 tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” Now if you believe that, you care deeply and that’s something that, um, I think maybe just being a pastor, it, it, it is so weighty in my heart when I see somebody beginning to walk in a pattern of compromise. And on the one hand, most people would look at that and say, “Well, that’s not that big a deal.” Except when you understand the truth of God and that is that little compromise will lead to another, will lead to another, will lead to another, and the dominoes fall and great tragedy is gonna come into that person’s life.

So we should be motivated as, as, with a deep concern because the wages of sin is death. There’s gonna be pain and deaths, not necessarily physical death, at least not immediately, but it may kill a relationship. They may die emotionally. They may die to a family. Their family may break up because of it. Who knows what all the dominoes that may fall. So we have to be motivated that we care for them and want them not to face that kind of outcome.

Now in James 5:20. What a powerful verse this is and we’ve probably seen this in a lot of ways. It says, “let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” Here’s the point: if you help a brother or sister overcome a sin in their life, you’ve stopped that multiplication effect of sin in their life. You cover a multitude of sins. You’ve done a great good for them.

Now again let me, let me repeat what I said early on. Most things don’t need to be spoken about. Most things don’t need to be corrected. Need to put them on a shelf and say, “Now God, if it’s a real pattern and a real hindrance to Your honor and Your glory and a real hurt to their life, then bring it up to me later.” We don’t need to commission a whole bunch of Marine rebukers tonight, okay? But we need to check our heart and our motives about how we do these things, again in our homes, in our marriages, at work, but especially in the household of God.

Now I won’t spend long here but III. We’ve talked about perverse judging, exalting self or just excusing sin, using those texts, that’s perverse, that’s taking, that’s perverting the doctrines of the Scripture concerning judging. There is a proper judging whereby we evaluate and things need to be addressed but we’ve got to be very careful that we’re thoroughly biblical and our motives, the glory of God, the good of the church and the good of the individual. Now thirdly, the product of proper judging. I’ve already alluded to this and that is restoration and blessing. When a brother or sister is properly corrected, it brings sweet and wonderful restoration and blessing. Listen to me, when a brother or sister is in unrepented of sin, they’re already causing disunity in the church because the church is built on a spiritual unity and sin quenches the Spirit. So there’s already and people say, “Oh, oh, Brother Jeff, I’ve heard this church discipline stuff! Don’t do that, it, it’ll divide the church and split the church!” The church is already divided in God’s eyes. The church is already split when there’s unrepented of sin in the camp. We’re dealing with it to bring the kind of restoration God wants to bring.

2 Corinthians 2:6-9 as this boy or this young man in the church at Corinth has repented. Now notice the restoration here. Notice the blessing. Paul says 2 Corinthians, ah, ah, 2:6, “Sufficient for such a one is this punishment that was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.” So now that this brother in the church, now this was a man in an immoral relationship with probably his step-mother, a gross and grievous public scandal, but he was broken and he repented and he said, “Forgive him. Comfort him. Welcome him back home.” That’s got to be our motive.

Now of course, in a case like this you can’t keep things confidential but remember the biblical admonition of Matthew 18, you go to a person privately, always. You go to the furtherest lengths possible to never expose the issue unless they are just refusing to, to even try to repent because, by the way, that’s the way you want folks to come to you because this isn’t about you or me, it’s about us.

We’ve got to remind ourselves in Christianity that it’s a blessing to be corrected. Years ago we had a, a, a retired pastor join our church and of all things, he was Methodist in background but he loved our church and loved our doctrine. I don’t know how all that worked but he did. And, um, he actually joined our church, he visited on one of the nights of our, um, True Church Conference, and almost every Sunday at the end of the sermon he came up and corrected something in my sermon. Usually only my family does that and I want to say, “Did y’all get anything other than that goofy word I said that’s not a word?” But they help me. They, they, they’re loving me. They’re doing it for the glory of God and I think they really are because they do love me. But this brother would come up and he would correct me. You know what I’d say? “Thank you, sir. Thank you for that.” Sometimes it was the tiniest thing. I sometimes wondered if it didn’t make him feel important but that didn’t matter, he was helping me. He was helping me.

And so it’s good, here’s what happens. Somebody corrects you and the first thing is your pride rises up and says, “I know what you are. I’ve seen how you talk. I’ve seen how you acted. I’ve seen how you reacted.” And you miss the blessing of being corrected. If God can use Balaam’s donkey, he can use some of these donkeys to help you. That didn’t come out just right but… Can I, are you listening to me? God joys in using vessels you don’t deem qualified. He told Timothy as Timothy’s pastoring the church at Ephesus, “Don’t let them look down on your youthfulness. They think you’re not qualified because you’re young, but if you tell them the truth, it don’t matter if you’re young or not, the truth matters.” So don’t worry about the vessel, be thankful for the correction.

Proverbs 10:17, ” He is on the path of life who heeds instruction, But he who forsakes reproof goes astray.” If you forsake reproof, if somebody says, “Let me show you what might be better here.” And you know, sometimes somebody will correct you and honestly they don’t know what they’re talking about. It may shock you, but I get, I get emails from people and lately literally all over the world, and they have been overwhelmingly and powerfully encouraging lately. But I did get an email from a brother and he’s a good brother and I love him, and he was correcting me on something but the unfortunate thing is he knows nothing about what he’s talking about because he wasn’t there, and you can’t know if you’re not there. But yet I thought I need to respond and say, “Brother, thank you for trying to help me on this.” Because it, you know, what does it hurt? I mean, other than your ego getting bruised and by the way, we’re supposed to be crucified with Christ. Crucified men don’t have egos. My point is God often uses a vessel that from all objective observation do not seem qualified to correct but God can still use them, and if we love reproof, it keeps us from going astray, Proverbs 10:17.

And Proverbs 13:18, “Poverty and shame will come to him who neglects discipline, But he who regards reproof will be honored.” He who regards reproof will be honored. So there is a blessing in this.

Well, restoration and blessing is the product of proper judging and correcting. Romans 15:14 says, “And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and able also,” listen to this, “and able also to admonish one another.” You know, I have been in a lot of churches over these few decades of ministry and I have been in a lot of churches that typically the pastors want to ask my advice and my guidance and my counsel on things, and they’ll tell me what’s going on in the church, and it’s very very common that when they describe what’s going on, I realize there’s not enough maturity in this church to be able to admonish one another. It’s just not there. But Paul writes and says, “I think you are able to admonish one another. You’re able to go to a brother or sister humble, thoroughly biblical with pure and right heart motives, and you’re also able to receive it from a brother or sister knowing that this is a blessing and this is helpful even if the vessel being used may not be the best.”

Now one word of caution from your pastor. I’m not asking you to let’s have a whole new crusade of correcting each other, I’m just saying as we do this, let’s do it properly, let’s judge properly for the glory of God, the good of the church, and the good of the individual.