An alarming number of professing evangelicals are living together and having children out of wedlock. The divorce rate among believers is now equal to non-churchgoers, and a disturbing number of Christians approve of same sex marriage. All of this would have been unthinkable 25 years ago.
Our “live and let live” society has conditioned even faithful Christians to ignore the sinful choices of their friends and family. But by ignoring sin are we complicit in it? How should a Christian respond when seeing someone he cares about in a sinful situation?
Pastor Adriel Sanchez, co-host of Core Christianity, recently discussed this topic in an article published at CoreChristianity.com. He wrote:
Your friends won’t sit by and watch you engage in sinful behavior. Much less will they share in your indulgences. The person who does that isn’t your friend, but an enemy of your soul. God calls you as his child to care more about the soul of your brother than you do his comfort. Jesus was a friend of sinners, but you never get the sense in the Gospels the Son of Man was overlooking their sin. People were drawn to Jesus not because he turned a blind eye to their iniquities, but because he brought grace and forgiveness to them. What a picture of the kind of friends you should seek out for yourself. Surround yourself with friends who aren’t afraid to wound you with God’s holy law, but (and this is equally important) who know how to bandage you with the gospel of God’s love. Pray that God will not only give you these kinds of friends, but that He will turn you into one of them as well.
Do you have a Christian friend who needs to be reminded that Christ not only bore our sins but gave us His righteousness and for that reason, we need to turn from sinful behavior? On Core Christianity, Mike Horton and Adriel Sanchez daily share the reassuring message of the “great exchange,” which is truly the Good News that we need to share with an increasingly sinful world. To learn more about Core Christianity, feel free to drop me a note at charley@ambaa.com
