Restoring The Fallen Brother

It has been said that the church is so unlike the armies of the wolrd in that we kill or ignore the wounded. We often get puffed up when someone falls into a sin. We so often kill the fallen brother, especially with sins of a sexual nature, as if they have gone beyond the grip of grace. How easy it is for us to sit in judgment against the fallen brother forgetting that we are just as fallible. Just a prone to wander and leave the God we love...

The fallen brother needs the community at that time more than any other. Rather than finding love and acceptance, he finds rejection and scorn as if he has become a leper. I find that we are so eager to have grace meted out to us yet so stingy with grace. It betrays a false understanidng or no understanding of grace itself to withhold it from one who needs it... One of the modern classics for me has to be Phillip Yancey's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" I highly recommed it. There we are taken into the belly of Grace, be prepared to be disabused of many of the false notions that you have as to what grace is all about.

Galatians 6: 1 - 2 holds the proper treatment of the fallen brother. Restore in the spirit of gentleness being veryy very mindful of one's own fallibility. This is the law of Christ that we should strive to fulfill. This is a supremem demonstration of love.

Comments

Timothy G. Smith said…
I could imagine this being the problem, but my experience in 4 different congregations has been nearly the opposite. In our time there is considerable sympathy given to "the sinner" and considerable condemnation of those who take steps to retore and help a sinning brother forsake his sin. There is tremendous moral outrage at those who might take a stand for purity of life in our time.

We recently had people leave our church in outrage against leadership because they sought to call a young person out of sexual immortality for nearly 6 months, but he had no interest in changing. In calling the church to act Biblically there were considerable numbers outraged at the church for taking such a stance. I believe they were judging the law of God and judging those who were seeking righteousness. This is the common story in our time.
The church may at one time have killed its wounded... now it puts them in charge of the advance and it shoots its doctors.
February 7, 2009 at 2:04 PM
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