Bring Back the Sinner

U Turn sign

What is the most important thing you did this week? Did you get something fixed at the house that could have caused major damage down the line? Did you lay out some plans that will course correct your life? Did you have a hard conversation with someone about sin? If it was the third option, according to James, that was far and away the most important thing you did.

In a letter full of admonitions and commands, we might be left wondering what to do if we or someone else violates these commands. If we recognize that in ourselves, then we need to, in obedience to verse 16, confess our sins to those whom we sinned against. But if we see someone else going astray, what do we do? Simply put, we are to go talk with them and try to turn them back.

While I think James has in mind here serious sin or doctrinal error, it doesn't have to be a "blow up your life" kind of sin for you to need to be brought back. When approached correctly, guiding someone away from their sin and to Christ is the most loving and important thing we can do. Whether the person is in the church or outside the church, sin needs to be lovingly confronted.

I think these two verses can be split into equal parts warning and hope.

Warning: Sin is a danger to all

The warning here is that there is the reality of wandering. None of us is exempt from that warning. Sin is a very real danger. It is like radioactive material. There is no level of it that you want to be close to. I wouldn't want to carry even a small amount of uranium in my pocket. Even if it takes a long time to damage me, there is no reason to want to keep it close. And sin is no different to the soul. No amount of sin is good to keep around. It all does damage to the soul, yes, some more than others, but it is all bad. No one outgrows having to be careful.

But what does it mean to be careful?

Beyond the recognition that I personally need to be careful in my life to avoid sin, I also need to cling to Christ closely, and I think that goes beyond rote Bible reading, meditation, and prayer. It isn't less, but it is much more. Ask yourself, do you treasure Christ? Does he animate your life? I think that is the difference between "having children" and loving your child. We can speak abstractly about what it means to have children. It's good for the world, it sanctifies you, it'll prop up social security in the future, but you might notice something about how I'm phrasing that. What word am I using to describe "having children"? "It." Having children is a concept when phrased this way.

Now, let's shift the topic from "having children" to "having your child." Suddenly, using the word "it" to describe your child is offensive. That's because your child is not an "it," your child is a "he" or "she." There's a person there who cannot be abstracted.

Anyone who has ever wanted a child but couldn't have one, or lost one knows this difference the deepest. They can open up the headlines and be disappointed in falling birth rates, but there is only one that rips open a hole in their chest.

We know the difference between a concept and a person, and too often Jesus is seen the same way, a concept. (The time when I called Jesus "the faith.") It was a far more fundamental mistake than I thought. Words have meaning, and the way we talk about things vs people is clear.

What does all this have to do with our verse? Everything. When someone wanders away from the truth, they are wandering from Jesus. While it can start as an intellectual mistake, it can end in a life destroying sin.

That is why it is so important to bring people back. Now, I will be the first to tell you that this is never an easy thing to do, when it is done Biblically.

First, you need to actually know what is going on, which requires personal interaction leading with questions, not accusations. Make sure that he is actually wandering from the truth, not just had a bad day or spoke something without thinking too much about it. We assume the best, but when sin appears to be revealed, it requires making sure. I've been in ministry nearly ten years now, and I can tell you that things are almost never as they first appear. I've seen it happen in both directions. Even in those situations where people come straight up to you and confess what they did, sometimes even they won't see where the real issue started, and questions reveal that. So you have to actually start with questions assuming the best, but verifying. That isn't easy to do in a world that moves fast and breaks things.

Biblical confrontation isn't easy to do because, secondly, this needs to be done with the motive of love. One Puritan commentator put it this way, "convert him. He doth not say destroy him; the work of Christians is not presently to accuse and condemn, but to counsel and convert an erroneous person." (Thomas Manton, 476). This is especially hard when the correction is needed in spite of prior warnings or when the sin has been committed against you.

Biblical confrontation isn't easy to do because, third, it can't be done when you are deeper in the sin than the other person. Jesus' famous illustration of the speck vs log fits right here (Matt.7:1-5). You need to get yourself close to Jesus, get that sin out of your eye, and then help the other person. Confronting sin requires a personal experience of holiness. You want to be more than a warning sign of which way not to go. You want to be a sign telling people where they need to go. You get there by treasuring Christ.

Biblical confrontation isn't easy to do because, fourthly, it takes time. It takes extra effort. We all are so busy. Clearing the calendar to have a pleasant conversation with a friend takes ages, doesn't it? How much harder is it to find the time to have a hard conversation with a friend? And really the time it takes to have this conversation isn't even the conversation itself, but the relationship that is built in order to know people well enough to see their sin and have a voice in their life. Relationships take time. They take energy. That's why most of us would rather outsource that to the internet. But when we do, we disconnect each other from the insight we need.

Biblical confrontation isn't easy to do because, fifthly, it might not yield results immediately. It is a lot to overcome all of the previous points even for something that we know would work. How many of us relentlessly and anxiously avoid sending an email that we know will take two minutes and will help us stop feeling stressed? How much more so does it take to do an unpleasant task that we are not even sure will work. To quote from our Puritan friend again, we know that this is not a new problem or hesitation, "Though it be an unthankful office, yet it must not be declined; usually carnal respects sway us, and we are loath to do that which is displeasant." (Manton, 476).

Hope: Souls can be saved

So how do we find a way to overcome all of that inertia? What is the motivation for that? James 5:20 gives it to us by reminding us of the stakes. You can save a soul from death. How do you find the motivation to risk your life in a burning building? Knowing that there are people you love in there.

At midnight in the Indiana summer, 25 year old pizza delivery guy Nick Bostic was driving around after an argument with his girlfriend. As he was driving, he saw a house on fire. He didn't have his phone, so he ran into the house to discover four kids, 18, a 13 year old with her friend staying the night, and a 1 year old. The parents were gone on an over night date. He managed to lead them out of the house, when he asked if there was anyone else. There was. A six year old. Reentering the smoke engulfed house, he was terified the house would explode, when he heard the whimpering of six year old Kaylani. He said it gave him the courage to keep going, knowing that panic would only waste time. He made his way through the smoke, up the stairs listening for her when, unbelievably, he found her. But by this point, the stairs were on fire. The only way out was through the second story window which he punched through and jumped out of shielding the little girl with his body. Everyone got out alive, and Nick was left with smoke inhalation and an arm injury that landed him in the hospital for a couple days. When asked about it he replied, "It was all worth it. I kept reminding myself what a small sacrifice. This temporary pain...it's so worth it."

James tells us what the stakes are, saving souls from death. That isn't saying that true Christians can lose salvation. God has predestined all of that from the beginning. Nevertheless, it remains terrifyingly possible to be deceived that you are united with Christ when you are not. James has given us that in this letter, and the rest of Scripture has as well (James 1:22-24, 26; Prov 14:12. 1 John 1:8; Matthew 7 and 13). The thing about self-deception is that by its very nature it is unlikely for you to undeceive yourself. None of us can see the truth without the Holy Spirit, but what this verse teaches us is that the Holy Spirit uses you to bring that knowledge to them. And if you do, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you participated in the salvation of a soul from eternal death, and were involved in God forgiving a multitude of sin.

It is the ultimate eternal act. It is the thing that you can do that will make the greatest difference in all eternity. Talk about a legacy. We can end up putting far more energy into much longer odds where even if success happens it is fleeting.

So you may be thinking, ok, so how do I actually go up to someone to talk to them like that? It's not like you can just go talking about the weather to suddenly saying, "Hey, I've noticed you might be on your way to hell." Well, actually you can. You can just do things. Maybe not quite that bluntly, but I've been amazed at how you can just take a conversation where you want it to go if you are direct. I find it refreshing to just know what is being said to me. It can be "Hey, I've got something on my mind, I've noticed this going on, and I just want to make sure that everything is good with you."

But if you are the more "peal the layers of the onion" kinda person, you can always bring up belaying.

Do you know what belaying is? It is when you strap on a harness on yourself that is tied to a pulley, itself affixed to a solid object by a rope. The idea is that you lean against that rope—over a cliff (it's critical you remember that part)—and with the assistance of someone else, ideally, you repel down the side of the cliff safely. In theory. I chickened out when I had the chance to do it. Nevertheless, one of the things that you do in belaying is you never go over the cliff without someone else checking your harness to make sure it is on correctly. And in the culture of people who do crazy things like this is no one is offended if you say, "Can I check your harness?" because everyone understands the stakes of getting it wrong.

Sometimes I will tell that story, and then say, "Hey, there is something even higher stakes than that, can I check your spiritual harness as it were?" Now, I'll admit that it is easier for me to do this because I'm a pastor and people expect it. But did you know there is a downside to being a professional Christian? People tell me what they think they should say rather than what is really going on. Some of you will be able to do this soul-harness checking way more effectively than I can because there is no script for them to follow talking with you, especially when you are good friends.

Is it awkward? Yeah. Does it take time? Yes. Might you hurt the relationship? Certainly possible. But let's remember the stakes. Hell isn't some made up place to drive up donations. People really go to a place of eternal conscious torment, and there is something that you can do to contribute to their not going there.

Let's also remember the possibilities. A soul may be moved to heaven, turned away from destruction. Even if the person wouldn't have fallen out of the harness, wouldn't you love to spare someone a traumatic injury? How much more so spare them from further sin?

Am I saying that we become the Sin Snipers, constantly criticizing every little word out of place? No. As a rule of thumb for the every day sorts of sins, lovingly bring up patterns not points. Someone can have a bad day, but a multiple iterations of the same sin need to be dealt with. Obviously, seeing a major sin come up, or smaller sins that lead up to a major one are worth confronting sooner.

And when you have to confront do so with love in your heart towards them, and confident in Jesus' ability to use your words to bring a soul to glory.