Restoring the Sinning Brother
Galatians 5:26-6:6
Coming back to our study of the book of Galatians tonight we come to Chapter 5, verse 26 and then Chapter 6 verses 1-6. And the title is how to restore a sinning brother. I'm very much concerned about the message tonight because I believe that this is one of those very basic subjects that is essential to the health of the church. It is critical that we understand this priority. This is the kind of message like the one I preached some time ago on prayer that ought to be repeated frequently, because this is so very germane to the health, progress, and holiness of the church.
Now sin, and this is an introduction, sin is a problem for everybody, even Christians. Now, I know that there are in some theological circles some Christians who claim they don't sin, but that's rather problematic to me. In 1 John 1:8 it says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." If on the other hand we are confessing our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
Now, twice our Lord says speaking through the apostle John, that to deny sin is to deceive ourselves and to make God a liar, for God says we are sinners. Sin is a problem for every believer, just as it is for every man. In James 3:2, it says, "For in many things we all stumble." "For in many things we all stumble." Now Satan and his foes relentlessly pursue the Christian. In Ephesians Chapter 6, in verse 10, just drawing your attention to the statements that are made there. He says, "Finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and the power of His might put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the craftiness of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against..." and then he names the ranks of demons.
So we not only have the problem of sin in a general sense, but specifically we're being hassled by Satan's emissaries. Now in addition to that, the flesh itself, even when it isn't a demon or it isn't one of Satan's planned programs, the flesh itself is activated to cause even the Christian to sin. James 1, verse 14, "Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust." And when lust conceives it brings forth sin. Every man is tempted in terms of his own lust, every man. He says to believers, "put away," verse 21, "all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness." It is a problem for the Christian. He has to face sin, both from Satanic emissaries and from his own flesh. Now sin in the life of a believer has three areas of affect. When you as a Christian sin, it affects three dimensions, yourself, God, and the other Christians. And we might include in that last one others all together, because it also affects unbelievers.
First of all, when you sin and when I sin as a Christian, it affects ourselves. When I sin, what happens? Well, let me just give you a...run by a list real quick. One, I lose joy. And there are verses supporting that. Two, I lose peace. All of a sudden, I am at odds with God practically speaking. I lose confidence. Peter says, for example, in 2 Peter 1:10, "That you can make your calling and election sure if you add to your positional inheritance virtue and goodness and all these other things." When your life is holy, the result of that is confidence. When you're living an impure life, you tend to doubt your salvation. So the believer loses joy, loses peace and he loses confidence. He loses also His strong anticipation of the second coming.
John says in 1 John 2:28, "you ought to live a pure life so that you will not be ashamed that it's coming." Some Christians living in sin are really hoping Jesus doesn't come. Other Christians living a holy life are anticipating His coming. One guy said "I'm so anxious for Jesus to come I'm...and I believe He's coming so soon, I'm not even buying any more long play albums." Now some people who are living in anticipation and some people who are living in shame. So a loss of joy, loss of peace, loss of confidence, and a loss of the great anticipation of the coming of Jesus when you're living in terms of a sinful life. And then there's the loss of usefulness. 2 Timothy, Timothy says in Chapter 2, verse 21, "that there are some vessels unto honor and there are some vessels unto dishonor and to purge yourself that you might become a vessel unto honor if you're not purged." If there's sin in your life, you're useless.
John 15 indicates that when there is sin in the life of a believer, there is the loss of fruit. There is the loss of fruit. Instead of having much fruit, it dwindles down to just the bear basics. So when you sin it tremendously and dramatically effects your life. In another dimension, it completely cramps the ministry of your spiritual gift, doesn't it? Because they're ministered in the midst of sin. Now secondly, when you sin and when I sin, it not only affects me, it affects God. It affects God, because you see the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6, he said to the Corinthians, when you join yourself to a harlot, don't you know you're violating at the divine level the union that you have with Him. "For he that is joined to the Lord is," what, "one Spirit."
And when you join to a harlot, you have joined the harlot to the members of Christ, you see. You have in a sense defiled God by such a union. Any sin then defiles God in the life of a believer and I think this is pointed out aptly in 1 Corinthians Chapter 10 where you have Paul's instruction regarding the Lord's table. In verse 16, he says, "The cup of blessing which we bless is it not the communion of the blood of Christ, the bread which we break is it not the communion or the fellowship of the body of Christ." And then he says in 17, "we're one body." And he pictures us all united with Christ. The he says in verse 21, "you can't keep on drinking the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons." And these people were going out and living it up in the pagan religions and they were coming in and taking the Lord's table. And he says, you can't keep doing this, because you're dragging God into those things because you're one with Him.
He says in verse 22, you're going to provoke the Lord to jealousy and then you're going to have to be in real trouble. And then he asked the question do you think you're stronger than he is, because if you provoke him to jealousy, he's going to act against you and you're not going to be able to handle it. God judged such people in Chapter 11, verse 30. Many were weak and sickly and some of them were dead. God actually to the life of those believers because they had polluted the relationship with Him.
The Lord's table, mark it, is the common symbol of our fellowship with Christ and with one another. And when those believers sinned, they were forbidden to come to the Lord's table. They could not celebrate a union that they were not holding in purity. Do you see? He says, I don't want you to mock me by celebrating our oneness when you're violating that unity. It's just like in the Old Testament when God espoused Israel to be His wife and Israel ran after other gods and committed spiritual adultery. When you sin, you're committing spiritual adultery. You're unfaithful to Jesus Christ with whom you are joined in union. Who in effect is your bridegroom.
Thirdly, when you and I sin as Christians, we not only affect ourselves and God, be we affect everybody else. Because it's very clear, for example, in 1 Corinthians 12 that we are one body and when one member malfunctions, the whole body's crippled isn't it? So sin in your life really has a tremendous affect on me and on everybody else and consequently on the world, because they're looking at us and Jesus said, "If you are one, they will believe that the Father sent me. But if your unity is destroyed that will be suspect and your unity will be destroyed by sin and it is and it is suspect."
So sin then is absolutely devastating in the Christian's life. Last night, I was up at the college conference and somebody asked me the question what is the...what is your greatest heartache in the ministry. What is the thing that grieves you the most and I said, it's simply this. To see Christians sin who know that they should not sin. To willfully sin and violate the purity of the body, violate the holiness of God, violate the union that they have with Him and lose their own joy, their own peace and everything else that comes along with the really a holy walk to see them do that willfully when they know better. That's the greatest grief that you could ever have.
Sin devastates. It devastates you, it violates God, and it destroys the unity of the body and consequently hampers our testimony. Now, the most important issue facing Christians, watch this, is the issue of holiness. Because you say well, I thought evangelism was. No, you see, evangelism is a function that grows out of holiness, right? I mean, really being effective in the world is going to be the overflow of a godly life, right? So the priority with the Christian is holiness.
Now if that's true on my life and the thing that I am most concerned with in my life is holiness. And if I'm living before God as I ought to be living, confessing my sin and repenting of my sin, God is going to be using me. And evangelism will happen out of that won't it? Now let me ask you this, if the most important thing for me as a Christian is holiness, what's the most important thing for the church as a unit? Holiness. What is the church, but a whole bunch of us. And so whatever is most important for us is most important for us together. Now I say that because I want you to understand this, maybe in a way you've never understood it before. The absolute number one priority in the church in terms of its practical life is purity, holiness. The great concern is that you be holy, because if you're holy everything else will happen. You'll live and walk in the Spirit. God will produce in your life...I mean just imagine a whole bunch of totally committed pure holy Christians. Man what an affect.
Now if that's true, now mark this, if that it is true and I believe you can substantiate as I've tried to, that holiness is the most important, then what is the priority that every Christian should be really working on? The holiness of his own life, first of all, and secondly, what? The holiness of the church. Now if I'm going to work for the holiness of the church, what does that involve? Well, that really involves me dealing with sin, first of all, in my life and then in somebody else's life.
Now most people say well, I'll work on me, you work on you and let's not get mixed up. I'm not sure I want somebody else working on my sin. Well, maybe that's good, because maybe that's a deterrent. But I believe that the priority of the church is holiness and if the priority of the church is holiness, then that's going to be my priority to work for the purity of the church. That's why Ephesians 5:11 says, "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. Beloved it is a priority in the church that we react negatively to sin, not neutrally. Now most, in most cases, the church reacts neutrally. They sort of go, oh. And then they sort of fade. See.
We are to react negatively, vocally negatively. That's priority if we're working for the purity of the church. Listen to what Paul told Titus. "These things speak and exhort and listen, and rebuke with all authority and let no man despise you." He says, Titus, you have the right to rebuke sin. Now beloved this becomes a very important feature in the New Testament and I want you to see this thing in context tonight and that's why I'm begging to point just a little bit because I want to establish a foundation. The discipline of the church is for its holiness. You know, you discipline your kids because you want them to grow up and be good kids. And our Lord disciplines His children, is that true? Hebrews 12, "He disciplines all His children, every son he scourges." Why? Because that's the only way He can whip them in to shape.
God disciplines His children. Now the church is His children and God mediates His rule in the church through the Holy Spirit and the life of believers and God will use us to be tools in the act of discipline toward other believers. If God is operating in His Spirit in His church and His Spirit dwells within me, then I can enact the rule of God in terms of this. Now you say, well, why does God want to do this? Why does He enact discipline? The answer is He in Hebrews 12:11. "No chastening for the present seems joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterwards, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness." God wants to produce in His church righteousness. So discipline is needed to produce it in the church, just like it's needed to produce it in the child.
The church then, and when I talk about the church, I mean you and I mean me, because we are it, must be very conscious of sin. First in my own life, then in the lives of others in the church. Now in 1 Corinthians 5, which we'll refer to several times tonight, the church is told to be on guard and to be careful that, watch this, that they keep the leaven of evil from entering. Remember that passage? Watch out for the leaven of evil creeping in. Those Corinthians they didn't watch out for it and it hit them. Now God wants to reveal His glory to the church. What's His glory, His attributes. God is Holy, do you believe that? If God's going to manifest His holiness through the church, He's going to have to do it through a holy church, right?
God wants the church to be holy. In fact, on many occasions our Lord through the writers of the New Testament commands the church to discipline. And while we're in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says this, verse 1, "It is reported commonly there is fornication among you," that's porneia, pornography, "and such pornography is not such as named among the pagans." What happens is incest. Somebody having relations with his mother or maybe his stepmother, but it's still the same. Verse 2, "And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he had done this deed might be taken away from among you."
You see what happened in the Corinthian church is they didn't deal with sin. Here's a guy that's sleeping with his own mother or stepmother and they don't even do anything about it. In verse 4 he says, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're gathered together and my spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ deliver that one to Satan for the destruction of his physical body that his soul may be saved." He was a believer. Do something? Your glorying isn't good. Your positive attitude is ridiculous in the midst of a horrible situation like that.
Get rid of that old leaven. Verse 9, "I wrote unto you an Epistle not to even accompany with people involved in pornography." Don't have a thing to do with them. "Yet not all together with the fornicators of the world with the covetous, extortioners, idolaters, for the must your needs go out of the world." Some say that means that if you do keep doing that the Lord will take your life and just remove you.
"But now I've written unto you not to keep company. If any man is called a brother, be a fornicator or covetous or idolater or railer or drunkard or extortioner, don't even eat with that kind of person." You've got to watch who you sit down a meal with, right? Pretty strong language even a brother, verse 11.
"For what have I to do to judge them also that are outside? Do you not judge them that are within?" Let's start where we are, like Peter says "judgment must begin at the house of God, but them that are outside God judges." You're going to have to deal with the ones inside. Put away from among yourselves that wicked person. Now here he says to the Corinthians, instead of just being neutral and kind of grinning about your sin, why don't you get into it and do something about it? This is a command. In Titus, the Lord again speaks through Paul. In Titus 3:10, "A man that is an heretic," that's a false teacher, "after the first and second admonition reject." What does that mean? Well, it's just like eject with an R. Push the button that fires him out. "Knowing that he that is such is subverted and sins being condemned of himself."
2 Thessalonians Chapter 3, Paul speaks of the same thing again, verse 6. "We command you brethren in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly and not after the tradition which he received of us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you." This is you've got a guy doing this, separate yourself.
Verse 11, "We hear there are some who walk among you disorderly working not at all, but are busybodies." You say, you mean, busybody is something to be disciplined? That's sin. That's sin. Now you see the Bible is very clear about it. In 1 Timothy 5:20, it says, "An elder that sins rebuke before the whole congregation that everybody might fear." Now beloved when the Bible says that much about the same thing, it's laying down some pretty important stress. God wants us to deal in the church with sin. You say well, John, just what sin is the church to discipline? I'll give you a simple answer. All of it. Because all of it pollutes.
There are things mentioned in scripture like difficulties between brothers are to be disciplined according to Matthew 18. Disorderly conduct is to be disciplined, we just read it in 2 Thessalonians 3. Divisiveness and false teaching is to be disciplined. Titus 3, we just read. Gross sin is to be disciplined, and that's a general category, 1 Corinthians 5. False teaching is to be disciplined, 1 Timothy 1:20. So all categories of sin, whether they're doctrinal or whether they are moral are to be disciplined.
Now you say, well, John that's good, how is the church to discipline? How do we do this? Turn in your Bible to Matthew 18, verse 15. Here's the pattern for church discipline by our Lord. "Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone." The first act that you take when you see a sinning brother is go to him individually. You don't tell on him to somebody else, you go to him. You don't say "did you know that so..." you go to him.
"And if he shall hear thee, you've gained a brother, your brother. And if he won't hear you then take with you one or two more that in