Week in Review (Part 2)

1 John 5:16-17

In our Sunday School class we’ve been studying 1 John.  Well, we’ve gotten to the end of the book and John doesn’t use the time to sum up his previous ideas in a way that is “This is what I was talking about no go do it.”  Instead he says some things that cause us to think even harder about what he has just said.  This has been one of the most challenging things to think about over the past week, so I will hopefully be able to help this make sense to me as I post a blog about this.  Yes, I’m still thinking about this.  As I said, it’s challenging to think about, so here goes.

These are the verses I’m talking about.  “16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death.  There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death” 

Clearly John had a specific sin in mind, but unfortunately we don’t know what that is nor do we know what he means by death.  Even as I write this I am still tossing thoughts around.  Many people point to this set of verses about an “unforgivable sin” and point to Matthew 12:31, Mark 3:29 or Luke 12:10 and say that John is speaking of the “unpardonable sin.” This sin would be blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. According to the concordance, blasphemy is the worst possible type of slander. The way I understand this sin is that a person would not ascribe these qualities to Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Let me explain. In the passage of Matthew 12 Jesus had just cast some demons out of a man and the Pharisees saw this and rather than seeing Jesus as the Messiah they quickly said that the power He came not from God, but from Beelzebub (Satan). So they had instead not ascribed these powers to the Holy Spirit and had given Satan the credit. This, in my opinion, is what blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is, so I would say that this is not what John is talking about in this passage.

Apostasy is another word tossed around in the conversation about these verses. Apostasy, in essence, is backsliding.  Apostasy is only mentioned twice in the ESV Bible and both times is in the Old Testament.  It is mentioned in the NASB in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 and the ESV translates this word as rebellion.  It is also talked about in Hebrews 6:4-8 or in 1 John 2:19.  A person commits apostasy when he has been involved with the church, has claimed to be a believer, but for some reason, never full commits his life to Christ and walks away from the church.  Not only do they walk away from their local believers, they fail to join another.  They rebel.  If I understand it this way I would understand that they person has not placed themselves under the authority of Christ.  They have not lost their salvation because they never had the salvation to begin with.  These first two arguments are if we take into account that the “death” John is talking about here is a spiritual death.

There is also the argument that John was talking about physical death.  This letter from John was written to a church.  Apparently, there was a schism in the church he was writing to and this is the basis of the letter.  (1 John 2:19)  With this in mind Apostasy (explained in the previous paragraph) could have been the sin that John was talking about that leads to death.  Or John could be restating that which he has been talking about throughout the letter.  (I’m going to back up a little).  There are three themes of 1 John which are the assurances of salvation: Love, Doctrine and Obedience.  1) Love is the love we have for our brothers and sisters in Christ and how we treat them.  If we aren’t treating them with love this should be cause for us to reevaluate our relationship with Christ.  2) Doctrine is what we believe.  We have to always evaluate what we believe about the Bible to make sure that what we believe about the Bible is true and not only leading us off course, but those around us.  3)  Obedience.  This is the major theme that draws us into this passage. 

John throughout this book has been harping on Obedience and that if a person is not obeying the law of Christ one has to really evaluate what they believe about the Bible.  Belief in Jesus leads to obedience for what he said.  If one isn’t willing to obey Christ then they can’t say they are a Christian.  In 1 Corinthians there are two points that would support this idea of thinking.  The first is 1 Corinthians 5:1-5 in which Paul says

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

and the second is 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 in which he says

“Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”

So Paul is speaking of sinning that is leading to physical death, but death nonetheless.  So what is the sin that leads to death?  I would say unrelenting nonrepentance.  This would explain both physical and spiritual death.  Repent means “to think differently.”  As a Christian we are to be repenting constantly.  Not of our values or beliefs or things that would contradict the Bible, but we are to be repenting of our sins, of our unbelief, of our misconceptions of the Bible and the list could go on.  The reason I say that this could be the sin is if one is “saved”, but unwilling to repent of his sinfulness he isn’t saved.  If one is saved, but is not willing to repent of a sin in his life he could be excommunicated from the church and in 1 Corinthians 5 it shows that this could be a way of disciple from God in that God takes his life so that his soul may be saved and also in 1 Corinthians 11 in that people weren’t evaluating themselves and because of their sinfulness they were getting sick and even dying.  These people were unwilling to change their mind about who they were and who God is. This would also explain the group in 1 John 2:19 that left the church.  These people were unwilling to repent of their original beliefs about God and because of that they left the church and pursued their pleasures. 

I’m not summing this up to say “The End,” but rather to bring some closure to my thoughts.  You may now be asking, “Why does John tell us not to pray for the sin that leads to death?”  I don’t know.  I do know that all things work out for our good and for God’s glory and I know that ultimately if God doesn’t initially reveal himself to a person that doesn’t mean He won’t.  God is on His own time table and who am I to argue?  Instead, we should pray for them and if the Holy Spirit guides us to use our prayers in a more profitable way so that we are not using the energy to pray for that person, but to be praying for a more immanent request then we need to follow the Spirit’s guidance.  If God will reveal himself to a person and convict that person of their sins He will do so on His time table.  As I stated at the beginning of this blog I have not figured this out completely.  If there is a flaw in my reasoning then please tell me.  For I would love some thoughts on this subject.

Galatians 6:1-2

Every other Tuesday morning some of the men from my church get together to have breakfast at Cracker Barrel.  Towards the end Aaron (The Pastor of Discipleship) will have some kind of a verse or two that we will discuss not only what the verse is talking about, but how that verse applies to our daily lives.  This past Tuesday’s verses were Galatians 6:1-2 “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  I’ve been thinking about these verses and this post is just my thoughts on these verses.  I’m going to try not to do much exegesis on this passage, rather I’m going to point out a few things that I’ve noticed right on the surface of this verse that caught my eye.

The second part (I’ll get to the first part at the end) is that we “who are spiritual should restore them with an attitude of gentleness.”  Why would Paul say and attitude of gentleness?  From what I’ve seen churches (Not all, including my church now) tend to reject and “excommunicate” people.  Maybe not literally, but physically they do.  “Oh did you hear about Sandy and what she’s involved in?  I hope that God intervenes in her life so she sees what she’s doing.”  We think that God is the one that should deal with them swiftly and “get them back in the family.”  Rather, we, as their brothers and sisters, should talk to them about it gently.  Not Condemning.  Not Condescending.  Not any higher than thou attitude.  We should see their struggle in sin as the same struggle we have just in a different area.  Or maybe it’s in the same area.  If that’s the case you can make more of an impact because you know how they feel.  It’s much more a relief to me when someone sees something in my life and they can relate than to have someone that can’t relate tell me how I should do things. 

Thirdly, We should “watch ourselves, lest we too be tempted.”  As we are talking to the person about their sin, especially if we have struggled with the same sin ourselves, we should not drop our spiritual battle to help them with theirs.  If I have struggled with pornography and I am helping a guy that is struggling with it as well I have to work even harder when helping because I could fall back into the lifestyle.  While it would be better, in some aspects, it would also be more difficult. 

The next part is “bear one another’s burdens.  This is building on the previous part.  If we truly love the person that we are talking about in sin we aren’t going to say “This is how it’s done.  This is what the Bible says. Now you’re on your own.  Good Luck!”  This is the actions behind the words.  This is when we some along side them and do whatever we can to help them out of the pit of sin.

The last thing is fulfilling the law of Christ.  When I first saw this it took me a second to see what Paul was saying.  As we know the “law” (Ten Commandments) were fulfilled in Christ.  This is a bad habit of mine.  The first thing that comes to mind when I hear law is the Ten Commandments.  The Law that Paul is talking about is the same law that Jesus talked about.  It’s the “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself.”  This plays right into what Paul is talking about.  If we love God and not only our neighbor, but our brother, we will desire to share this burden with them so that they can grow in their walk with Christ.

The first that that Paul says is if anyone is caught in any transgression, so we know this is going to a person who has sin in their life.  We aren’t supposed to be the “Sin Police” in the church “seeking someone to devour” rather this person made some kind of “mistake” and while they think their sin is still hidden yet by the grace of God someone in the church found out about it.  The person was caught in their sin.  What Aaron mentioned this morning is that there are two types of people that are caught in sin.  (1) Those who are in a cyclical pattern of sin that really repent and really desire to get out of this sin and yet when they think they have found the end it catches them at the least likely of moments and they fall into it again.  Then there are (2) Those people that are in sin, don’t care, don’t repent and could careless about what others tell them if the occasion arises.

With the first group of people it is rather easy to follow through with what the rest of the verse says, but with the second group it isn’t so easy.  So how do we go about knowing which is whom and how, if we can, do we share this burden?  I’m hesitant to jump to Matthew 18:15-20 where Jesus talks about how to go about this because I know people are going to argue “That’s if your brother sins against you; not if your brother is in sin.”  My reply is to answer that yes this is about a brother sinning against you, but is the body of Christ not more important than a single part of the body?  We should be willing to see our sin for what it is and desire to have it flushed out of our bodies by any means necessary.  The first group of people when their sin it put out in the open they will own up to it and show their desire to change.  The second group is the group that it is necessary to use the “Church Disciple” model.  We should desire, not to make ourselves look good or better than them, to help our brothers and sisters with their walk in Christ.  Derek Webb puts it well when he said that “The best thing that could ever happen to anybody would be that their sin would be exposed on the 5:00 news.  Your deepest darkest most embarrassing sin.  The one that you work the hardest to hide.  Why?  Because it’s weary to hide the sin; We are deceiving people about who we really are.  So that we don’t have the option to hide from anyone and that Jesus is the only one that we can grasp onto.  He is the only one that we should grasp onto, but that’s not what we act like.” (Paraphrased)