How Do You Respond to Sinners?
Sin is a terrible subject. It’s ugly and demeaning and terrible and evil and deceptive and hurtful and gross. Sin is the very thing that separates the created from the Creator. Sin is the thing that makes a mess in your life, then camps out and wallows in all the bad that is going on around you. Sin tears apart families, companies, friends, and our relationship with God. Sin keeps people from trusting, from loving, and from seeking something better. Like I said, terrible.
Often times, though, we think of the sinner in the exact same terms. Instead of focusing on the actual problem (sin), we focus on the person who is committing the sin. We single them out, make them feel guilty and dirty and unloved. We tell them that God hates sin, but our lives scream that God hates the sinner. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe for a second that God wants people to live in sin. I know that He does not excuse sin, and therefore I do believe that people who are caught up in lifestyles of sin need to change. That just isn’t the focus of this post.
I want this post to focus on how we, God’s children, respond to sinners.
Let’s look at two Biblical examples of people responding to sinners. First, let’s look at Esau. Esau had sold his birth right, then been tricked out of his first-born blessing by his mother and younger brother. Esau was SO mad, and rightly so it seems. The blessing that was meant to be his was given to his younger brother, through whose lineage Jesus would ultimately come. Sensing Esau’s rage, Rebekah tells her younger son to flee, lest his older brother kill him.
Years pass, and Esau and Jacob finally meet up. Now let’s pause for a moment and reflect on our own lives. Have you ever been hurt by someone, and still felt the bitterness years later? Have you harbored resentment toward someone who wronged you, and when you saw them again, all of those feelings came up? Let’s look at how Esau responded:
“But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.” - Genesis 33:4
Esau responded the right way. While Jacob had wronged him, he forgave him. He didn’t plot to kill him, or run out and spit in his face and tell him to leave. No, he simply acted like nothing had ever happened. The Bible doesn’t record that Esau asked Jacob why he’d done it. It just says that he embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him. It says that he accepted him.
The next story I want to look at is in Luke 15. Again, a younger son goes out and sins against his family, acting out and living wildly and in sin. When he comes back, hoping for forgiveness, the father lovingly accepts him back. The older brother, not so much.
“Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ “But he was angry and would not go in.” - Luke 15: 25-28
This older brother knew what his younger brother had done was wrong, and he didn’t think he needed to be so lenient in his forgiveness. Not only did he resent that his brother had gone off and lived so sinfully, but he also resented that he had not. He was resentful because he’d remained faithful, and the father still accepted the younger son back.
Which way to we act when sinful people to God? Do we act like Esau, dropping everything and running to meet those people with open arms? Or are we the older brother in Luke 15, harboring resentment because we’d been so faithful the entire time?
There aren’t ranks in God’s service. We are all His children, and He longs for each of us to have a right relationship with Him. Here are some final thoughts for you to think about as you examine your own reactions to sinners:
“I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.” - Luke 15:7
“But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” - Matthew 6:15
