Full Transcript for Confronting Sin

to confront sin or to have your own sin confronted is so that you remain oriented to God. That's why we're here. That's why we're talking about it, it's why you're listening. The whole point of the Christian life is like a compass pointing it, you know, magnetic north to remain oriented towards your creator. We're creatures, he's a creator. Let's make sure that we're not losing sight of him. So everything that we say about confronting sin has to be rooted in that because as soon as you turn the confrontation of sin as interpersonal, you know, it becomes a matter of personality conflicts or dislike or cultural differences, whatever you want to pick. It becomes man versus man. It's he said, she said. That's nonsense. That's not what confronting sin is about. Confronting sin is about someone saying to someone else, God's over here, I'm pointed towards him, and you're pointed in some opposite direction. You're pointed off in the weeds. We both need to point in the same direction. So So it's just important when we're thinking about all the rest of these things that that should always be the root, the beginning and the end of every conversation. You know, when you're confronting someone else's sin or when your sin is confronted, you need to make sure that you're both pointed at the same God in that conversation. And as a Christian, if you are confronting someone else's sin, you need to make sure that's what you're pointing them at. You can't point the person you're confronting to some other God. You can't accuse them of sins that are not scriptural sins. So that'll be the long part at the end. And the middle part is just going to be talking about the duty to receive correction. Because both of those things, whether you're the one receiving the rebuke of sin or you're the one giving it, in the context of two Christian brothers discussing with each other, you begin with the orientation towards God, and then it's very much a case that you want and you pray that the person would receive your rebuke the same way that if they come to you and and accuse you of something, you would hope that they would approach it in the same way that you're trying to approach them. It's very much a do onto others thing. But just at the outset, when we're pointed at God and we're talking about the duty of God, I think that one of the framing episodes for this episode and this framing for the whole this episode is the perfect hatred episode where we talked about what does hatred mean? What does love mean? Because it's part of the same thing. There is no possibility for hatred without love of something, actual Christian hatred. And we make the case in that episode that we have a duty as Christians to hate whatever is opposed to God, and that love can only be defined in terms of pointing at God. The things that God commands, the things that God expresses as true, those are the only things that we should be loving. And anything that's contrary to those, we're commanded to hate. And so when we're looking at the sin in our own lives and in others' lives, it always has to be in view of that. And part of the reason for emphasizing that is that when you're looking at things that are oriented either towards God or away from him, it precludes all matters of opinion. It precludes disagreements. You know, one of the prime examples we'll get into in a couple places is matters of historical events. We've done past episodes we talked about you know, the moon landing and whether nukes are real, you know, conspiracy theories. And we made very clear, as I've said elsewhere online, I don't think you're going to hell if you think that the moon's not real or that the moon landing is not real. It's not an article of faith. My concern about those things is that someone who's been detached from reality by denying those true things is that they've opened themselves up to spiritual errors. And so that's the concern when there's a rebuke there. But it's not a matter of salvation to say we landed on the moon or we did land on the moon. Pick any example you want. The moon doesn't even matter. It's just when it's a matter of opinion about something that has nothing to do with scripture, i then it's just a question is it true or not? And what we've seen happen in the last sixty years, last thirty years especially, is that there are other historical events, and you know which ones, that have become articles of faith in a competing religion. And so if you have the wrong opinion about those historical events in the last century, you're either damned or you're saved, depending on which side of those events you fall on. Well, the only historical event that has that kind of weight is Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. That is the historical event that determines damnation or salvation. Your belief in that is what determines whether you're a Christian. No other historical event has that weight. And so the very fact that people will come into the church and say, No, these are these other historical events that are matters of damnation when actually they're matters of opinion. Even if you're wrong, even if something happened in nineteen thirty-three or nineteen forty-five or nineteen sixty-four, if you don't believe it or you disagree with the tenor of it, you think it's fine or whatever, that doesn't mean that you're going to heaven or hell. Doesn't matter either way. When someone points to those things and says, well, the religion says you gotta do this or believe this, They're not pointing you to God. They're not fulfilling their duty to God. And so as we look at the examples where we're interacting with each other, making sure that our compass is pointed at God, which is found in Scripture, is crucial because that's the only way to determine morality. Right and wrong is determined by God. It's not determined by what makes us feel bad. That's another element of this. There are things about having your own sin confronted or you confronting someone

else's sin, even the word confrontation. We talked last week about why do we confront certain errors? Why do we go after certain things? Why is anyone confronting anything? That's mean. Makes people sad. Well, the question is is it true or not? And if God is over here and everyone else is pointing ninety degrees or one hundred and eighty degrees, the guy who comes along and says no, you gotta turn around and look this way, he's gonna disrupt you. He's gonna be annoying. He's like you're looking in the wrong direction. What do you mean? you think you're better than me? You think you're holier than thou? Like, no, God's over there. You're not even looking in the right direction. So let everything that you do that revolves around confronting sin or having your own sin be confronted be dictated solely by that by that which is found in Scripture and in truth. When Woe says that it does not matter how you feel about these things, I want to add not a caveat to that, but an important sub point. If your conscience is properly formed, and it will be formed properly by the Word of God, then you will feel correctly about certain of these things. You will hate the things that God hates, you will love the things that God loves. And so your feelings, so to speak, will be aligned with what God wants. Your conscience being correctly formed will tell you what you should believe, which way you should go on a given issue. And so again, if your conscience is properly formed, these things will be aligned. It is not that your internal perception of these things is definitive, that's the point. And most people have malformed consciences, because if your conscience has not been formed by scripture, then it's effectively a crapshoot. It may be right, it may be wrong. It just depends on the particular issue, on the circumstances. If your conscience is not formed by scripture, by the word of God, if it is not correctly formed, that it is That it is not reliable, and that is why the Word of God has to be the sole standard in these matters. Because whether or not you internally feel that something is right, that matters because that's an indicator of whether or not you have been formed by the Word of God, whether or not you are aligning yourself to the things of God, but it is not in and of itself definitive, because it is subsidiary to the Word of God. And so when we have these conflicts, when we are fighting over something that is related to our duties to God, to the Christian faith, we look to Scripture to find the truth, because that is where God has spoken his truth to us. We are specifically in this case talking about theological controversies, things that can be found in scripture. As Will mentioned, there's a distinction between these sorts of issues and just something out in the world. And so for instance, if you're having a debate over something related to biology. That's not going to be something for which you turn to the Word of God to discover the ultimate answer, because it's probably not even addressed in the Word of God. Now in some cases it's going to be, of course, if you're dealing with micro versus macro evolution, but that is also addressed in nature. You can determine that from the created order of things. But when it comes to issues of morality, when it comes to questions of the faith, questions of theology of doctrine, all of those must be absolutely and solely grounded in the Word of God. That doesn't mean we can't use the faculties that God has given us to understand it because of course you can't read scripture without using the faculties that God gave you. First off you have to use sight to read the words or you have to use your hearing in order to listen to it if you're listening to a recording instead. And then you have to use your reason to understand these things. So yes, our faculties will of course play a role in this, but as Christians we also have God's promises and the Spirit, so we know that if we spend the time in the Word, if we turn to the Word of God for these answers to these questions, God will lead us into truth. He has promised to do that. But we have to actually do what He said in order to receive the promise, in order to receive the things He has given. You have to turn to scripture. You have to look at the Word of God to determine what is true or false. And so, as Woe said, the issue is not going to be A conflict over personalities. This isn't, you know, Martin Luther hated Pope Leo. That was not the issue in the Reformation. The issue in the Reformation was whether or not the Word of God says certain things about justification, says certain things about works, says certain things about satisfaction, all these other issues. These were theological issues, these were doctrinal issues for which For which we have to turn to the Word of God. It doesn't matter if you dislike the brashness of Luther or the approach of the Medici Pope, regardless of the personalities involved, it is a matter of what God has said, what a correct interpretation of His word is. And so you can leave aside all of those other ancillary issues, and so it's not a matter of well this person is acting in a mean way mean way. That's not what is at stake. It's not whether or not the personalities matter because of course, in human conflicts, because humans are involved, that's going to play some role, but that really should be, as much as possible, put aside when dealing with theological and doctrinal matters. Because these are simply essentially what you would call them in the law, really they're questions of fact when you're dealing with things that are external and questions of law when you're dealing with things that are in Scripture because you are purely dealing with the interpretation of God's word. That's the distinction there for the legal sphere anyway. But another thing that Woe mentioned, I want to highlight all systems have blasphemy laws, all systems of belief. And the question is

going to be what a system considers blasphemy? Because that is going to tell you what the god of that system is. And it's going to tell you the god of the person who is advocating for that system. And so if someone tells you that you're damned because you believe X, well you now know that X is part of the blasphemy laws of that person's system, and so that is the system underneath the god that person worships. So if it's a particular historical event that isn't dealt with in Scripture, then you know this person has a different God. Because that is not a matter of whether you are saved or damned, if this is some historical event outside Scripture. And so it doesn't matter, for instance, if you believe the North or the South was in the right with regard to the Civil War. That is not a matter of whether or not you will be saved. That is not a matter that is central to the faith. It may be a very important matter, and as American I certainly would say that Would say that it is, but it is not a tenet of the faith, and so it is not something that falls under blasphemy laws. Because blasphemy is to speak falsely of God, and that is why this matters, of course. It also ties into, of course, the first and the second commandment. But primarily, this is a matter of whether or not what you are saying about God, whether it is in your words or in your behavior, the things that you are asserting about God, whether or not they are true. Because if they align with Scripture, then they are true. If they are contrary to Scripture, then they are false, and if they're outside of Scripture and you're saying this particular thing is still blasphemous, and so you're damned if you say this thing. That's worship of a false god. That is rejection of the Lord God. That is why it matters, and that is why we say you must turn to scripture for this, because if you're turning somewhere else, you are setting up an idol and you are turning away from the Lord God. As we've said many times before, in this life you are always and with everything you do, travelling Godward or hellward. That is what is at stake in these matters. If you are rebuking someone, you are rebuking him because you believe that he is turning away from God, which means he is moving hellward, and you want to turn him back to God. You want him turning Godward Because that's the ultimate goal. The goal is for everyone to run the race, to persevere. And so if someone has walked off the path, walked off the track, and he's going down some rabbit trail or he's going the wrong way, you want to tell him, and part of the reason you want to tell him, of course it's your duty to God, but it is also because you want him to tell you if you do that in the future. And so that's the issue, which one of you is right? Are you traveling in the right direction? Is he traveling in the wrong direction? Or is it the other way around? Because someone is going to be wrong. So the first half of this that we're going to talk about that will be the shorter half is the duty to receive this sort of correction rebuke. And it's important that the things we're talking about have to be sin, as Corey said. We're talking about sins. We're not talking about things where your opinion is either, you know, not historically defensible or whatever. Is this going to cause your damnation by itself? And that's crucial because there are a lot of things where we make small mistakes, small sins. You know, I say mistake, I'm not trying to paper over something. When Adam ate the wrong piece of fruit, it was a small mistake. You know, it was it was a it was practically a a process violation. And yet we all die because of it. Because God said don't do that. That's off limits. That was sin. I'm not minimizing it in the slightest. I'm saying that when we're looking at sin versus looking at just mistakes, we have to be very clear about where we're getting this stuff from. And so when we're receiving correction, we're receiving the rebuke of our own sins, we have to always have we're gonna talk about the always, because that's part of the problem here. We as a Christian should have the default position, the default position, not the universal position, but your default approach. That if a Christian brother comes to you and says, Brother, I believe that you're sinning by X, our default position should be to hear him out and to take it seriously. Now this is all occurring in a vacuum. This is a perfectly spherical cow simulation in physics. That should be your position. Somebody comes to you and says, I think you're sinning, you should hear them out. In reality, it's never that simple. And so that's where you know the personality conflicts and history and all the other things come into play sometimes for the sake of streamlining, but often for the sake of greater sin and disruption. So if somebody comes to you, you first have to ask, you know, is this guy even Christian? If it's someone who's known to you, who's you know not only a brother, but someone you have a relationship with, absolutely, you should take that much more seriously. On the other hand, you know, on the internet, for example, I routinely have people in my mentions and elsewhere saying things like Jesus is actually Satan, saying that the Trinity is a heresy and I'm going to hell for confessing the Trinity. Those are rebukes. And those people and often in many cases claim to be Christian, even while they're saying that Jesus is Satan. And so when we say that the default position should be to hear out someone who says he's a Christian brother and he's rebuking your sin, that doesn't mean you're stupid. If someone comes to you and says something blasphemous, you silence them. You don't hear them out. You don't argue and debate and try to find common cause with someone who's a blasphemer. And while those are extreme examples, they're also pretty common, unfortunately, today. Because not only is the world very far gone, but it's also particularly

far gone within the church, where we have people who say, Oh, I'm Christian, and I believe all this insane crap that is demonstrably damnable. So the fact that someone is coming to you with a rebuke by itself doesn't necessarily tell you anything. As we've said many times, especially in the last year, just because somebody says he's Christian doesn't mean anything anymore Which is tragic. That should not be the case. If someone comes to you and says, I'm a Christian brother and I have a concern, we should be able to just take that wide open, whoever it is. The reality is that if you were to do that every single time, particularly if you're engaging with a lot of people, almost every one of those is going to be some sort of demonic attack. You're going to be someone speaking the teachings of demons, saying things that are false sins or true sins and trying to get you to confess false sins to a false God. You can't do that. So at the same time, like this is why part of the is a profound matter of wisdom is that you have to have an open heart as in a Christian to receive rebuke. But you also have to have discernment, which goes back to the first point. You got to be pointing at God. So whenever someone comes to you, however, they frame it, if they say XYZ is a sin, you need to look at your own heart and your own actions and say, am I still pointing at God in this particular instance? Not in your whole life. You know, maybe you have everything squared away. And maybe there's just one blind spot that you have. We all have them. Anyone who says he's free from sin deceives himself and the truth is not in him. God said that somewhere. It's pretty important. Every single one of us has blind spots, even podcasters. The point is when someone comes to you and says that, you have to say, okay, I take it seriously. I've said in the past I do. If someone is mad about something I said, my first response isn't to disregard them. My first response internally, you know, in a millisecond is early right? Because that's all that matters. If someone rebukes something as sin, the only thing that matters is not whether you like them, it's not whether you like their tone of voice, it's not how it makes you feel, the only question that matters is is it right? Does God actually condemn this? And you may not be able to figure it out in one conversation. You know, in the case where someone who is a Christian brother comes to you and says, I'm concerned about something, I believe you've sinned against me, or in whatever regard, whether it's a theological dispute or it's personal action or whatever, it's perfectly acceptable for you as a Christian to say, thank you. I need to think about this. I need to study the scripture. I need to pray. And oh And I'll get back to you. And both of you should be free as Christians to leave it at that. And I think this is a crucial aspect of this, both giving and receiving rebuke, is that you're not trying to fix the person. You're not trying

to say, you're wrong, I gotta fix this right now, you gotta straighten up, you gotta get on your knees and confess your sins. If repentance is actually required, then yeah, that's going to follow. But it doesn't need to immediately happen because you're not trying to win an argument. You're not trying to beat the other guy. You're not trying to increase your score. You're trying to make sure the both of you are pointed at God. And that should in most cases take time. In many episodes, we have said and will continue to say, don't just believe us because we said something that you haven't heard before. Especially if, you know, not only have you disagreed with it in the past, you've been taught the opposite, but it's going to reorient something about your faith, your default position should be not to budge, but to look, to study. And if it turns out that you need to budge, and it turns out you need to nudge your compass to point towards magnetic north, God's north, then that's you interacting with God. It's not you interacting with a particular person's argument or their condemnation. It's always about what has God said and who is in accord with it. Maybe it's neither of you. And you know, another aspect of this, maybe somebody comes to you and accuses you of something, at that point there is a sin. If you are the recipient of rebuke of error and someone comes you, says you've sinned, at that point there's absolutely a sin on the table. Either you're wrong and you need to figure it out and you need to repent and confess, or they're wrong, and they need to be rebuked and repent and confess. And so in some ways it's important for these controversies to arise among us because it's going to strengthen everyone's faith if we're actually Christian. If these disputes and debates occur and somebody's like, well, this is wrong, and you say, no, actually this is wrong, if you're both honest and you both have faith, your faith is going to be strengthened by the outcome of that disagreement because you're gonna hammer it out and you're going to find that one of you is an error and at the end of it ideally god willing and if you have repentant hearts you'll both be correct. you'll both now be pointed at God. And so the orientation may be that you have to straighten out, or maybe you have to straighten out your friend. He comes to you and he thought one thing he was mistaken. You figured out together. Maybe you need to involve a pastor or someone else who's like, hey, can you help us understand this? We disagree. What do you think? Help us figure this out from scripture. Sometimes it involves the rest of the church, not in a big public sense, but just other believers. Where there are two or three are gathered, there he is with us. And so when disputes arise, I think it's important that we don't take them as personal confrontations, as fights, as emotional things, as matters of reputation and of feelings. Take it as a matter of okay, we're gonna learn about God today. Somebody thought something different than somebody else. Let's figure out what God says. You're gonna have a Bible study, you're gonna pray, you're gonna discuss, and iron is gonna sharpen iron. That's a cause for joy, even when someone's gonna be proven wrong in the process. Because in the end, if you're brought to repentance and you're the one receiving it and your brother is correct and he rebukes you, and you're like, You're right. Amen. Thank you. I'm sorry. To him, to God. Whatever the sin was, to have someone straighten you out as a Christian brother is one of the great joys of the Christian faith. Because it's strengthening everyone within the body of Christ. It's not about ego. It's not about one-upsmanship. It's about us all pointing in the same direction, pointing at God. And so when you receive these sorts of corrections, you should have an open heart. At the same time, you need to make sure that you're understanding and filtering what's coming in. Is it true rebuke or is it an attack? It's gonna be one or the other. Well, it could be three things. It could be true rebuke, it could be your brother airing, or it could be an attack. And those are three fundamentally different problems that all need to be received and solved in different ways. We should always view these conflicts both as an opportunity for improvement and as an opportunity for deepening our faith and deepening our knowledge of the Christian faith. But they also have to be pursued as that sort of opportunity. Again, not as a conflict in the sense of a conflict of personalities or an interpersonal conflict. This is an intellectual, really, is one way to put it, sort of conflict. This is dispassionate. This is not like Wo said, it should not be emotional. This is not where one man is staking his reputation and something personally on this matter. It's whether or not you're right about the things of God, and that is what is fundamentally and centrally important. Are you oriented rightly toward God? Are you believing rightly with regard to God If you were out hiking and you were just wandering along the trail and you happened upon another hiker, and he asked you where you're going, you ask him where he's going, you say, I'm going to visit this waterfall, and he tells you you're going to have a hard time finding it because you're walking the wrong way. You're probably going to consult whatever map you happen to have with you to figure out which one of you is right, because if you want to see that waterfall, it kind of matters that you're walking toward the waterfall. These matters are significantly more important than whether or not you get to see a pretty waterfall. We should treat them the same way you would treat that sort of you can call it a conflict, but not in the sense that's usually imported with that word word in English. It's a disagreement. One of you says it's this way, the other man says it's that way. You look to the standard, in that case a map, in this

case scripture, and figure out which one of you is right. And if that man proves that he knows where the waterfall is, maybe he's a local and you're hiking somewhere on vacation, you don't know the area, you're going to thank him, and you'll be glad that you listen to him, because that's the right way to receive that correction. He's actually doing you a service. The same is true with regard to our Christian brothers. If we rebuke them for their error, we are doing them a service, it's also service to God, of course, and if they then in turn rebuke us for some error later down the line in which we have engaged something false that we believe or if they correct us on this specific issue because perhaps our initial correction was not a correction, we were in error, and our Christian brother was correct, the person receiving that correction should rejoice because you now no longer believe something false. Some error to which you held has been removed. That's always a good thing. In many parts of our lives we think of correction in those terms. If someone helps you with cooking and tells you the reason that that burned is X, Y, and Z, and then you take that into account and next time whatever you were making doesn't burn, you don't get angry at that person, you thank him for helping you not burn the dish this time. We should of course think of these conflicts in theological or doctrinal matters in the same way. If your brother helps you to see correctly, that is a wonderful thing. He has done his duty as a Christian brother, and you have And you have received that Christian comfort because you have Christian brothers. Which raises a tangential point that is very important, one we've made many times, and scripture bluntly states, do not forsake the gathering together of the saints. One of the reasons that you have Christian brothers, one of the reasons you go to church and maintain these relationships and have Bible studies and all these various other things is that Is that so that you have men around you who can help you in your Christian walk, in your Christian faith, so that maybe there's some issue on which this particular Christian brother is more knowledgeable. He spent more time studying it in scripture. He can explain it better. Maybe you're better at another issue. As Woe said and as Proverbs says, iron sharpens iron. This is what we do as Christian brothers, we help each other with regard to the faith. Some men have been given the gift of teaching and interpretation and these other things, some men perhaps have less of that. All parts of the body are important, but when it comes to these sorts of conflict these sorts of conflicts, we turn to the Word of God, and we find the truth there, and then we rejoice whether we are corrected or whether we are the one doing the correcting Because the outcome is that everyone improves. Even if, say, you are the one doing the correcting, and you are right, the other man is in fact in error. He receives the correction. He amends what he believes. You are both better off. And the reason you are better off is not just because you've done your duty to God. Of course, that is paramount. That's always of paramount importance. But when you teach these things, you will improve your own knowledge of them. Anyone who is engaged in teaching really any subject will be able to tell you what Very truthfully and with firsthand knowledge, teaching a subject improves your own understanding of the subject. That is one of the ways, in fact, that you can best deepen your understanding of some even a new subject is explain it to someone else. Because in explaining it you have to solidify your own thinking. You have to shore up how you present the information and how you understand it. And so you will deepen your own understanding. There are benefits all around to those correcting and to those being corrected. And we should see this as a good thing as a part of the Christian life, as something that one Christian brother does for another. Not just again, not just because you're looking for some benefit in the future of that person doing the same for you. Of course that's part of it. But because as we mentioned, with the first major point in this episode, it is your duty to God. These things are about God's honor, they are about God's truth, and above all else we have to defend that. And so bear in mind that if you have a Christian brother who brings some correction to you who says I believe that you are in error on this point, because God's word says this in these places places, recognize that he is doing his duty as a Christian, because what he is doing is he is defending God's truth, and secondarily he is also seeking to aid you in your Christian life, to aid To aid you in your faith by correcting what he believes to be an error. And if he is right, then you are better off because you've been corrected. If he's wrong, you have the opportunity to help him. That is how we should view these things that is how we should respond to them, instead of letting them turn into acrimonious conflicts of personality or whatever else it happens to be. But as Wo mentioned at the outset of this part of the episode, this does all come with an important caveat. We're dealing with brothers correcting brothers, and in this case I do mean the broader sense of brother, because of course our Christian sisters are also part of this. That plays into this differently, because there are differences between men and women. We've gone over those in previous episodes. But women are also part of this, because one of the core duties, of course, of a Christian man is to see that his wife is trained properly in the faith, is to instruct her, because he is the first and foremost teacher in her life with regard to the Christian faith. That's one of his duties, and he should of course take that very seriously. And so spend more time in the scriptures. But to return to the caveat, today we deal with far

more people than anyone ever in the past, with the only possible exception being, say, a king who held audiences and so would see many of his subjects. In the past, you knew a tiny handful of people who lived around you, unless perhaps you're a traveling merchant or something. You didn't know very many people. You didn't interact with very many people. There wasn't opportunity for those people to tell To tell you you're wrong, or maliciously perhaps to tell you you're wrong in some cases, that's no longer the case because we have things like social media. If I post something on Twitter, it is going to be seen by thousands of people I will never meet, or even tens of thousands of people I will never meet, or if it's something controversial, perhaps more than that. Every single person who replies to that does not have to be taken as seriously as I would take a Christian brother, particularly a Christian brother, whom I know well, who's been a friend perhaps for many years, a Christian brother I trust, and so for instance, if woe were to come to me and tell me he believes I am wrong about song about some particular issue of the Christian faith, I would take that very seriously. If someone with bright blue hair and a listing of Marvel movies in his bio pops up pops up in my Twitter mentions and tells me that he believes I am wrong about some facet of the Christian religion or I'm wrong about Jesus and his nature. I am not going to take that as seriously as I would take woe telling me that I am in error. And that is exactly how a Christian should respond to these things. If someone, some random person on the internet, tells you that you are in error with regard to the Christian religion. I'm not saying that you can just immediately dismiss that as being nothing. If you read that and your conscience is not pricked in any way whatsoever, you can probably just dismiss it. If however you think that there might be a point there, go and discuss it with your actual Christian brothers. Those men you know to be Christians, those men you can trust. You don't have to discuss it with this random person about whom you know nothing on the internet. That's probably not going to be as productive as if you raise the issue in your Bible study. You could say someone asked me a question or someone said I was wrong about this particular thing. What do you think? That's iron sharpening iron. That's discussing something with a Christian brother, so you can both deepen your understanding of the subject, and you can quiet your conscience if you had some sort of doubt because of something raised by a random person. You simply cannot take every single comment that comes your way in the modern world and treat it the same way you would another member of your church, if he had raised the issue. Because if you do that, it will not only absorb all of your time, it will probably drive you insane. So there are some caveats with this when it comes to modern life, because this is an issue of wisdom, and part of that wisdom is knowing what to take seriously and what not to take seriously, or at least not as seriously. You have to filter that. The same way that you filter everything else in life. You don't believe every single email you receive at face value. If you did, you would probably have been scammed out of all of your money by now. So we recognize that you have to do this filtering. The same is true with regard to to issues dealing with theology, dealing with the Christian faith. As Woe said, there are three possibilities. You can have a Christian brother who is coming to you earnestly, who believes that you are in error, you could have the Christian brother doing that who is himself in error, and there's always that third option. There could be someone who is doing it maliciously, and that is very often the case in the modern context, particularly on social media. Do we have Which is precisely why Paul's admonition that all scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for reproof and rebuke and correction of error is the central thesis of all of this. I'm not even going to call scripture a tiebreaker because scripture should be the source. It shouldn't be well my opinion and then your opinion and let's see what the Bible says. No. If you're coming to a man and you're trying to correct him and you didn't begin with the Bible, you have already sinned. You shouldn't be getting anything that you're going to admonish a man for sin anywhere other than the Bible. And so, you know, it's important, I think, when when we remember that passage, that when Paul wrote that, only the Old Testament existed. The New Testament didn't exist yet. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James, and Jude were in the process of writing the New Testament. So when God says all scripture is breathed out by God, it's inclusive of all scripture that we have today, but they were only talking about the Old Testament at that time. It's true of both. I mentioned this specifically because A, uh We give short shrift to the Old Testament in many cases in a lot of these discussions today. It's very common for people who call themselves Christian inside the church to set the Old Testament against the New Testament in effectively to confess that there are kind of two gods in play where the God really changed his mind. We have a lesser God and a greater God or a meaner God and a loving God. That's when you know that you're dealing with someone who's not an error. You're dealing with the teachings of demons. And the second minor point today, but that's going to be a major point for a couple upcoming episodes, is that when they were talking about that, they were talking almost exclusively about the Greek Old Testament. Virtually none of the quotations in the New Testament come from the Hebrew. That'll be a subject for a future day, but I just want to prime you guys if you're not already on Twitter following some of the things we've been discussing there.

There was a There was a radical change in the church regarding the Greek versus the Hebrew. And it has a lot of impact on our faith today. One of the quotes I'm gonna have a little bit will exemplify just how much changed. So now that you're primed to be able to receive as a Christian the rebuke of another and to be able to filter well is this true or is it false? We get to the harder subject of how and when do we rebuke the errors of others? As we said in the persuasiveness matters episode, there are times when you just keep your mouth shut because the fact that someone is wrong about something is not an occasion for you to necessarily leap into action and fix everything. And the examples we were giving, they were primarily not theological at all, but there may be cases where theology is in play. You know, Corey and I are Lutherans. This is a Christian podcast in a Lutheran vernacular in some cases, in a Lutheran flavor, but most of what we say, I think most of our audience just agrees with, is not really a Lutheran distinctives. We've done a couple episodes that we've largely sequestered about baptism and communion because those are a couple Lutheran distinctives. And we did them principally because we had so many people asking. That's not a case of us chasing the rest of you down the street and yelling at you because we think that you're wrong about these things, even though we believe you are wrong. And so we made the case in those episodes, here's what we believe scripture says about baptism or about communion. Those are sealed off areas of disagreement that fall into other areas. You know, it's when I say sealed off, I don't mean that like the sacraments are isolated in the Christian life. But they are particular subjects that are not always in play. I think it's something the Lutherans are incredibly bad at, especially today, is that because we have a sacramental theology that's sort of in opposition to most other denominations, there are a lot of Lutherans that that's their comfort zone. That's they want to run to that and say, I'm going to pick this fight because I got all the sources on my shelf. I can make these arguments because they're five centuries old. I'm going to beat up on those guys because they're wrong. And the question that I will always ask is what problem are you trying to solve? No one's arguing about communion. we're talking about trans and kids. Shut up about communion. And I think that you know, whatever your distinctive is in your denomination, when someone comes along and is addressing an issue and you say, Shut up about this, it's not the point, it's perceived as an attack on the doctrine when it's not, it's a correction of the misplaced emphasis. I think this is something that virtually all Protestants are guilty of today when it comes to the doctrine of justification. This is something that came out of the Ogden Conference a couple weeks ago, and something I've been saying for a while. The fact that justification

was the seminal issue of the Reformation doesn't mean it's a seminal issue today. Satan has moved on. And is not the justification is not important. Anytime I'm having a conversation with anyone anywhere, if I realize in the course of that conversation that they're wrong about justification, meaning they think that they can save themselves by whatever degree, I'm gonna stop whatever the rest of the conversation is and try to work through that first. Because whatever else, you know, we agree with in scriptural matters, if you think that you can earn your salvation, your salvation is in jeopardy. You're in the most extreme danger. So when I say something like justification is not the fight right now, it is not the justification doesn't matter, it's that it's not the pressing issue. Because it's very simple. I tweeted a couple days ago, it takes sixty seconds to explain justification to somebody. The fact that there's been reams of paper printed for centuries dealing with the errors surrounding it doesn't change the fact that it's a very simple question. Can I earn my salvation? Absolutely not. Who did? Jesus earned my salvation on the cross. He paid for my sins. He paid for your sins. That's justification. It's located on the cross. If you try to locate it anywhere else, you're ceasing to be a Christian. But today, that's not where Satan's attacks are. Satan's not attacking justification. And so sometimes when we're looking at confronting the errors and others others, sometimes we're not even confronting doctrinal errors. We're confronting errors of emphasis. I will loudly say the Lutherans are talking about almost exclusively the wrong things. Their heads are in the sixteenth century and they're not paying attention to where Satan's attacking, and it makes them virtually worthless. In fact, it makes most of them enemies of the church today. Not because the doctrine's wrong. The doctrine that I hold to that they're trying to defend is simply not the fight. And so the last part of this episode is about talking where the fight is. So we talked about last week too. Where is the battle? Because when you're looking to confront the errors of others, and principally for this portion, we're gonna be talking about theological error versus you know personal sin, although both are involved to some degree. And I think that's one of the distinctions we need to make. When you're looking at confronting the sin of another, you know, just as we talked just a minute ago about someone confronting your sin. In some cases it's just gonna be you're wrong about something in scripture. That's a bad sin because you have been misled about scripture, it's potentially undermining your faith. And then there are things where someone needs to confront you because you sinned. You sinned against them, you sinned against somebody else. When you're looking at confronting the sin and error of another, it's going to fall into a few different buckets. And those And those different categories need to be treated differently. If someone has sinned against you personally, you know, say Cory did something really mean to me, something sinful against me, I'm not gonna tweet about it. I'm gonna speak to him privately. I'm going to say you did this, this was a sin. You need to repent. I need to forgive you. And all this needs to happen. And so you know we figure it out. As Christian brothers. A lot of what's discussed in the New Testament is specifically focused on that. It's focused on personal sin. And I think the problem that we have today when we're looking at scripture for addressing these broader doctrinal problems and broader societal sins that aren't personal sins at all, is that when we look at the texts that are given in scripture that talk about how to deal with these sins against brothers, we ignore the brother part. Corey is my brother, according to the faith. And according to the flesh, to some degree. We're we come from the same parts of Europe. Long time ago. We're not recent relatives, we're distant relatives, but not that distant. Certainly much closer than I would be to an Indian. And yet principally he's my brother in the faith. So when those discussions happen in the New Testament, they apply to us. They apply to two Christian men hammering out their disagreements, whether it's sin, whatever it is. They don't apply universally. When Scripture speaks of a brother, it's not talking about everyone on the planet. Every man on the planet is not your brother. Every man on the planet is not your neighbor. And brother and neighbor aren't synonyms. They mean two different things theologically, because they mean two different things linguistically. Like they mean what they say. You know, the the fact that Cory is my brother according to the faith is a theological layer applied on top of the brotherhood according to the flesh. So it's saying that our adoption as sons of God makes every Christian on the planet our brothers according to the faith. And that's absolutely essential for the Christian faith. Because wherever a man is anywhere, whatever our disagreements, if we both actually have the same God, then the rules that the New Testament in particular sets sets out dealing with these disputes because we don't have the sacrificial system anymore. if you sin against me or I sin against you, we can't go sacrifice a pigeon or whatever at the temple. There's another way that we have to deal with it. If you're not my brother in the faith, then there are other ways to deal with things. And so when we look at the duty to confront sin, if it's in the church, there are private matters, and then they're also public matters, and they're distinct matters. And what's ironic about the fact that when you look at many of this scripture passages we're gonna get into here in just a minute, in the New Testament, people in the church used to say, Well you can't say that publicly because you know, this, that or the other thing where

someone's spreading false doctrine, they ignore the fact that Paul is literally emo it's mostly Paul, but God overall is publishing these epistles against public error. These epistles ring out for all time, for the eternity of the Christian church, that these errors occurred in these places. There's nothing that's ever in history been more public than the condemnation of these errors. And yet today we're told inside the church, oh, you have to keep that a secret. You can't say that that person did anything wrong publicly. You can't say this body is wrong. You have to go approach them privately. Utter bollocks. It's complete nonsense. And so that's the last part of this is dividing where is it a personal sin, where is it a personal error, where it is a private matter, and where is it a public matter? Because the parts of scripture that you look to in some cases are gonna vary. Now it's gonna vary in terms of the rules that apply, not in terms of the heart. That's why we did the the previous portion talking about the heart which we should receive correction. Because the same heart with which you receive the sort of correction should be the kind of heart that you use to approach certainly another brother. But when we love the things that God loves and we hate the things that God hates, we're going to apply it in different ways in different situations. When there's public doctrinal corruption in churches, it's not a private matter by any definition. Not scripturally, not in our confessions. It's a public error that's going to destroy souls. And the destruction, the scope of the damage being done, is another crucial part of this. If Cory gets something wrong with me, like if we have some personal problem with each other, that's private and it's between us. If Corey says something publicly that I disagree with and I believe that it's sin, I believe it's a corruption of scripture, then although I may speak to him privately, I certainly would because we're close friends, the damage that he's doing by saying something publicly is itself a matter of great urgency. It's much more urgent than just us disagreeing privately where no one else is being harmed. If the harm is being done publicly, the urgency is vastly greater. Because if it's just a private matter, then you know you can reconcile until you die. And even then you God has forgiven our sins and we can trust in his mercy even when we are ignorant of our own sin. But when someone is actively harming someone else, whether it's in the church or in the world, which is the other thing here, we have two spheres going on. Some of the harm that's done is bodily. It's in the left-hand kingdom, it's political. Has nothing to do with the church. And those are cases where things are simultaneously sin and they're matters of law. And this is where many people in the church come wading into conversations to which they're not parties, trying to trying to apply falsely biblical standards in cases where an army is needed, where the sword of the prince, the godly prince, is needed to deal with open rebellion. So the fact that there are texts that deal with error and rebuke and sin doesn't necessarily mean that that's the only thing you can do. And so as we go through these, some of these, just keep in mind that the wording of the passages matters. It's not enough to say, well, there was a sin, and so this is the only thing we can possibly do. There are sins where the response is you send in an army. And that's it. You don't send in priests or pastors. You don't send in the gospel. You send in people to kill the evil men, which is a state matter, it's not a personal matter, but sometimes that's the only response. It's not a gospel issue if someone is committing an invasion. That's a matter for defense. And the fact that the church is wading in incompetently and maliciously in many cases to those conversations is one of the chief political problems today. The those in the on the right who are in the church are trying to get those who are on the right outside of the church to say, look, we're on the same side, but you need Jesus. And then on the left, you have people who pretend to be in the church who are doing Satan's will against the Against the world. And we have unbelievers looking at the evil that's coming from inside the church and saying, well, I don't want anything to do with Jesus. So it's crucial for us under to understand as Christians when and how do we address error in the public sphere versus in the private sphere? Because it will ultimately separate some from God who could have been reached if we were faithful about these things. Woe mentioned the episode on perfect hatred Already, and there is another episode, really, a series in this case, that also serves as foundation for or preface to this episode, and that is the series we did on love, and of course, those episodes are closely related because hate and love are related. As we went over in those episodes. But one of the reasons that love is so important in this is because those who offer the rebuke or correction are often accused of being loveless. They are accused of lovelessness. That is one thing that is thrown as an accusation almost constantly. Woe and I both receive accusations of that on Twitter and elsewhere. Because you have people when it comes to those who are either ignorant or malicious or actually quite frankly usually both, but you have those who know only that God is love. That's all they know about scripture. They know absolutely nothing else. They've never picked up a Bible in many cases, and so they pop up pop up and say, well you're not being very loving. It's because they have no idea what love actually is. Permitting someone to persist in egregious error in sin is not love. That's hatred. That's the bad kind of hatred. That's not hatred of evil or hatred of the wicked. That's hatred of the good. Because all you're doing is letting that person merrily march straight

into hell. That is not love. You can think of Proverbs, spare the rods, spoil the child. There are certain things that you must do with regard to error, with regard to rebuke, with regard to raising children, all these related matters, that the modern world would not call love, because what the modern world does is it conflates permissiveness and license and calls them love because if you just let someone do whatever he pleases, that's called loving by the modern world. If you tell him these things you are doing are you going to harm you or are harming you? Well, that's not loving because you're being intolerant. Which is completely insane. If someone is eating poison and you tell him, you're eating poison, you need to stop. That's the loving option. The tolerant option would be to say nothing because well he can just eat whatever he pleases, that's his freedom, that's his liberty, he can do what he likes. That isn't love, that's hatred, that's malice. That's hatred taking the form of indifference, which is one of the worst kinds of hatred. And yet that is what the modern world attempts to pass off is love, and it is the accusation again that is so often thrown at those who are attempting to rebuke and correct these errors. And it is done often with malice. There are some Christians who do it simply out of ignorance, which is, quite frankly, in many cases, an excusable ignorance, because it shows an ignorance of Scripture, because again, you have to know Scripture in these matters, if someone says something, if they mention a topic, you should have parts of scripture that come to mind because you should be familiar enough with God's Word that you remember those things. So if someone says slavery is a sin, you should think, well, God gave Abraham slaves, and there's an entire book Philemon to a slave master, not commanding him to free his slave. If someone says polygyny is a sin, you should think, well, God told David he would give him more wives. If someone says that capital punishment is a sin, you should think, well, God actually commands that in Genesis nine six, it's part of the moral law. It flows from God's unchanging nature. It is required that Christians have and also exercise the death penalty. And any of several dozen other topics, there are ready answers for these things in Scripture if you know Scripture. And someone who rebukes these errors should not be accused of being quarrelsome or loveless or contentious or whatever accusation happens to come to mind of the person throwing it, because that is not what is at issue. What is at issue is whether or not the party making the contention is correct, whether it is the initial contention or the rebuke. The question is does this statement, does this assertion align with what God has said. Because if not, it is an error and needs to be rebuked. If it does, then the person attempting the rebuke is an error, and he needs to be corrected. Assuming that we are dealing, of course, with Christian

brothers, if you're just dealing with some malicious interlocutor, that's a different matter, you can dismiss that person or handle him differently. Because as Well mentioned, you have to read the words that are actually in Scripture. And so Scripture says if your brother, well that is if your brother, it is in this case your brother in Christ. Because there are differences there. We know this from our everyday life, your brother in law and your brother are two different things. They're both brothers, but there's a distinction there, and the same thing is true with regard to a brother or a brother in Christ. There are duties, there are rules, there are ways you approach these things as dictated by God's word, depending on whether you're dealing with a brother or not. You do not deal with a pagan, with an unbeliever in the exact same way you would deal with a brother. But to return to that issue of murder briefly, the issue of Genesis nine six, as Wo said, there are times where the solution where the medicine, as it were, is not the gospel, it is the sword. That is the case with regard to punishing murderers. The state uses the sword when punishing murderers. The state doesn't use the gospel to deal with that issue. Scripture doesn't command the use of the gospel to deal with that issue. I'm not saying that the gospel can't be somewhere in our juridical process if we were actually a Christian nation. There should probably be some point between arrest and execution, where a pastor goes and speaks to that man gives him the opportunity to repent, to confess his sins. As Christians we should offer that. That should be there somewhere. But that is not the core part of that process. That is not even the ultimate goal of that process. That is addressing wickedness in the left hand kingdom. And that is addressed with the sword. And so when Christians, supposed Christians, interject themselves and says, well is that a gospel issue? Or you're not letting the gospel predominate or whatever other catchphrase happens to come out. They need to be rebuked because they are actually harming whatever needs to be done with regard to the problem. We see this conflated sometimes in the case of those who will conflate forgiving your enemies, forgiving those who sin against you and wanting to do away with the punishment. There is a distinction there. There is a very important difference. Yes, you must forgive the person who sinned against you, however, if it is a matter with regard to the left hand kingdom for the prince to handle, he must still punish that man. Just because he has been forgiven by God and by those against whom he sinned does not mean that he is not punished temporally for that, it means that he will not be punished eternally for it if he repented. But the temporal punishment remains. These issues are distinct, they have to be treated differently. And so if someone interjects himself and tries to bring in well this scripture says that if your brother sins against you, well if it's not a brother it's not applicable, and if they try to bring in well the gospel, if it's not dealing with the gospel, it's not applicable. If it's dealing with transgressions of the moral law, yes, of course, that is an issue related to God's word and related to the positive laws of the country, that person may very well need to hear the gospel in the process, but the central and fundamental issue is that violation of the moral law which must be punished. These are important lines that we must know where they exist and we must recognize and respect them. You do not conflate these issues, because if you conflate them, not only do you create chaos. But quite frankly, in many cases, you're probably sinning in doing so. This is a problem that we see everywhere in the modern world, because we have Christians who don't know anything about scripture. They don't know anything about God, they don't know anything about the Christian faith. All they know is the word love. And so as just a general rule, which it's unfortunate, it's another one of those, but if someone accuses you of being loveless or not being loving or lovelessness or whatever the accusation is, if you hear that word, you should be on your guard. That is an indication the person with whom you are dealing does not actually understand Christianity, does not understand scripture, or is acting in malice, because that is one of Satan's favorite weapons. He loves to level the accusation against someone who is attempting rightly to rebuke error or sin. The accusation of being loveless, you aren't being kind, you aren't being Christ like, you're being insufficiently loving, you're being mean, you're being hateful. These are all of a piece. It is one of his favorite weapons, and far too many Christians fall for it because they hear that accusation, they shrink back from the attack, as it were, from the rebuke, from correcting that error that needs to be corrected. So if you hear that, you need to immediately be on your guard and you need to scrutinize what that person is saying, what that person is doing, and why he is doing it. Because again, you have to know are you dealing with a Christian brother, or are you dealing with someone who is something very different from a Christian brother? So in the case where you are dealing with Christian brothers, which is is a limited subset of this, but it's it's a vital one. And it's the one that we began with in the opposite direction where you're receiving a rebuke. I'm gonna give you just a few passages, brief ones to demonstrate the spirit which with we should approach the error in others the sin in others, whether it's personal sin or it's matters of theological error, this is what we should do. Galatians six says brothers, so we just been saying brothers, that means in the church. Does mean all human beings on the planet? Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit

of kindness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you two be tempted, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. As I said earlier, the spirit with which we receive rebukes we should also rebuke. You should not go after someone in a way that you wouldn't want them to come after you. And so when I say go after, obviously that's a very limited subset of all the possible ways of going after somebody. If somebody makes a mistake, you want to bear the fruit of repentance and that's going to mean that you gotta do it as a Christian in a way that's going to be received because inherently when someone comes to you and says, I'm doing so you're doing something wrong, your instinct is generally to get your ackles up to be defensive. Nobody likes to hear it. However, you receive it, you're generally your first instinct is not, oh great, I'm wrong. I love being wrong. Like, no, that's you shouldn't have a habit of that. But when the rebuke is given, it should be done in a spirit of gentleness, in the case of brothers in the church. And that's absolutely true. And it's also absolutely not universal. There are rebukes that should not be given in kindness, and we'll get to that in a minute. Another passage from James five, at the very end, James says, My brothers, again, if anyone among you in the church, that is, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, which is to say if anyone who was a Christian is straying from being Christian, my brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that what whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. So again that's the impetus behind any Christian correction of another brother. You see someone who's a Christian, he's in the church, he's a brother in Christ, and he's straying by whatever means. Maybe it's a personal sin, maybe it's something habitual, maybe it's an error that's going to lead to more error. And you know, because you've seen it a hundred times, you know that this is how that plays out. To go gently and rebuke that error and bring him back is loving. There are many other examples we're not going to get into. Much of the New Testament is about this sort of thing. It's absolutely vital that we approach these things within the church in a way that's loving, because to fail to do so will often bear destruction where perhaps repentance would have been possible. If someone is in error and you rebuke them so harshly that they can't help but become defensive, they may be hardened in their sin simply because they don't want a cave to how mean you were. That's entirely possible. It happens. People will maybe be factually correct about some sin, but then they go so far beyond what is permissible for a Christian that the other person becomes even less Christian as a response. Satan can get away with anything when we're not keeping our compasses pointed towards God. And so you begin your rebuke in scripture and you make sure that you have a Christian heart with another brother. But it again doesn't apply everywhere. This applies within the church. And in first Timothy five, Paul writes, As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality. So this is the case where someone in the church is effectively hardened in their sin. Yeah, I think one of the most common cases that we see in the church, unfortunately it tends not to be rebuked, is something like premarital fornication and shacking up and that sort of thing, where people are in are engaging in behavior. It's open and notorious, and everyone just kind of turns a blind eye because they're still coming to church. And so you you let it go. That is one of the most pernicious types of sin in the church because it corrupts everyone. It corrupts every man who knows and says nothing. I think that's another aspect of this. The scripture makes clear that there are cases where you must rebuke. And even though the rebuke must be given in gentleness and it must be done in a loving fashion to achieve the result of repentance that God wants. Because again, this is not us saying I want you to do this. It's saying, brother, God says this is a sin. Don't do this. It's harming you and it's harming everyone who witnesses it, it's harming anyone who keeps silent about it, because they're ultimately condoning public notorious sin by pretending it's not even notorious at all. Satan loves that. That's a victory condition for him. There are cases where persistent sin must be rebuked, and as God says rebuke it publicly so that the rest stand in fear. God wants fear and shame to be a part of these discussions. And I think that's something that's lost whenever you have these people making accusation of lovelessness. It is loving to say what you're doing is an error that leads to spiritual death. And the persistence in that error necessitates saying, look, what this person is doing over here, they stand judged, they stand condemned. Everyone should be fearful and they should be ashamed. Fear and shame are a crucial part of what has to happen in the church when someone is not repentant. And if you only ever focus on oh love, love, love. Love without knowing what it means, you won't understand that it is only loving to say that. It's hateful to just put up with open and notorious sin and say nothing. Because you really like 'em and so you just let it go. That's not loving. Corey gave a couple good examples of that. If you go to a doctor because you maybe weren't feeling well, you're run down or whatever, and they run some tests, and the tests turn up that you have some potentially fatal disease, and then you go in for your test results and the doctor says, no, you're fine. You know, it's probably just a cold and

sends you home. And you you feel a little bit better, you know, psychosomatically because you've got a clean bill of health and six months later you're dead because the progressive disease killed you Well the Christian today would say that what the doctor did was loving. Why? Because the doctor knows whenever he tells someone that they're gonna die if they don't have some radical treatment, they get sad. They cry, they're upset, it's disruptive to their life. They gotta do a bunch of other stuff. Some of it's not gonna be pleasant. And so the nicest, most loving thing a doctor can do is give them a clean bill of health, right? That's what the church does. The church papers over these open and torious sins. It's like, no, it's fine. You're okay. Even though those sins are sins which lead to spiritual death. The only loving thing, the only Christian thing for us to do in the church, just as in case of that doctor, is to correctly diagnose the sin, to say this thing is actually bad. It's actually harmful. That's the only way to treat it. You cannot treat a sin or a disease by pretending it's not there. Last example I want to give here from scripture is one of the most crucial because I think it's probably just about one of the most abused passages in scripture today in this context. It's a passage probably everybody knows to some degree. It's Matthew 18. When even if you don't know a whole lot of scripture by you know name and number, Matthew 18 for a lot of people is like, yeah, I know it's got something to do with you know confronting sin. I'm gonna read a paragraph, but I'm gonna just emphasize first the the first sentence of this. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him is fall between you and him alone. Now everything else that comes after is in this context, but we pretend it isn't. If your brother, that is someone in the church, sins against you, that is a personal sin, go and tell him his fall between you and him alone. That necessarily means that there are no other parties to this sin. If Cory does something to me, I don'm not gonna broadcast it on the internet. That would be a violation of Matthew 18. We deal with it privately because it's a private matter. Nobody else knows. And so to tell anyone else, hey, did you know what he did to me? That's is is itself slanderous. Even if it's true. Go back and listen to the slander episode if you've forgotten how that works, because it's vital. The problem with the misapplication of Matthew 18 today is it's very narrow how scripture describes it. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fall between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen, then tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. Now this is described in in many places as the Matthew 18 process. Process for admonition where if anyone sins anywhere, anytime, any place, this is the only thing you can possibly ever do. That's radically false. If it's a public sin, Matthew eighteen doesn't apply. That's only for private personal sin. The reason that Matthew eighteen is given when you actually just read the text and you don't have any baggage from false teaching, this is saying that a personal sin can in fact escalate to the point that someone is removed from the church. That what we call today church discipline is functionally and is truly only a recognition that, you know, say Corey has sinned against me or let's make it less mean. If I've sinned against Corey, I do something horrible to him, he confronts me, I don't repent, like no, you deserved it, whatever. He brings somebody else in so that someone else can testify that I'm unrepentant. If I'm like, I don't like any of you guys, I'm gonna keep doing what I want, you're all wrong. Then that is something that is made a matter of public record that everyone is told that not only did I do this thing in secret to Corey, but that I refused admonition, there was scriptural admonition, like I don't like any of you guys, I'm gonna do what I want. Publicly, I need to be recognized as an unbeliever that whatever else I may get right, if that is my approach when someone's like, You're sinning sinning, I'm not Christian. Because whatever else my confession may be, this is a confession of my damnation. To resist the rebuke of Christians when the Holy Spirit is in play, when scripture is in play, when clear sin is involved, if someone is unrepentant, they're not a Christian. Period. You cannot be a Christian if you're not repentant. So what Matthew 18 is actually teaching is not that there's a particular script that's applied to every possible case for anyone ever sinning anywhere in the universe. It's very specifically saying that even private sins can and must become private matters if they're matters that lead to damnation. If I'm unrepentant about something and nobody else knows about, and it rises to the level that we've previously discussed, it is necessary for that privacy to be made public and the expulsion from among all believers is something that is to be recognized. And that's it. This is a very, very narrow passage. It is not a universal script for all times and all places. If it's not a brother, it's involved, Matthew 18 has nothing to do with it. Even if the spirit isn't is informative. And so I gave these other passages. The spirit of these things is clearly informative. And what is the information? You seek repentance. Why? Because this is about God stuff. God seeks our repentance. God came among us as a man seeking our repentance. He died as a man on the cross. God died on the cross to pay for the sins that we're all committing. That's how much he cares about us repenting. For us to look to the cross and say, yes, that punishment

of sins was for mine. I put Christ on the cross, and God loved me so much that he put himself on the cross for my salvation. When we turn these passages that are trying to pursue the reconciliation in the church into something that actually becomes license for abuse and lies. Again, it's a satanic victory. Satan does a victory lap anytime someone's like Matthew 18, Matthew 18, Matthew 18, for things that are open, public, and notorious wickedness. It doesn't apply. It certainly doesn't apply in theological matters. If someone has an office of a public teacher or a pastor, and they go around lying in God's name, Matthew 18 has nothing to do. They have no protection, they have no eighth commandment protection. Their reputation is according to their false public confession. And that's the only reputation that they can have until they are brought to repentance. And so when somebody's running around as a false public teacher, spreading false public sin, you don't use Matthew eighteen, you tell the world this is a false prophet, they're endangering souls. And so as we're looking at how we apply this to others, there's it's not even a continuum, it's there are different sets of problems. And the different sets of problems have different rules, even though they're informed by the same spirit. And the spirit is protecting the church and protecting the individual, protecting the soul by bringing them to repentance, and protecting everyone else who is either going to witness their unrepentance or perhaps be subject to their lies because all those things are in play. And if we don't treat scripture the way God gives it to us, it leaves all these cracks for Satan to slip through. It's like, oh no, Matthew 18, Matthew 18, sure, there's a there's a false prophet running an entire denomination and he's lying in God's name, but you have to go speak to him privately, or you can't tell anyone what he did. No. When someone's putting out press releases and making public speeches and private speeches to hundreds of people, spreading lies and filth about God, you have no duty to speak to that man. Your duty is to publicly rebuke him. And in fact, any man who fails to do so, when he has any sort of duty to speak publicly within that body, has himself sinned. Silence is often a sin in these matters. That's something that no one will treat because you know what? It puts a lot of guys on the hook. There are men who should be speaking out against things that refuse to. And when push comes the shove, like, oh well, Matthew 18, I just haven't had a chance to go speak to him personally until I talk to this guy face to face, I can't tell the world he's a false prophet. Get real. The Reformation would not have happened with those rules, and Satan knows it. This distinction between private matters and public matters is key. It is absolutely essential to understand these things are handled differently because they are different. If your brother sins against you, and just you, no one knows about it, it was in private, it is a sin against you and you only. Then you are to deal with that one way. But if your brother is teaching falsely publicly, that is a sin against all of those who hear it, all of those who may hear it is a sin against God, of course, first and foremost, but that is a public matter that must be rebuked publicly. And there is a sort of third category here. It's not really a third category, because it's really a subset of public. But there are times where the sin, this is going to be particularly the case for false teaching, but there are other sins that could be in play. If a man is teaching falsely, but let's say not publicly, privately, but not privately as in one-on-one, privately as in say seminars or a class, some smaller number of people. This was more of an issue historically because today much of this will then be published on the internet later and it will be truly public. That is somewhere between the private matter of between one man and another, and the public matter of something that is deliberately published. But But if that man is in a position where he can then go on to create additional harm, say it's a pastor who is preaching in a church or a man leading a denomination, and he is saying these things in these supposedly semi private settings, you as a Christian, if you are in the position to rebuke this false teaching, have an absolute right to further publish the false things that he has been saying in order to rebuke them. This does not run afoul of the eighth commandment, it does not run afoul of the issues regarding slander. This is a matter with regard to the things of God, with regard to the truth, with regard to blasphemous false teaching. And it is public by virtue of his office, his position, the things that he is doing, the consequences of the harm, even the just the consequence of the potential harm. There are times where publication of that sin is going to be part of the rebuke. This again is a an issue of wisdom. You have to know as a Christian man when, where, and how to make that call. But just because someone says, well, you can't publish that because that was a private seminar. There were only 30 men there, that is not a defense. It is certainly not a perfect defense. There may be cases, and there will certainly be cases where the man who has the duty to rebuke will have to publish that sin, make it more public, and then rebuke it publicly. That is not slander, that is not a violation of the eighth commandment, because the sin is already effectively public, and because the consequences of that sin are going to continue to harm, are going to increase in harm When it comes to this matter of public sin, I want to give all of the Lutherans listening an actual paragraph number to memorize, and anyone else who is so inclined can memorize it as well. It is paragraph two hundred and eighty four of the large catechism. This is of course in the section dealing with the eighth

commandment, and this is most relevant for these issues because it deals directly and explicitly with the issue of public sin, and so I will go ahead and read that paragraph. All this, and to editorialize what precedes this is dealing with Is dealing with private sins, is dealing with the sin of one brother against another, and so all this has been said regarding secret sins, but where the sin is quite public, so that the judge and everybody know it, you can without any sin avoid him and let him go, because he is brought himself into disgrace. And you may also publicly testify concerning him, for when a matter is public in the light of day, there can be no slandering or false judging or testifying, as when we now reprove the Pope with his doctrine, which is publicly set forth in books and proclaimed in all the world. For where the sin is public, the reproof also must be public, that everyone may learn to guard against it. That last part is key what you are doing when you rebuke public sin if you have been given the opportunity and of course the abilities to do that, what you are doing is guarding against it, you are protecting others from it, because false doctrine must be refuted. Because if false doctrine is not refuted, there are those who will believe it. Of course there are those who will believe it anyway, but if it is refuted, if that false teacher is rebuked, if the correct teaching is set forth in opposition to that false teaching, it is not It will guard some of those who would have believed the blasphemy if not for that defense, if not for that rebuke. And so, for instance, this gives a very good example. If someone publishes a book, if someone publishes an essay, whatever written thing it happens to be, with false teaching in it, there is no concern about going to that man privately to rebuke him, because that is entirely public. That is a public sin. It is subject to public rebuke. Matthew 18 does not play into it, because Matthew 18 is addressing a different matter. It is addressing that private sin, the secret sin, the sin that is not published, that is not known to the wider world. That is a sin that can be handled in a different way. It must be handled in a different way, because God Because God has commanded us to do so. It is more productive to handle that sin in that way because you give the person the opportunity to repent. You're protecting his reputation, you are helping him as a Christian brother, you are attempting to salvage that relationship. Or if not necessarily at the level of salvaging it, to fix it because there's some problem. That is handled differently. That is not the consideration when it comes to public sin. We have many false teachers these days who stand up and in the name of Christ proclaim things that are directly contrary to scripture, that are incredibly wicked, that are abominations in the eyes of God. They are not subject to any of these protections in Scripture. They are They are to be rebuked forcefully. They are to be rebuked publicly. There's no concern with regard to their reputation or any of those other matters that play into our concern, that play into how we deal with We deal with brothers in Christ. These false teachers have to be destroyed. That is going to take the most forceful sort of rebuke and the most public sort of rebuke, as opposed to how you would deal with the private or the secret sins. And so if you see someone who is dealing with a false teacher in that way, you as a Christian may not rebuke the way he is doing it. Because how he is doing it, if he is doing it publicly and forcefully, as long as of course he himself is teaching rightly, what he is doing is not wrong. He is defending God's honor, he is defending God's truth. That is the concern there. The concern is not the reputation of the blasphemer, of the false teacher, of the demon who is standing up and pretending to be an angel of light, pretending to speak in God's name, and teaching falsely and leading other Christians or would be Christians astray, or leading apostates and unbelievers deeper into hell. The central concern is for God and His honor and His truth that is That is the duty with regard to these matters. That is the central duty being upheld by those who are teaching rightly and rebuking false teaching. However, there is also that secondary, that subsidiary concern concern with regard to our Christian brothers. False teaching is harmful. Even if you don't necessarily believe the false teaching, you now know it. There is some knowledge that is bad. We've gone over this many times in previous episodes. There are things that are harmful simply in the hearing. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world. There are going to be false teachers. They cannot all be silenced before they speak, or before they speak too broadly, before too many men have heard them. And so sometimes the best we can do is simply rebuke them and then teach correctly. But hearing that false teaching is harmful in and of itself. You can't sequester that and delete that from your mind. Some of it is there now. You've heard the false doctrine. It is harmful to hear false things about God. Those are things that we as Christians should not want to hear. In a fallen world, yes, sometimes we are going to have to hear them so that we are prepared to rebuke them, so we are prepared to stand against them. But it would be better if we did not have to, and it is certainly better if false teachers are not out there freely preaching and teaching these things. Not only is it an insult to God, is an affront to God, and it reflects poorly on the society, the nation that tolerates it, and God will judge that, and I would remind everyone that God does judge nations, not just individuals, but not only are all of those concerns, but there is also the concern for those who are Christian, who will be harmed by hearing this wickedness. Just as there are things that you should not want to see, there

are things you should not want to hear. And we all know the things you should not want to see. That one's easy. We all immediately grasp that. There are horrible things that you could see, and you would be far better off if you had never seen them. But the same is true with regard to hearing false things, and it is particularly true with regard to false things about God. And so this sort of rebuke of these false teachers can be forceful, can be even perhaps verging on strident. This is not a matter where we're concerned about tone, where we're concerned about being mean, or not being nice enough. This is a matter where we are concerned about the truth, where we are centrally concerned about rebuking those who are lying in God's name, about silencing wicked tongues, about ensuring that the truth is defended, and that the sheep are not harmed. This is not a place where the eighth commandment factors into defending this man's supposed reputation, or where slander is a concern. I'm not saying that you lie about him, because that is a different matter. But if you are simply standing up, speaking the truth about a wicked man, who is doing this in public and then rebuking him, all of these concerns in scripture about if your brother or if a brother, or when your brother, any of those concerns, they are absolutely not in play. And if a Christian tries to inject them into the matter, then you can rebuke him, because he has now aided that false teacher, and he himself is guilty of sin, to some degree guilty of the false sin of the false preacher himself, because when you aid someone who is teaching falsely, when you aid someone who is sinning particularly openly, you have become complicit in that sin, and so part of this is not being complicit in the sins of others. As Wo said, if you stand there silently, when God puts you in the position with the ability to rebuke false teaching, you have become complicit in it via your silence, because it is possible to become complicit in evil without doing anything except standing there with your soul mouth shut. An astonishing example of this complicity that I just came across last week. I had occasion to look at the LCMS bylaws. I was interested in what it would take to expel a present of the President of the LCMS. LCMS bylaw two point sixteen on the expulsion of a president of the Synod from membership in the Synod. So this is effectively removing the president himself from the roster of all the members of Synod, which if you remember from previous episodes or if you haven't been in the LCMS, pastors in congregations are members of Synod, individual Christian men are not. So there are no Christian men in that are members of Synod, it's pastors in its congregations. The bylaw related to removing a man from the roster has to do with open and notorious public sin, public false teaching, all manner of things that cross so many lines that the next step is to effectively defrock them. Here's what bylaw two point sixteen

says. If the council of presidents by fifty one percent of the votes of the District Presidents determines that bylaw section two point one six applies, then the Council of Presidents shall ensure that the accuser has met face to face with the accused president of the synod in the manner described in Matthew eighteen fifteen. Even if the alleged violation of Article thirteen of the Constitution is considered to be quote unquote public, this provision of Matthew 18:15 shall be followed. The reputation of all parties to the matter is to be protected as commanded in the eighth commandment. Now, as Corey just delineated a few minutes ago, this is in direct contradiction to Lutheran confessions. The Lutheran confessions expressly state that the manner of sin in Article 13, that I'm not going to bother reading, that it's it clearly applies here. Open public notorious sin is the only reason that 51% of the presidents would say we have to remove the president of the Senate. The Missouri Senate bylaws codify a direct repudiation of what scripture says about Matthew 18, and a direct repudiation of what the Lutheran confessions say in the large catechism about the eighth commandment. It's astonishing to me, and yet it's not astonishing at all at this point. This is absolutely blasphemous in the bylaws of the corporation and is there falsely to protect, as Corey just said, to protect blasphemers. None of this would ever apply because remember it takes fifty-one percent of the presidents to say this man needs to be removed. And then they would begin the proceedings to affect that. What this says is that the accuser of the man, as though there's an accuser when there's public and notorious thin. I think that's one of the greatest lies in all of this, when Matthew eighteen is misapplied in cases where it has nothing, no bearing whatsoever, is the notion that there has to be some individual accuser to be personally offended by whatever has happened. Because what does that do? It sets up a he said, she said. It means you have an accuser and you have the accused. Well no. When we have cases of open, notorious public sin, of paul false teaching, of false prophets, like we have with the current president, it's blasphemous. It's open public blasphemy against God Almighty. The only accuser is Christ himself. And although Christ is going to accuse men like him at Harrison on judgment day, every district president has a duty today to also accuse him. Every pastor has a duty to point to the things that have been falsely said about the Christian religion by men like him. And yeah, it doesn't happen. And the bylaws of the corporation are there to insulate such men from accountability to the Christian church, which in effect says it's not a Christian church, and it isn't. There are Christian churches among it, but the congregations are going to need to flee or be destroyed because this sort of pernicious denial of scripture can only ever possibly have the result of destroying faith. And part of the point of this episode is this stuff, the failure to to correctly address sin, to publicly address the wrong sins, all these are ways that Satan is going to exploit our own sinful fallen nature. Because we're all sinners. You know, it's the gimmick you're told as a little kid. If you point your finger at somebody, there are three fingers pointed back at you. It's kind of dumb, but it's also true. You don't want to be pointing fingers unless there's something this serious. But the reason that that's a dumb example is that there's no accuser when someone is doing something so open and egregious and notorious. It's not that oh I'm offended by this, is that this offends God. This is clearly against scripture, whatever it is. That's why the our compass needs to be pointed at God first and foremost, and then to correct others and say, look, man, you're not pointing at God anymore. You need to get on back on the right path and have your compass point at a God too. And you will know when your compasses are pointing in the same direction, and you're basing that on scripture, then you know that you're talking about the same God again. And so many of these disputes come to where our compasses are pointing. These guys will point to something that's not scriptural. They'll point to the global religion and say, This is what I believe. These historical events of the 20th century, this is what I determine faith in damnation based on. We will link once again for about the fifth time in the show notes a essay by Professor Mark, who sainted, who was discussing many of these subjects that we're talking about today. And he found a a quote from Luther that's perfectly apt. Luther said, Faith and love are two different things. Faith tolerates nothing, love tolerates everything, faith curses, love blesses, faith seeks revenge and punishment, love seeks to spare and to forgive. Therefore, when faith and God's word are involved, there can be no more loving or being patient, but only anger, zeal, and scolding. All prophets also acted in this way, that in matters of faith they showed no patience or mercy. And odds face this seems like a very heartless quote. It seems like a quote that's completely at odds with what I just read a few minutes ago from Galatians in first Timothy. It's loveless, right? And so Mark Wort's dealing directly with the accusation of lovelessness, which is why one of the first things we incorporated by reference was the episode that we did on perfect hatred. Because if you do not understand perfect hatred, Christian hatred, the duty of every Christian to hate that which God hates, none of the rest of this will make sense, along with the episodes that Corey mentioned that we did on love. You can't understand rebuke, in fact you can't understand faith if you don't understand love for that which God loves and hatred for that which God hates. We're dealing here when we're talking about rebuke and reproof and correction of

error of things that God hates. And while it is not license, therefore, for us to hate anyone who makes a mistake, because that's that's all of us. We all make mistakes every day. We sin, we get things wrong, we lie knowingly and by omission. We're sinners. We're human. We're creatures. We've we're fallen. We get things wrong. And so the distinction needs to be between hating that which God hates and hating people. And is not always the same thing. If I get something wrong and you believe that I'm a Christian, the first approach should be, well, you know, this guy made a mistake. He sinned. I don't hate him. I want to try to straighten him out so that we're both on the same page with regard to God. That approach Has to be rooted in faith that's always going to be about telling the truth. Just as in the example, the doctor refused to give a potentially fatal diagnosis because he didn't want the guy to feel bad. That's not loving. And so that's the point of Luther's quote is that when you it's not setting faith and love in opposition, it's saying that when we're dealing with matters of faith, of salvation, of doctrine, we can't give an inch. Satan wants to give an inch. He wants you to give up just the tiniest bit, the pinch of incense. There's so many examples throughout scripture. Beginning in the garden, when Eve recounted what Adam had told her God said about the fruit, she said that she would die. What did Satan say? you you will not surely die. It's not gonna be that bad. You'll be fine. That's the eternal cry of hell. It's not that bad. You're gonna be fine. And who doesn't want to hear that? Whatever you do wrong, you want to hear it's gonna be okay, right? you don't want to hear that you have a potentially fatal disease. You don't want to hear that you've sinned. You wanna hear that's gonna be hunky dory. And there's a distinction between it's gonna be hunky dory and Jesus died for your sins. The distinction is whether or not a sin occurred. Because, oh, I feel bad, yeah, maybe I didn't get right. Like, no, I sinned. I sinned against God. And if I sinned against another man or whatever, I I sinned first and only against God. Faith deals with that honestly, and it deals with it heartlessly in a sense that my heart isn't going out to someone and saying, oh, well, yeah, they're sinning and they're lying and they're doing all this stuff, but I really like 'em. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna tell 'em. Like no. The more you love someone, the more urgent it is to correct their error. And so that's why so often we will we'll try to delineate between that which is emotional and that which is factual, because our emotions will almost always mislead us. And it doesn't mean that they should be completely disregarded. I gave the example earlier. The scriptural admonitions for a Christian rebuking another Christian acknowledge the fact that you can do it in such a way that you'll drive someone further from God. If they've sinned and you clobber them when it's the wrong thing to do in wisdom, you can make things worse. You can compound one sin with another sin by failing to be wise about the situation. But your devotion must be to faith and to truth. And that is to God's will. God's eternal will doesn't change. And the love that we have for each other must always be bounded by saying, I'm going to tell the truth. And it's one of the things that Corey and I are good at, even though it makes many people dislike us. Even if they kinda like us. Like, you know, these guys I I I try to put up with them, but then they say this stuff that's really upsetting and you know they wander off in disgust. Happens fairly often. And all I can say is that I love you enough that I'm not gonna lie. I love you enough that I'm okay with you hating me for telling you the truth. And if I fall too far off that side of the horse, I confess to God that that is my weakness. But it's also one of my strengths. It's one of Corey's strengths. The fact that someone will be angry doesn't give us any information about whether we're right or wrong. And that's the the the essence of Luther's quote about faith and love being two different things. The faith that we as Christians are to bring to these matters isn't set against love. It's driven by love. But love cannot dominate faith because love can't override truth. That's why we talk about the transcendental sometimes. We talk about God's nature, which is unknowable and impossible and perfection, but when we talk about these different essential pieces of it, God is love and God is truth and those are not in opposition. So Luther's not citing them in opposition, neither are we. The doctor that fails to diagnose a fatal disease, the Christian who fails to diagnose a fatal sin in the name of love is not being loving at all. I think that's one of the crucial things we have to address in our own lives, when we're looking at the sins, the mistakes, the errors of others, are we being loving by letting something go? And in some cases, you know, like n not necessarily with sin, but things that are just, you know, if I think you're wrong about the twentieth century or the nineteenth century or the eighteenth century, I might think you're wrong about any number of things. I'm not gonna chase you around yelling at you about it, unless something is actually gonna rise to the level of salvation. That is when faith must override the loving tolerance of brothers just being human. We're all human, we make mistakes. When it's sin that's involved and when it's sin that's misleading others, a different set of rules apply because truth must dominate. Our faith must dominate. And that is not set against love. But love cannot be used to say, well, I love this guy so much, I'm not going to tell him the truth. That is an incoherent sentence. You cannot love someone such that you do not tell them that which is true. There's wisdom in how you approach it, but to remain silent when a man is endangering his

soul is hatred, even when it makes you feel better, even when it makes him feel better. Frankly, when there's sin and there's error involved and everybody feels better, that's your sign that something's gone horribly wrong. That's it's the crucial element of this episode is that they're are times when you gotta make people feel bad. This episode, last week's episode, there are times when you have to make people feel bad. Not necessarily everyone. It's not necessarily the duty of every single Christian in every single case to address every single error. That would be mass chaos. these are matters of of wisdom and patience and love, but the love must serve God. It cannot serve another man's feelings. So I know it is not a perfect analogy, but I will leave you with this analogy to sort of couch the differences here between and among private, semi-private, we could call it, and public. There are two distinct kinds of juridical systems, of court systems. The best example would be the US versus, say, Germany. Many of the EU countries, but we'll use Germany for this example. The difference is the adversarial versus the inquisitorial system. There are many differences here, and as I said, the analogy is not perfect, but it is a good way to help keep these parts in mind, to think about the difference here between the private and the public. The inquisitorial system is what you use for the private matters, the private sins, the secret sins, in the words of the large catechism. The adversarial system is what is used for public sin. The difference between the two systems, the inquisitorial system, first off, there is no jury. Second, the judge plays a much more active role and the goal is simply to arrive at truth. The goal is to figure out what happened and what is right, what should be done. The adversarial system, which is the system we have in the United states the judge plays a less active role, a less thorough role. It is the parties that independently collect evidence as opposed to in the inquisitorial system the judge collects the evidence and then in the actual case, in the courtroom, the parties are adversarial. They are against one another. It is a contest between the two sides. The judge serves as sort of a referee is how you could think of him. And there is a jury. There isn't a jury, but for the sake of the analogy, there's a jury. That is how you should view the public sin, the public dispute, because that is the public dispute. You have one side that has said something, that's one of the attorneys, or one of the parties. You have the other side who says something else. Well that's the other party, the other attorney. They are going to use the evidence they have amassed to argue for their side. Now, of course, ultimately the judge is God, and God, in the actual case, gets the final say. He plays a more active and final role than the judge would in the analogy. But you are the jury, because every Christian is part of the jury. You have to decide which side is right when it comes to these public contests. The arbiter, of course, is God's word. So you could also think of God's word as the judge because that is what God has given us to judge. His word is also, incidentally, the judge in the inquisitorial system, but that is a different approach, and the reason it's different is because the parties are not supposed to be adversarial in the sense that they are in the adversarial system. The goal is to find that truth. You are all working together to find the truth, using God's Word as the ultimate arbiter, because it is the only arbiter in these matters. And so if you think of the difference between private and public sin as being these two different approaches, but with that same central truth of God's word, then it gives you a mental framework into which you can slot things that you encounter in your life. If you encounter a public sin, if you are in a position to rebuke that you have the abilities God has given you, the knowledge, the attributes, the aptitude, whatever it happens to be, God has given you these things, then by all means you may be the one to stand up and rebuke that, to teach correctly with regard to the topic about which someone else was teaching falsely, or it may be the case that you're part of the jury in this particular instance, and so you look for those who are defending the false teaching, or in this case you've already found that man, you look for the man who is rebuking him. And then you use God's word to determine which one is correct. The men who are engaged in that public dispute, at least one of them will be using God's word. It may be that the false teacher is not, or he may be using it and perverting it, because of course, as we've mentioned before, and as we see clearly in scripture, Satan loves to pervert God's word. But at the very least, the man who is arguing for God's word will be employing it, so at least one party will be employing God's word. He can point you to the sections where you can go for yourself and you can read them, and you can see if what one man says or if what the other man says is in alignment with what God says, because that is the ultimate arbiter. But if you find yourself instead not dealing with this public sin, this public false teaching, if you find yourself dealing with a private sin, then you don't want that adversarial system. You are not necessarily in an adversarial position with regard to your brother who has sinned against you, or your brother who has come to you and said that you were sinning. You are on opposite sides, as it were with regard to a question, but your goal should be to find the truth. The goal in the adversarial system a lot of times is just to win. In this case, the truth matters because in this case, of course, it is God's word, and you as the jury should be seeking the truth, not just which side is better at arguing or happens to be flashier. You should want to arrive at a true conclusion. The

same thing in this case, in this specific facet, is true with regard to the inquisitorial system. You should want to arrive at the truth, but you're doing it in a less confrontational way. You're not doing it with the same level of acrimony that is going to be there with regard to public sin. Because as the quote from Luther said, there is a difference when it comes to matters of the faith versus matters of love. And one way you can think of that is the matters of faith are things dealing with the things of God, things dealing with God's truth. So So if someone is teaching that Jesus Christ is not God, that's a matter of faith. That has to be dealt with in a certain way. That man must be rebuked in no uncertain terms as a false teacher straight from the pits of hell. But if you're dealing with a matter where it is a matter between brothers, you don't deal with that the same way. You don't approach that the same way. And we all know this. We have this distinction also in the left hand kingdom. If you're dealing with politics, that is going to be handled a certain way. It is a purely public matter. Politics is Politics is public. Those rebukes, those arguments, the adversarial encounters are going to take on a certain tenor, a certain nature, that should not be the case, say in a family. That's private. Disputes between and among family members should be handled differently from political disputes. Well one, they shouldn't be broadcast, but they should be handled in love, they should be addressed with love. The same thing is true when it comes to dealing with your brothers in Christ. Yes, you have to be uncompromising with regard to the true things of God, with regard to the faith, with regard to the tenets of the faith, with regard to what is in God's Word. But you do that in love, in a way that you are not necessarily going to approach rebuking a false teacher. And so don't look for the same behavior if someone is dealing with a private matter versus a public matter. Those rebuking public false teachers are going to have to use tactics and engage in a way that would be inappropriate in a private matter. It is inappropriate to use the tactics you would use to refute a false teacher to rebuke him when you're dealing with a dispute with a brother or a sister or a parent, you behave differently in different places. You engage differently with different people. That is part of just human life, but certainly as part of the Christian life, it's part of wisdom. And so this distinction between private matters and public matters, between private sin and public sin, must be maintained. Those who attempt to blur them are attempting to mislead you or harm you in some way. Whether they are doing it personally or those behind them, the animating intelligence is doing it, it really doesn't matter, because in either case it is going to harm you if you let it. Do not let that harm you. Do not conflate these things. And so finally, though, I want to go back to that

first point, major point that we made. Because that is the core of this. That was the most important point. Yes, the rest of this matters. Yes, it is key. You have to understand it. because it gives you the roadmap, the the groundwork, the way to approach these matters, how to deal with these things, how to handle these as a Christian. But that first point is what is most important. And just like the commandments, the first one is more important than the rest, the second is more important than the third through the tenth, the first point matters the most because it is about God. And that is the core of this. When dealing with theological questions, when dealing with questions of scriptural truth, we must get them right, because these are the things of God. We are not permitted to be tolerant, to give leeway, to let bygones be bygones, to let others persist in error, to agree to disagree. Because when we are dealing with the things of God, what we are doing in what is our duty is to defend God's honor, to defend God's truth. And there is no leeway in that. Love covers a multitude of offences, and so we can do some of that with regard to private matters. We can overlook the gruffness of someone or the fact that someone approaches something in an unpleasant way. We can let some of those things slide not with regard to the truth claims, and the truth claims are the whole, are the totality of the public matters. And so we cannot do what the world says, because what the world always says to us, particularly in this day and age, is that you have to be tolerant. You have to be nice. You have to be loving. If you don't simply let the other person persist in his error, then you're being unloving, you're being unchristian, you're being unchristlike, you're being hateful, all of these accusations. Ignore them. And ignore them if they are thrown at those who are rebuking false doctrine, because they are not relevant, they do not play a role when it comes to public sin. Because what is being defended is God and His truth truth, and for that it is only an absolute defense that is acceptable, because there is not a single part of Scripture which we can yield and remain Christian if we are yielding it willfully, if we are yielding it knowingly. Absolutely everything God has told us is true, and all of it is worth defending. It isn't the case in all things in all parts of life that every hill is worth dying on, but when it comes to God's truth, it is absolutely true that every hill is worth defending, every hill is a hill on which it is reasonable to die because these are the things of God, and we as Christians are not permitted to compromise on them. We are not permitted to tolerate false teachers. Because God is truth, and any deviation from that is a deviation from God. So as we've said before, and will undoubtedly say again, if you aren't moving Godward you're moving hellward, so to compromise on these things, to tolerate false teaching, is to move away from God, is to walk toward hell, and that is what we are avoiding, by teaching correctly, by rebuking false teachers, and by doing so publicly and in an uncompromising way