Two Keys for Engaging with Blatant Sinners

As our culture continues its secularizing journey, we in the church will be faced with more and more quandaries about how to deal with the unbelieving world. Our difficulty comes when we seek to be faithful to Scripture which appears, to skeptics, to have conflicting commands. Before addressing such objections, we remember that our presuppositions about Scripture protect us. We state upfront that there is no actual conflict in God’s Word. Our God is all wise, and His Word is perfect. If you step away from this presupposition, you step away from the very ability to give an account for reason.

With that said, we turn to the two commands that must be harmonized. These two commands are:

Matthew 22:39 You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

2 Corinthians 6:17 Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord.

So how do we love our neighbor and maintain the proper separation commanded of us in 2 Corinthians 6:17?

First, we must acknowledge that there is a way to do both because God commands both. However, Christians often error to one side or the other. Some will be so desirous to love their neighbor that they will overlook sin and destroy their own testimony by such close proximity to sinful living. Jude 23 reminds us to “have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.” Others are pursuing holiness in such a way that the Christian bubble becomes an iron dome. They are so far removed from the sinful world that there are no unbelievers in sight. Paul’s example of becoming all things to all people in 1 Corinthians 9 is almost incomprehensible to these Christians.

So is there a way to strike a chord of harmony between these commands? I would like to suggest two keys for doing that very thing.

Don’t Normalize Sin

This first key is what keeps you separate from sin. Christians are called to follow Christ and to be faithful witnesses; light in the darkness and salt of the earth. This means that we cannot pretend that sin is normal. To be sure, the blatant sinner wants sin to look normal. In fact, they are trying to sin with such public regularity that it just fades into the background of everyday life. This we cannot let happen. The day is coming when every idle word will be judged and nothing, not even those things that have disappeared from consciousness, will be overlooked by the piercing eyes of holy justice. Christians have to be truth speakers to this reality. Therefore, the relationship that we pursue with homosexuals, adulterers, greedy businessmen, proud people, and the like, cannot exclude conversations about obvious sin in their lives. Yes, we must tell them of our love and demonstrate our love through real acts of relational do-gooding. But in all of that we must say something like, “Friend, what you are doing is sin against God and I want to talk about that with you.” Doing that could possibly end the relationship. That is a risk of love. But it is a risk you must take, and you must take it periodically because you cannot stand by and let sin be normalized to the sinner’s own destruction.

Don’t Enable Sin

The second key is the balance to the first, and it helps a Christian to love wisely. The relational do-gooding that we pursue with our unbelieving friend should be as robust as possible. We should hang-out with them, serve them, attend events together, and meet real needs. But the line that must not be crossed is enabling their sin. We should hang out with them until our hanging out is used for sin. We should serve them until our service supports a sinful action. We should attend events together until those events promote sin. We should always meet real need, but the reality is that the most important need they have is to see that sin can’t be enabled.

With these two keys Christians will have some guidelines for loving a person without enabling their sin, and being around them while being separate from a normalization of sin.