How Do You Confront A Christian Brother or Sister about His or Her Sin?

We are all sinners. We should not believe that anyone is better than another. Yet, there are times when a continuing sin is destroying the fellowship a Christian has with the Lord. Other Christians have a responsibility to confront their Christian brothers and sisters when they are seen walking in sin away from the Lord.

There are no church police. There should be no group that make it their job to search out the sinners who need confrontation. It is the responsibility of each Christian if he or she can meet some qualifications.

First, do you love the person you are going to confront? The person confronting must have an attitude of redeeming the sinner rather than merely showing him that he is wrong. It is not about saying you know what is going on. It is imperative that the motivation is bringing the sinner back into the fellowship. Otherwise, it has no purpose.

The closest friend who is willing to confront the one in sin should be the one who confront him. This friend should ask the person in sin privately if the sin is true unless the friend has personally observed the person committing the sin. Sometimes reports are merely suspicions and the friend needs to go back to the one making the accusation and tell them it is not true and to stop making the accusations. For example, Mike sees Bill pulling away from a bar a couple of times a week. Mike knows the John is Bill's friend and tells him he thinks that Bill is drinking a lot. John asks Mike if he has been drinking a lot since he has been seen leaving the bar a couple of nights a week. Mike says that he has been helping the bartender's son pass his GED and was meeting him there for tutoring purposes. John then goes back to Mike and tells him that things are really okay and to go back to anyone he has said he suspected Bill has been drinking a lot and straighten things out.

However, the danger in this method is when the one being confronted denies the sin when he was really committing it. It tears down any trust that the friends once had when the sin is finally revealed. Trust is the basis of any good relationship. The relationship must be rebuilt. It cannot be rebuilt as long as one of the two continues to lie.

Second, are you willing to do what is necessary to show the one sinning how egregious their sin is? Let's say that the one committing the sin admits he is doing it. He says that he is going to continue to do so whether his friend likes it or not. Then, the friend will get one or two other believers to go with him to confront the one sinning again. This accomplishes a requirement of Scripture of two or three witnesses necessary to bring about a conviction. These should be very respected people in the church. They should have a reputation for spiritual decisions. They may tell the one confronting that he is being too picky about his confrontation and should look at the log in his own eye before confronting another. More than likely though, they will go with this friend to confront the one who is in sin.

Fellowship should be withdrawn if the one who continues in sin rejects his friend and the one or two he has brought with them. This is a formal separation of the position the one sinning has already made. He has already separated himself from his friends by his sin. The friends should no longer have fellowship but should tell the one sinning they will always be there if the one sinning would like to come home. This tells the one sinning that sin is serious but grace is available. But grace cannot be given while a person remains committed to the sin.

Sometimes there are serious consequences to sin that linger well beyond the time that the sin was committed. Many years ago I was in a church where a family with middle school age children began to visit. They seemed like a great family for our church. One of our members came to the pastor and told him that he couldn't worship while the father in this family was in our the church. The member said that this man had an affair with his wife. After confronting the visitor we discovered that he had affairs in other churches and had been asked to leave them. We told him he must apologize to these other congregations before he could attend our church. He told us he was unwilling to do so. What would keep him from doing the same thing in our church if he was unrepentant about what he had done in other churches? His continued affairs also pointed to an unrepentant heart. Church was just a good place for him to hunt for unsuspecting women. We asked him not to attend our church until he was willing to make things right. We never saw him again.

Please make sure you understand that confronting a friend in sin does not always turn out like you would like. In fact, I have some experiences where it didn't come out well at all. But, how can we say that we are loving when we will allow our friends to hurt themselves and others around us?

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