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‘Full of Grace and Truth’
A Talk by
(This talk was first given by Dusty at his local Fellowship in
The two Bible readings for that
meeting were Proverbs 15:3-14 and 3 John 1:1-8.)
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Good morning everyone. For the benefit of those here
today who don’t yet know me, I’m I don’t do a lot of
speaking, so I hope you’ll be patient with me. As we heard earlier in
the month, the ability to speak well in public is not related to
soundness. A lot of very talented speakers today are false
brothers, whereas the Apostle Paul admitted to the Corinthians that he was
not a great speaker. I must say that, in my time, I’ve heard a lot of
absolute rubbish preached, but it was often preached very capably. (After
all, Hitler himself was able to beguile an entire nation due to his
speaking ability.) What I’m trying to say is, please don’t determine
the quality of my material by the quality of my presentation! May I also say that I’m
delighted to be here. I mean that in both senses: Firstly, I’m happy to
be here behind this lectern this morning (although I’m acutely aware
that it is a very heavy responsibility indeed to bring teaching to the
Body of Christ). I’m extremely grateful to the eldership of this church
for trusting me and giving me this opportunity to bring what I believe the
Lord wants me to say today… But I’m also very happy
to be here in the sense of being attached
to this Fellowship, and to have met so many good people so quickly. There are just a couple of
‘admin’ points for us before I get into the topic of my talk. First of
all, please test everything I say. (As we also
heard a few weeks ago, it’s important not to judge by the outward
appearance, but it is important
to judge my words. Please check
what I say against holy scripture.) Secondly, I will happily take some
questions at the end, so, if any queries occur to you as we go along, it
would be great if they could be held on to until then. I hope that’s all
right.
PART
1: The NEED for correction Okay. When the Lord Jesus Christ was here on Earth
with us, He was described as being “full
of grace and truth” (John The fact is that, no
matter what a believer wants for
his local church, or indeed what he wants from
his local church, the most basic requirement for seeing that desire come
to fruition – as long as it is a biblical desire of course – is truth. So, whether a
person wants their Fellowship to be…
...Whatever our individual
dreams and desires for our local church, the key in every single case is
for us congregants to increasingly know – and obviously obey – the
truth. (Whatever we want for our own
lives – again, provided that thing is biblical – is also achieved
through knowing, and obeying, the truth.) Clearly it is rather hard for a
person to obey the truth if they
don’t first have a good grasp
of the truth. The more we know the truth, the more we can obey it. The essential point I’m
leading up to is that every Christian needs instruction and correction. We
all need our brothers and sisters in the Lord to be watching out for us
and to be prepared to point out truths that we are missing or ignoring.
(Please note that I am talking here of correction regarding both doctrine and practice – i.e. our beliefs and
our behaviour.) My talk today is about
this subject of correction, and my thoughts have been organized into two
parts. To begin with I plan to discuss the ways in which a Christian
should try to receive
correction, and then I want to look at the ways in which a Christian
should try to bring correction to another. (My suggestions come from 23 years of
experience of making a lot of mistakes myself and watching others make
them as well. I therefore beg you to consider what I have to say, rather
than unnecessarily repeating the same errors that I and others have made
– and which any right-thinking believer would regret.)
PART
2: RECEIVING correction The flesh hates correction. It therefore makes sense
for me to approach this section of my talk by putting myself in the hot-seat and by telling you how I will endeavour to respond when I receive correction from anyone in
this Fellowship. (However, I obviously believe the following principles
should be applied by all
believers.) BE THANKFUL The first point to make is
that, if someone gives me correction, I will always seek to be thankful
– i.e. to show gratitude. Why ought I to be thankful when someone comes
up and criticizes me? There are three reasons I want to suggest here: (1)
Firstly, I ought to be grateful because correction will enable me to be a
better-equipped servant of the Lord. If I want to be a true, and growing,
disciple then I will need correction (and even admonition) at times. (2)
Secondly, I ought to be grateful because the flesh and the devil are
always seeking to deceive us and take us away from the truth. If I give in
to my flesh, or am fooled by the enemy, I may well need others to help
show me my actual situation. (Indeed, I have come to believe that we
Christians are designed to need
our brothers and sisters to watch out for us – just as different parts
of a human body are needed to protect and restore other parts so that they
can do their job properly. God surely encourages us, in Proverbs, to have
a “multitude of counsellors” for this very reason (Prov. (3)
Thirdly, I ought to be grateful for correction because God says that we
must love the truth – and must
therefore seek it – and that His People “are destroyed
for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). If I have an error in my theology
then it will inevitably lead me to have a distorted view of God – which
can only serve to distance me from Him. In Psalm 119 we are told to avoid
“every false way”. In fact,
it says nothing of the sort. The Psalm in question says we are to “HATE” every false way (see verses 104 & 128). It follows that
I should love being helped to
recognize false ways in my life. So, I need to be grateful
to the person bringing the correction. I should also be grateful to God,
for He says that we are to be thankful in ALL circumstances, even those
which hurt (e.g. see Eph. BE OPEN Next, whenever someone attempts to correct me, I will endeavour to be open to that correction… In this regard, let’s go back to Proverbs 15, which
was the first reading this morning. We’ve already seen, in verse 10,
that “he that hateth reproof shall die”
(not, ‘he that hateth reproof shall not store up much treasure in
heaven’, or ‘he that hateth reproof shall lack friends’, but “he
that hateth reproof shall die”).
Very many of the other verses in that chapter of the Bible are directly
relevant to this talk, but I’ll leave you to check the rest of them at
your leisure. For now, I just want to mention one other – i.e. verse 32.
It reads: “He that refuseth instruction despiseth
his own soul: but he that heareth
reproof getteth understanding”. It shouldn’t matter who
the person bringing the correction is, I still need to be open to it. It
shouldn’t matter to me if the person trying to correct me is
well-dressed or not, eloquent or not, even sound
or not. Regardless of what the person is like, if they try to bring me
correction, I need to be open to it. Even if they are horrible in the way
they present it, what matters most is whether the point they are making is
legitimate or not. (An American friend of mine recently had someone
‘nuke’ him, as he likes to term it, for sending the person a criticism
of a new fad with which they were getting involved. But this person
focused entirely on the style of my friend's letter rather than facing up to the question of
whether his points were right or not – yet it is the latter which is the
most important issue.) CHECK IT CAREFULLY Next, if someone brings me
correction, I will always endeavour to check it out carefully and to take
it very seriously – even if I don’t initially believe the other person
is right about the particular point they have raised. Now, I may be able to
think of one or more scriptures which appear to negate the criticism being
offered me, but, in order to encourage us to read the whole Bible, God has
made a lot of individual verses rather ambiguous. [For
proof of this, please see my talks entitled ‘Beware False Balances’ –
freely downloadable from the
Better Than Rubies
section of the Bayith
website] Therefore,
if I disagree with some correction because I think I know of a verse which
gainsays that correction, I will take care to triple-check that my
understanding of the verse, in context, does indeed line up with the rest of Scripture before
responding with it. Even if I am certain that the correction on offer is completely wrong, I should still
take it away and mull it over and check it against holy writ. It may well
also be advisable for me to ask the other person for clarification –
and/or for all the supporting Bible verses they can bring to bear. In
truth, even if the correction is totally unfounded, it may still
give me useful tips as to how I can pre-empt similar criticisms in the
future. (What I mean here is that I may unintentionally have done
something which, although entirely reasonable, did allow folks to
misunderstand my actions. Perhaps I inadvertently wrote an ambiguous
statement in a particular article – which enabled people to misconstrue
my agenda. Even if my motives were entirely pure and what I wrote was
fair, some tightening of my work can avoid anyone else from wanting to
make the same criticism of me.) BE AMIABLE The fourth and final thing
I will try to do whenever someone brings me correction is to be amiable. In a moment we will look at some advisable ways to bring
correction, but the ‘bottom line’ is that, even if the person
correcting me fails in all these
ways, I still need to respond amiably and graciously. Why is this? Well,
mainly because the Bible tells me to. Colossians says: “Let your speech
be alway with grace”. But there is another important reason for
giving this response. Let me explain by way of an example: You sometimes see people
being ill-mannered to total strangers for no reason at all. Maybe they
arrogantly push into a queue ahead of someone else, or perhaps they laugh
loudly and viciously at a person nearby who has just had a misfortune. If
you think about it, this sort of behaviour is ridiculous, because that
ill-mannered person may come to need that same stranger’s help. Suppose
the obnoxious person suddenly has an accident. The stranger who has been
abused may well be seriously discouraged from aiding someone who has just
been horrible to them without cause. This sort of thing happens
quite a lot in the workplace. A
person is unjustifiably sharp, or otherwise unpleasant, to someone in
another department, apparently never thinking
that they will probably need to ask that same person for a work-related
favour one day. Won’t the abused person be significantly less motivated
to help the individual who was ill-natured toward them?… In the matter of bringing
correction, the same is basically true of Christians. If I am
objectionable in my response to someone who was simply trying to bless me
with correction, and if, later on, they are the only person to recognize
some other problem in my life, I have shot myself in the foot – or
possibly even dug my own grave – because my graceless reaction in the
past will discourage the other person from correcting me again. And what if the person I
have alienated goes on to inform other members of the church that I am
difficult or disagreeable when challenged? Will that news encourage those
other folks to bring me correction when I need it? I don’t think so.
(I’m not suggesting that true Christians will cease to love
a brother who is unpleasant when being corrected, but I am saying that it could easily tip the balance regarding whether the
offended party is willing to put themselves in harm’s way again by
bringing correction in the future. It might even distance them so much
that they physically cannot spot their brother’s subsequent errors.) If we feel that someone we
know has indeed become reticent to challenge us, it is wise to be
pro-active and to reassure them that they need not be so. For instance, we
can humbly ask them if they have any concerns over any area of our walk.
This is just one simple way in which we can help show them that we are
teachable after all.
PART
3: BRINGING correction Okay. So much for receiving
correction. What if the shoe is on the other foot and we need to bring
correction? What is the most effective way to do that? (Notice I have
deliberately used the word ‘effective’ here. We must keep the goal
in view – the goal being to rescue the person from their error, or at
least to leave them without excuse. The goal must never be to get the
matter off our chest, or to make ourselves look clever, or anything like
that. We need to make sure that our motivation is right. We must be
careful not to correct others out of ‘religiosity’ or to ‘score
points’. Just as the flesh hates to receive correction, so the flesh loves to give correction,
so we have to make very certain that any correction we bring is given for
godly reasons.) PREPARATION Before correcting another
believer, we must do some
preparation. For a start, we must check
our facts. And by that I not only mean we must check to ensure
that the correction we plan to bring is biblical (it surely goes without
saying that it is essential we get this aspect right), but we must also
check that the perceived problem does indeed exist in the other person. It
is very
easy to misunderstand a person’s actions, or to mishear things people
say. We can often get wires crossed – especially if we have heard of the
matter secondhand. And jumping to firm conclusions is extremely foolish
and dangerous. We must be sure we know the other person’s side of the
story before launching into correction. I cannot emphasize this point
strongly enough. Another thing that I have
come to realize is absolutely crucial, whenever bringing correction, is to
pray before doing so. Even if it
is a small, simple matter at issue, we must be careful not to act in our
own strength. For all we know, the other person may be going through a
terrible time at that moment, e.g. in their work life or family life, and
even one wrong word can do a terrible amount of damage in such
circumstances… I have also come to see
that the enemy is very good at creating situations where one person is
minded to bring correction to another at exactly the wrong
time (and in exactly the wrong way – i.e. in a way which presses all the
wrong buttons). The correction may well be legitimate, but if it is not
handled in God’s timing or in His way then it can bring serious harm to
the Body of Christ. Another reason we need to
pray – and need to make sure we bring our correction in the way God
wants for that specific situation – is that most people today seem, to a
lesser or greater degree, to have a ‘spiritual blindness’. If a person
has been taught an error in the past which has pleased their flesh and is
something to which they have held for a long time – despite them being
exposed to arguments which deny that view – they will almost certainly
have developed a degree of spiritual blindness which will make it far
tougher to correct them… Their understanding will
be clouded, and they may well get angry and unpleasant when their view is
challenged. Only God knows how to deal with such a blindness, so we must
be sensitive to His leading because we may only get one opportunity to bring our concern. (In other words, the other
person may become too hardened against us and our suggestion if we get our
first approach wrong.) I have met some absolutely lovely Christians in the
past who, when gently challenged on certain errors, suddenly and dramatically
changed for the worse toward the person correcting them – because of a
spiritual blindness in that area. Another important
principle when preparing to bring correction is to avoid being hasty.
Unless we’re unlikely to be able to contact the other person in the
future, there is rarely any need to bring correction on the first day we
discern the problem. It is frequently very helpful to hold back and
instead to start building (or improving) a relationship with them before
confronting them with the criticism. (Sometimes it will be the
case that God does not want the issue raised for quite a long time –
especially where the error in question is only a symptom of a deeper
problem which needs identifying and addressing first. Besides, a delay
will also give us the chance to learn more about the person – and thus
pick up some valuable clues as to how best to approach them. A delay will
probably also make it easier for the other party to receive our comments,
because they will be impressed that we initially held back rather than
rushing in straightaway.) Having said all this, if
the other person is known to be spreading their error – e.g. by publicly
teaching a heresy – then we may not have the luxury of biding our time. The closing point I want
to make here is that, if we are thinking of bringing a relatively advanced piece of instruction or correction, we do need to consider
the doctrinal maturity of the recipient, else we may find ourselves trying
to cast our pearls of wisdom before a metaphorical swine – which is not
only a pointless activity but,
according to Scripture, a dangerous one as well (Matt. 7:6). DELIVERY
If, after
completing our preparation, we decide that it is right to go ahead and
deliver the correction, what are the keys to doing that successfully? One
point I really want to stress here is the need to be amiable, or graceful. (Unless one is dealing with children, I
believe it is only for mature elders who are full of the Holy Spirit and
who are known to be upstanding men of God to ever ‘rebuke sharply’ in
a church context. Even such strong admonition should still be given in a
gracious way. Besides, all types
of rebuke should be used very sparingly, and should rarely be the first
resort. And anyone giving a rebuke must be absolutely certain of their
ground, for they will look supremely foolish - and will grievously
exasperate the person they rebuked - if the correction later proves to be
wrong.)
If we lack
grace during such a delicate activity as correcting someone’s life then
we are potentially going to do damage both to the other person and to our
reputation. For example, a single harsh comment could destroy
a new believer’s faith – or could put a sincere seeker off
Christianity for good. (Please see James 3:5-8 for more details on the
terrible dangers of a poorly-controlled tongue.) No man or woman of God
could easily cope with having that on their conscience. How then do we
correct people in an amiable or graceful way?
It is
invariably good to start by finding a few encouraging things to say about
the other person. The Lord Himself did this to each of the churches in
Revelation (as long as there existed
any such thing to say about them!). This approach does a great deal to
prove that our desire is not to ‘knock’ the other person. We need to
make sure that they know we’ve got their best interests at heart. We
also need to speak in a patient, gentle, humble, tenderhearted way (see
Col. 1:10-11, 1 Thess.
A further
point worth quickly making is that, if the issue we are raising is one
with which we ourselves have struggled in the past, then we should
definitely consider letting the other person know this (unless the
information is sensitive and the other person lacks the maturity to handle
it aright). This will again help to demonstrate that we are not trying to
correct the other party just for the sake of it, and will also tell them
that we probably know what we are talking about – and therefore that we
would probably also be an ideal person to advise them on how to deal with
the problem. (I should make clear at this juncture that I am saying all
these things for my instruction
too.)
Another
important way for us to show grace is to think the best of the person. For
instance, when we choose our words, we need to bear in mind the fact that
there may well be mitigating circumstances. The British Army is strong
here. Before chastising one of their men, officers are taught always to
give the soldier a decent opportunity to explain his actions, in case it
turns out that he had a good reason for doing what he did, and the officer
ends up looking an idiot – and thus losing the respect necessary to do
his job. OTHER
POINTS RE: DELIVERY
Apart from
the need to be graceful, there are a couple of other things which can help
make correction more effective. The first is that we should explain our
concern very clearly. A colossal
number of divisions within the Body of Christ are simply due to inadequate
levels of communication. We need to make sure there is no room for
misunderstanding. In this regard it is usually also helpful to ration
our criticisms rather than expressing a whole raft of them in one go. For,
not only does the latter approach run the risk of pushing the other
person’s carnal side beyond what they can handle, but it may also mean
that some of our criticisms end up not getting explained fully.
We also
need to consider the gender, and relative age, of the person we are
attempting to correct. For example, according to Scripture, a person
seeking to bring correction to a significantly older individual (say, more
than 20% older) needs to be very careful to give the correction in a
respectful manner. 1 Timothy 5:1 states: “Rebuke not
an elder, but entreat him as a father”. I well remember an occasion when
I rebuked an elder. I paid a heavy price for doing so because, although it
was very mildly worded, I gave my rebuke in public – which greatly
embarrassed the person who had introduced me to this elder and prompted
him to privately rubbish me (unjustifiably) to that elder for several
years afterwards.
Following
nicely on from this anecdote, a further recommendation I would make is
that correction should normally be done privately.
Trying to correct someone in front of other people can sometimes work well (hence 1 Tim.
I am not
following Matthew 18 in this regard because that passage only refers to private
trespass against us rather than adherence to some wrong doctrine or
practice. [For proof of this, and for solid advice on how to handle these types of
personal conflict, see endnote [2].] EXTRA
POINTS TO CONSIDER
My talk
today is not an exhaustive discussion of this whole subject, but merely
some tips I’ve picked up over the years. There are just two further
pieces of advice I want to offer on the best way to bring correction.
Firstly, in some cases it is more helpful to communicate our concerns
through a letter rather than bringing them verbally. Writing is often the best
approach if the point at issue will require careful or substantial
explanation. It is also often the wisest route on those occasions where we
are unlikely to express ourselves well in person – perhaps because we
have a weak short-term memory or because we might get flustered (e.g.
because we do not know the other party very well, or because they are not
terribly open to correction)...
I say this
because a letter allows us to draft and redraft our phraseology as many
times as we need in order to get the most godly and effective wording
possible. Additionally, many people find it far easier to accept
admonition by reading something on their own than by being criticized in
person. (Indeed, people find it even
easier to accept correction from an item, e.g. a book, by a third
party. It just makes matters less personal – so people feel less
humiliated – and, as I say, the important thing is that the individual
gets corrected, even if it takes a bit more effort on our part.) Although such indirect approaches must be used with caution, since a letter obviously lacks the human intonation etc that we would naturally communicate if we were dealing with the person face-to-face, nevertheless such methods do also allow the ‘correctee’ time to consider the issue properly before having to supply any response. Face-to-face correction, or correction given over the ’phone, affords the person vastly less time to chew the matter over before needing to give some sort of reply. And this brings me happily to my final thought on how best to bring correction…
If the
person seems unresponsive while we are trying to correct them, we really
do have to learn to ‘back off’ and give them space to consider our
concern in their own time rather than to keep hammering them with the same
point on that one occasion – which will only get both sides agitated
(and therefore at risk of saying something they will regret). After all,
there is seldom any desperate
hurry for the person to change, and a surprisingly large proportion of
such people will take your comments seriously when they mull them over
during the subsequent hours and days.
CONCLUSION Well, that’s it. When being
corrected, we need to be Careful, Open, Amiable and Thankful. (One way to
remember this is c – o – a – t, or ‘coat’.) And when giving
correction we need to be Careful, Amiable and Prayerful (which could be
summarized as c - a - p or ‘cap’.) Whichever situation we find
ourselves in, let’s make sure we’re ‘covered’ with our coat or
cap.
Alongside
the need for truth, what I particularly want to stress today is the need
to be loving to one another,
i.e. loving to the brethren. If a person does not treat the brethren in a
charitable, loving way then 1 John 3 (part of which formed our second
reading this morning) says that this person is not
a believer. For example, verse 10 says “In this
the children of God are manifest, and
the children of the devil: whosoever
doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither
he that loveth not his brother.” And verse 14 reads “We know
that we have passed from death unto life, because we love
the brethren. He that loveth not
his brother abideth in death”.
(The Word says this because, if we do not genuinely love our brothers in
the Lord then we are clearly not in touch with the true God – else His
Spirit would be supplying us with more than enough of the love, and desire
to love others, that we need.) In closing, we must be prepared to give correction – and at least as prepared to receive correction – because both are paramount if we want this Fellowship to be all it can be. If we want this church to be blameless, if we want it to hear God, if we want it to be salt and light in this area, if we want it to grow; whatever we want for our lives and for this church, it all starts with truth – and it all ends with truth. Any questions? Thank you for listening, and God bless you.
Endnotes [1]
The book is called
Alpha – the
Unofficial Guide: Overview. [2] For a good, if rather direct, piece which proves that Matthew 18 only applies to private transgression against us rather than, for instance, to public teaching, see Paul Proctor, ‘Heretics and Hypocrites’, 08:May:2005, http://newswithviews.com/PaulProctor/proctor70.htm. For helpful material on how to handle Matthew-18-type challenges, see the article by Jay Adams, ‘Forgiveness’, first published in Evangelical Times, 1997, or Ken Sande, ‘Forgive as God Forgave You’, which is a chapter from his book The Peacemaker (Baker Books, 1997).
© Dusty Peterson https://www.bayith.org bayith@blueyonder.co.uk | |