Leviticus 19:17
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.”
So again, how much do you hate your friends? Do you sit idly by as your friends walk straight into a pit?
What kind of pit?
How about bitterness or pride? How deep is that hole? Can it even be measured? How about a big ol crater of anger or a cavern of gossip? Do you say nothing as they do all things with grumbling and complaining?
Do you take a back seat and just watch it all unfold, like a casual bystander, as your friend drives off a cliff? Do you love yourself and your comfort so much that you won’t even tell them – someone you supposedly love – that they swimming out to sea with the sharks?
Why do you remain silent? Why are you quiet when you are, in all probability, the best of all people to say something to them? Do you just hope that their parents will notice and say something? Do you slip hints to the pastor and hope he will pick it up and do something about it?
The answer is all too simple and all too painful. “I love me.” As football wide receiver Terrell Owens put it in a post game interview, “I love me some me.” Now before you think too lowly of Terrell Owens, he just had the audacity to declare in the open what is in the heart of so many.
If we are going to be honest we would have to say, “I don’t rebuke my friend because I do what’s best for me and calling out my friend doesn’t sound like fun so I’m just going to let that ride. It’ll probably work out in the end.” Such a thing could cause all kinds of problems in your social schedule and it could open up that whole ‘Who are you to judge me’ can-o-worms.
If you’re a sweetheart you might have nicer thoughts like, “This just isn’t the right time.” And yet the right time never seems to come. But that is just a coward with a sweeter thought process. You still love yourself too much and you’re still a coward.
Responsibility for rebuke lies heaviest upon those with the closest proximity. The closer you are to that person the greater the platform you have with them, the more likely they are to see your rebuke as coming from the mouth of one who loves. It will be much harder for them to push aside the perspective you have shared because they know you. They should know that you wouldn’t bring it up because you want to hurt but because you want to help. Why would you, who has been there with them in so many things in life ever want to hurt them?
As a parent I always try to remember that I need to discipline my children because if I don’t someone else will. I remember some smart mouth guys through the years. Many of them got their smart mouth shut for them, via fist to the mandible, because they never learned respect.
A parent who loves their child will want correction to come from a hand that loves them, not from the fist of one who hates. Children will be corrected, they will be disciplined and it’s ugly. The nice name we give it is “peer pressure.” Kids have a way of imposing their will. “You are not acting the way we like. So get in line or we will hurt you.” Granted they will hurt you in various ways. For example it might be insults to your face or slander behind your back or again with the age old punch to the nose. So rebuke certainly comes but the big question is: does it come from the hand of love or from the hand of hatred?
Would you like to see your friend suffer harm and embarrassment? Would you like to see them in pain and reaping the consequences of some nasty little chickens that have come home to roost? Say nothing. Don’t say a word and you will. Just sit right back and watch the fireworks. And as you do that know this: You share in their sin (Eze 33:6). Right back to Leviticus 19:17.
“You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.”
“Bear not sin because of him” – the point here is that if you don’t love and rebuke your friend you share their sin.
Treat a friend as if you loved them more than yourself. Philippians 2:3-4
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
Love your friends. Speak kindly to them. Be gracious, considerate and gentle. But speak the truth to them and reveal their sin. Lay it bear that they might be delivered. Or as Jude said
Save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh.
Snatch them out of the fire by making the truth known to them. Tolerance and idleness are not the loving thing to do when a friend is in sin – rebuke is.
