That's how you deal with the wayward. You don't pounce on them judgmentally. You don't condemn them. You don't wreak havoc in their lives by abusing them and alienating them and cutting them off. You come alongside like a paradise.
Parent loving a child and understanding where the child is going, calling them back, and you do it with tears of compassion. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Webster's calls it sorrow for the sufferings or troubles of another. But where biblical compassion is concerned, that definition doesn't quite cover all the ground.
You need to show compassion to, well, everyone, regardless of their circumstances. Of course, that can be a challenge. What do you do, for example, when a fellow believer is in sin? Do you confront him with truth? or do you embrace him with tenderness?
And does it have to be one or the other? What role should compassion play with those who attack others, or sow discard, or refuse to obey God's word? Find out on today's grace to you as John MacArthur teaches you how to be compassionate in a truth-filled and biblical way. Here he is now continuing his study called The Pillars of Christian Character. There are internal systems in the church.
They are made up of spiritual attitudes that flow and carry the life of the church. And we've been talking about those various attitudes, and there are many of them in the scriptures, and we're kind of taking them one at a time. Spiritual attitudes like faith, which of course is a starting point, obedience. Things like humility and love and unity and forgiveness, and two very important spiritual attitudes: joy. and thankfulness.
Very, very essential in the life of a church that its people be filled with joy and gratitude. But I want to talk about another absolutely essential component that has to be a part of the church to make its life flow and to make it what God wants it to be, and that's the spiritual attitude of compassion. compassion. And when a church is as committed to sound doctrine as we are, as committed to a biblical Christianity as we are. Is as concerned about precision, not only in its doctrine, but precision in its teaching and precision in its living.
That when a church is concerned about holding up the highest possible standard of virtue and holiness, When we are as sensitive to sin as we are as a mature church, It is easy for us to err on the side of being judgmental. And sitting in a condemning position on people who are struggling. And so it's important for us to understand the wonderful balance of compassion in the life of the church and how absolutely critical it is. The church, by the way, is not a gallery for the exhibition. Of eminent Christians.
It is rather. A hospital. For the healing. of those who are imperfect. We understand that.
The church is filled with people who fail. It is filled with sinners. As Charles Morrison once wrote, the Christian church is a society of sinners. It is the only society in the world where membership is available only to those who aren't qualified. We are not qualified to name the name of Jesus Christ.
We're not qualified to be a part of His church. And that qualifies us to be in it, the recognition of that. and the dependence upon him to do for us. What we are unable to do for ourselves. But the church has problems.
As one of my friends used to say, the light draws bugs. And I think there's some truth in that. The bugs are the sinners, and the light is the word, and the word draws sinners, and we're a society of those sinners, and we've got our problems. I remember a young man who was talking to me one day, he was ready to launch out from here, and he said, I'm going to go pastor a church. I want to get into local church ministry.
I want to pastor a church, but I'm not in a hurry because I want to find a church that doesn't have any problems. Oh boy. I said to him, look. If you find one, don't go there or they will. There is no such thing as a church without problems unless it's a church without people.
People have problems, and the church has problems. We struggle with issues all the time here. We certainly don't make any claim to perfection at any level. It's the direction of our lives that the Lord is concerned about, obviously, not the perfection. We have to await that at our resurrection, at our going home to be with the Lord.
Until then, we have problems. And the church has problem people. And in all honesty, we spend a lot of time dealing with problem people. They can drain the energy of a pastor, they can drain the energy of a staff, continually trying to help these problem people. They're very much like families, I think, where you might have a number of children, one or two of which stand out as being more demanding than the rest.
You know, they say there's those type A personalities that are already programmed genetically when they arrive. And from the beginning, they put great demands on the parenting process. There are other compliant children who don't call for so much. time and energy. That is true in any series of relationships.
It's that's that's the way life is. There are going to be those people who put tremendous demands on leadership, tremendous demands on the people of God to work with them because they struggle so greatly.
Now, if I were to divide those people up into five categories, they would be these categories. Number one are the wayward. The wayward, they're the people you're always trying to get off the edges. They run everything to the edge. They want to climb the fence, they want to go outside the boundaries, they want to step over the line, violate the law.
They're never really in sync with where you're going. They're always out on the fringes. Never with the program, never really involved continuously doing their duty, never faithful in service or giving. They tend to be sometimes idle, lazy, loafers in the way of progress, disorderly. They can be AWOL, they can be apathetic or indifferent, and sometimes they can even be contentious.
Everything from being uninvolved to being rebellious. They just push the edges all the time. Maybe they don't get into the place where you want to discipline them. They're just on the borderline all the time, on the borderline of commitment, on the borderline of faithfulness, on the borderline of service using their gift, on the borderline of contributing positively to the development of the church. They're those fringe people out there just right on the edge of everything, never really concerned and committed to the heart and flow of the life of the church.
The second category of people I would call the worried. These are the no-risk people who basically operate out of fear. Fear that somebody won't love them, fear that they might fail, fear that problems might arise that overwhelm them. If group one tests the edges of everything, this group huddles in the middle. They never get near the edge.
They're motivated by fear. They're driven by a lack of courage. They can think of 10 reasons why something could never succeed. They have no sense of adventure. They hate change.
They fear the unknown. They worry about the consequences of everything. All the issues of life are really more than they can bear. And so they go around generally dismayed and occasionally depressed. Then thirdly, There are the weak.
Not only the The wearied the worried, I should say, but the weak. These are people who spiritually are just weak. They have fallen to temptation. They have fallen to sin. They keep trying to scramble back up, dust themselves off, get back in the flow, but they seem to be highly vulnerable because of long habits, because of bad influences, because of their own spiritual weakness.
They want to do what's right. They have a desire to do what's right, but they sort of fuddle along in the Christian life, stumbling, picking themselves back up. It's sort of three steps forward, two steps back, and maybe sometimes two steps forward, three steps back. They embarrass themselves, they embarrass the church, they goof up their testimony, and they are occasionally a real dishonor to the Lord. They're just feeble and susceptible to temptation and sinful patterns.
And fourthly, then, there are what I would call the wearisome. They just frustrate you. Uh they they are the um They're the people who never get it. That they they never quite catch up. They can't get focused, they can't concentrate.
They drag their feet, they miss the point, or they forget the point. or they ignore the point. They never seem to speed up, get with the group, and move at the rate that everybody else is moving at. They exasperate you because they never seem to change. And you try this, and you try that, and you try this, and they never seem to change.
They're the kind of people to whom I have often spoken and said, Well, why don't you do that? I did that, it didn't work. Oh, well, why don't you try doing this? Take a little time and read five Psalms every I tried that, it doesn't work. And, well, here's a series of tapes, so maybe you could listen to those.
They come back. I listened to those, didn't help. Oh. They just exasperate you. They exhaust your options.
And you keep trying and trying and trying, and you never seem to get them where they need to be. Those are the wearisome folks. And then finally, they're the downright wicked. Those are the folks who just do evil in the church. They do harm to other Christians through gossip or slander.
They break up relationships, they fracture the unity of the Spirit, they violate the bond of peace, they are unloving, they break up marriages, they. Divorce their spouses, they're unkind to their children, or there are children who are disobedient to their parents, they defile daughters and sons, they just sin. And as a church, we deal with all these people. I mean, the standard of getting in is you have to be a sinner to get in, and you have to be an unworthy sinner to get in, so we assume we've got this problem. The wayward, the worried, the weak, the wearisome, and the wicked.
And it's little wonder that growing a healthy flock is a challenging business, isn't it? All these folks need help. And with all today that's being written, about the church and the growth of the church. All the sophisticated stuff, all the homogeneity principles, cultural demographics, all the subtle strategies, all the entertaining methods, and all the advertising and marketing technique to build the church. Little of anything is ever being said about spiritual health of the flock.
About how you grow people into Christ-likeness. That is the great challenge. Getting a crowd is not. nearly as difficult. As building a Christ-like disciple.
That is a very challenging situation because you've got people in all these categories at all varying points in their own personal life, and you're trying to move them to the single goal of the likeness of Jesus Christ. Churches are spending all kinds of money on stuff that is purely external, superficial, that is not going to change the inside. And when the church is changed on the inside, it really becomes a force. for evangelism and righteousness in the world. The Apostle Paul, you must note as you read through the New Testament, put all his energy and his prayers into growing a spiritually healthy flock.
And that's the real work of the church. It's not just my work, it's your work. In fact, look at Colossians, if you will, for a moment. And There's a pervasive attitude that we're going to address today that is essential to this work. And it's found in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 12.
And you will see here that he's referring to all of us because he says in verse 12. And so as those who have been chosen of God, Holy and beloved. That's all Christians. All of us are elect. We have been made holy by the righteousness of Christ.
And we are the beloved of God, all of us, all of us in the church. Must put on a heart of compassion. We must deal with each other compassionately, with kindness, he says. Later in that verse, gentleness, patience. Verse 13, bearing with one another.
In other words, there needs to be a patient, gentle, humble, kind compassion. Toward people as they struggle through all of the issues that debilitate them, whether Waywardness, worry, weakness. Being wearisome or just being wicked. All of us who belong to the Lord, all of us who are the chosen, the holy in Christ, the beloved of God, are called to compassion. Not just compassion toward lost people, and sometimes churches have more compassion toward the unregenerate than they do toward their own.
But we are to show love to all men, but especially those of the household of faith. And so we are to Be compassionate. Let's look at this issue. Through the pen of the Apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians. Chapter 5.
1 Thessalonians 5, as you have noted. This is a very important passage because it gives instruction for life in the church. It's a very, very Important chapter. It talks about how the shepherds act toward the sheep. In verses 12 and 13 of 1 Thessalonians...
How the shepherds act toward the sheep. It also talks about how the sheep act toward their shepherds.
So in verses 12 and 13, you have the sheep to shepherd and shepherd to sheep relationship. But when you come into verse 14, now you have the sheep to sheep relationship. How we are to conduct ourselves among ourselves. In verse 14, he says, We urge you, brethren, now we're sheep to sheep.
Now we're talking about how you live in the church. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly. Encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all men. See that no one repays another with evil for evil, but always seek after that which is good for one another. And for all men.
Now in verses 14 and 15 Paul gives instruction to these five categories of people that I have mentioned to you. All five categories are introduced there. Notice how verse 14 begins. We urge you. This is the tone of the whole section.
There's an urgency here. There's a command here, a compelling here. To the sheep. to behave in a certain way. among themselves.
And that way Indicates compassion. We are to treat each other with kindness and compassion. And patience, bearing with one another as we struggle through our weaknesses and our worries and fears, as we struggle through our waywardness and our wickedness and all of those things, we must be dealt with lovingly and compassionately. as I have been studying in the Old Testament. It is amazing to me going through the Old Testament how consistently righteous and just God is and at the same time how consistently gracious and merciful he is to those who sin.
On the one hand there is always the standard that is perfect and holy. On the other hand God is so patient and so tenderhearted and so merciful as he deals with his sinning people. And does not consume them until he has exhausted his compassion in pleading with them to return from their iniquities. As holy and righteous and just as he is, he is that. compassionate as well.
And that's the way we are to be. We can hold the standard high, we will. We can call people to a holy and righteous life, we will. But that should be equally balanced. With a heart of compassion, understanding the struggle.
that all of us engage Because of our flesh. First of all, let's talk about the wayward. The people who get out on the edge and just test the edges of everything. They live right on the fringe. He addresses them in verse 14.
He says, This: We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly. The word unruly attacked us Used only here, though it has cognate forms used elsewhere in 2 Thessalonians. The word basically had the idea of being out of line in a military column. When the troops all lined up, as they are wont to do in every army, when it's marching time, they get into. To rank and file, and they stand appropriately in perfect order because that's the design.
There would be a soldier out of rank, out of line. And that would be the word to describe him.
Somebody who's unruly, disorderly conduct, somebody who doesn't get in line, who doesn't find his place properly in the rank and file. It could be someone who's just too lazy to do it, who's idle, or someone who's just in his heart kind of rebellious. He doesn't want to conform, he just doesn't want to get involved. By the way. In 2 Thessalonians, where you have other forms of the same root word.
It is used to describe someone who is a lazy, busy body. Laziness can keep someone from being there in line, conforming to the group as they move ahead. It can refer to laziness, indifference. A loafing attitude, just sort of hanging on the fringe because you don't have an interest in getting involved, a certain kind of apathy. But it can also refer to general insubordination to a leader.
General insubordination to someone who's in charge, being out of step. And certainly that is True in the church. There are those people who just hang on the edges all the time. They're just wayward. They're unruly.
You can't seem to get them in line. You can't seem to get them to the place where they do what needs to be done. They hit and miss at the worship services on Sunday morning. They hit and miss on Sunday evenings. They never get involved in a fellowship group.
They never get in a ministry. They never really commit themselves to godly living and a holy life. They just kind of hang on the edges with a certain amount of apathy or a certain amount of rebellion in their hearts. They can be contentious. They are usually non-supportive both in their activities and their giving.
That's just an attitude that they carry. They're just... wayward. They just don't have the commitment to the heart of what is going on. I like to think of them as benchwarmers.
You know, they never get in the game. They just can't get in the game because they don't have a commitment to play. They haven't honed their skills to play. They're not that devoted to it. They don't care about the cause.
In my judgment, benchwarmers usually become critics. They usually turn out to be critical of. What you're doing. They at best have an audience mentality. And they just don't get into the flow.
They uh they want to watch And they usually want to Criticize How do you deal with these people? Tells you right there in verse 14. Admonish them. What does admonish mean? It's nuthe te'o.
It's been sort of transliterated into English with the word neuthetic. We talk about neuthetic counseling. It's a marvelous word. It means to advise. In the light of future consequences, it means to warn in the light of what is coming.
In that sense, it's an instruction. A.T. Robertson has a wonderful way of expressing it. He says it means to put sense into something. To give somebody some sense of what they're doing and where it's leading.
It demands a certain closeness and a certain intimacy. To get close enough to someone, to begin to put some sense into their heads about their behavior. It's a recognition that somebody's behavior needs to be altered. Not by punishment. but by influencing them.
It's a positive word, and what you want to do is you want to influence their mind.
So, you want to teach them the path that they're on is a path. It's the discipline or punishment, and certainly it's a path away from blessing. It has no element of judgmentalism. It has no element of Phariseeism. It has no element of a sense of superiority, of condemnation.
But it has the idea of coming alongside someone to warn them. To warn them. In a sort of a Paradigm that you might understand. Paul uses the parental image in 1 Corinthians 4, where he uses the same word. And he says to the Corinthians in verse 14: I do not write these things to shame you.
In other words, my goal is not to just obliterate you, just to heap shame on you, but to admonish you, to nuthei te'o you, as my beloved children.
So the paradigm is that of a parent. It is the kind of warning, it is the kind of instruction that you give a child that you greatly love.
Sometimes the child doesn't understand that you say, I'm not going to allow you to do that. I'm not going to allow you to stay in that path. I'm not going to allow you to keep maintaining that kind of attitude or that kind of behavior or that kind of relationship because I love you too much to allow you to expose yourself to the consequences of that. And a parent does that. We do that all the time.
There are consequences to certain paths. And when you know that, you warn and you warn out of love. And sometimes the person you're warning doesn't appreciate that.
Sometimes the children don't appreciate that.
Sometimes the Christians that are wayward, that are playing out on the edges all the time, don't understand the implications of that kind of life. And you may warn them out of love, and they may see it as judgmentalism, and they may try to define it as that, but in fact, it's not. The attitude with which you do it is very important. The attitude with which you do it is essential, and to get a picture of that attitude, Acts 20:31, where the same word is used. Very important, Acts 20:31.
Paul uses. This word, and here's what he says. I did not cease for three years. To admonish, same word. to admonish each one with tears.
Cheers. That's not a judgmental attitude. That's an attitude of compassion. That's tenderheartedness. That's kindness.
That's a broken heart that says, I grieve over where this is taking you. That's how you deal with the wayward. You don't pounce on them judgmentally. You don't condemn them. You don't wreak havoc in their lives by abusing them and alienating them and cutting them off.
You come alongside like a paradigm. Parent loving a child and understanding where the child is going, calling them back, and you do it with tears of compassion. Compassion. The beautiful, beautiful attitude which God demonstrates. towards sinners in which Christ demonstrates toward us.
Let's pray. Father, we have covered so much so fast. And yet, really, just one great truth, and that is that we are to deal with folks compassionately, the same way you deal with us. Who fail you so constantly, who violate your perfect standard so. Regularly.
And you are so compassionate. Your compassion is immeasurable. Unending. unceasing. And great.
We thank you for it. And may we be as compassionate. With those around us who are wayward. And worried and weak. and wearisome and wicked.
As together we struggle. with a flash. To gain the victory, that will conform us more and more to the likeness of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur.
As John explained today, it's not always easy to show biblical compassion, but showing compassion is possible for all who follow Jesus Christ. John's current study is titled The Pillars of Christian Character. And friend, for help in cultivating the type of compassion John talked about today, let me remind you about the brand new study guide that goes along with our current radio series. Each chapter spells out biblical truth that can help you set strong foundations in your Christian life. To get John's study guide titled The Pillars of Christian Character available exclusively from Grace to You, Connect with us today.
Our phone number is 8005 GRACE. or you can order from our website, gty.org. The Pillars of Christian Character Study Guide is excellent for your own devotional reading and as curriculum for your Bible study group. Again, to place your order, Call 855 Grace. or go to gty.org.
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Now for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Be back tomorrow as we consider the best way to help people who are hurting spiritually. We're continuing John MacArthur's study, The Pillars of Christian Character. With another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on grace to you.
