Augustine's Relevance--4th vs. 21st Century...People Are The Same

Sunday's message brought many powerful exhortations. Particularly convicting were Pastor Steve's comments concerning our Christian responsibility toward unbelievers.

It is often difficult, isn't it, to know when to speak and confront unbelievers in their sin and when to hold our tongues. As Pastor Steve made clear, we can only truly love people by revealing to them their desperate condition and pointing them to Jesus. (Only a few weeks ago, we heard from another pastor that any relationship we have with an unbeliever that is not redemptive in purpose is treason!)

It could be that group of moms at the park who berate their husbands or speak unbecomingly. Maybe the environment you work in constantly surrounds you with immoral banter or vulgar speech. Oftentimes it is the 'sweet little elderly neighbor' (that everyone seems to have) that gossips about the goings-on of the block. There are countless settings that provide us with opportunities to speak truth to our friends and neighbors (and sometimes even strangers). So how do we 'make the most of our opportunity' while speaking graciously and kindly?

In his classic work City of God Augustine offers some insight into the whens, whys, and hows of responding to the sinful habits of unbelievers. 

For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing [unbelievers], either because we shrink from the labour or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing.

[Christians] abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love...the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal. And if they will not be the companions of the good in seeking life everlasting, they should be loved as enemies, and be dealt with patiently. For so long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come to a better mind.

God give us grace to take bold stands for holiness, for His name's sake. May it become the instinctive impulse of our tongues to defend righteousness and truth and to dismantle evil that we may be pleasing to the Lord. 

'Speak the truth in love.' Now that's hard!