Extending Grace To Others Series

I remember when I was in college participating in a campus ministry (which is basically a UM church on campus) and my pastor at the time invited my friend John and I over to his house, which wasn’t a big deal since we were pretty close with him. When we got there he seemed fairly troubled. You can tell when someone has something on their mind they want to share. And he shared with us that he was leaving the ministry because he had an "inappropriate relationship" with a college student. How do you respond to something like that?! What do you say when someone you look up to, who believed in you disappoints you? I don’t remember what I said, I just remember being shell shocked. So...I know disappointment. It hurts. And the closer they are to us the more painful it is. It’s easy to distance ourselves.

Being a Barnabas, Offering Encouragement and Grace

Paul’s decision put up a wall, he didn’t want Mark on his team. It’s not that he didn’t like Mark, he just didn’t trust him. He made a pragmatic (common sense) decision because the spreading of the gospel shouldn’t be compromised by one person’s lack of commitment. But I can’t help but wonder, did Paul make the right decision? How do we balance pragmatism with grace when it comes to Christians who disappoint us? Paul leaned toward pragmatism. Barnabas leaned toward grace, he believed Mark deserved a second chance because he had a lot to offer the church.

How do we know when to offer grace and encouragement and when to be pragmatic and not to be "fooled" again? I wish I had an easy 3 step process, but I don’t. We need the discernment of the Holy Spirit, and the discerning of other Christians. It is a matter of prayer. Having said that, there are a few markers which can help us. We can ask: 1) Is there evidence of sorrow over past behavior? 2) Has there been a change of behavior? 3) Has this person grown spiritually closer to Christ, or have they matured spiritually after the incident?

If yes, than we need to be willing to extend the same grace and mercy Jesus extends to us. Even though we continue to sin (hopefully less and less), and we disappoint Jesus with our selfishness rather than doing unto others, yet when we repent (make an effort to turn from sin), and ask for forgiveness, he forgives (1 Jo. 1:8) and renews a right Spirit within us. Even though we make mistakes he looks past ours . Shouldn’t we do the same for other Christians? Paul himself writes in Ephesians 4:32 "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you."

I was just reading an article this week from a pastor who had a hard working tithing couple in his congregation who came to him one day and (as he writes) "with folded arms and wrinkled foreheads made it clear that if they continued to let a certain young lady come to church, they would leave," along with their money of course. This young lady had hurt their daughter as well as others in the church including the pastors daughter, but the pastor was reminded of the words of Jesus about forgiving someone 70 times 7 if they repented and asked for forgiveness, and he reminded the couple that this young girl appeared to have genuinely repented, and demonstrated sorrow for what she had done. So no, he wouldn’t tell her to leave. The couple left the church hardened, angry, unwilling to offer grace, yet the young lady is still walking with Jesus because a church offered her grace. Do our actions demonstrate we are persons of grace?