Take a look around you and answer this question? Who is not here today that should be? Think about that for a minute. Some of you have been members here at TFC for many years and as you think back, you can probably think of a lot of people who were once part of this body who are no longer here. And even if you’ve only been here a short time, you can probably think of some people who you no longer see here.
There are obviously a lot of reasons that those people are no longer here. Some have left this earth and gone to be with the Lord. Others have moved out of town. Some are not here this morning because they are sick or on vacation. Some have left for various reasons and are now active in another good Bible-teaching church here in town. But we all know that there are some who have just kind of drifted away from the church totally. I want you to think for a moment particularly about those people. Who does God bring to your mind?
Take a moment and write down the names of those who God brings to your mind. I’ve given you some space on your sermon outline to do that. And I’m going to ask you to pray about this some more this week and see who else God brings to your mind. And at the end of this message this morning I’m going to ask all of us to do some rescue work in those lives. We’ll use our time together this morning to be better equipped to do that.
Turn in your Bibles to James chapter 5. This morning we’ll wrap up this nearly six month journey that we’ve been on through James’ letter to the Jewish believers. Since we’ll only be covering two verses this morning, let’s go ahead and read the passage out loud together:
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
(James 5:19-20 ESV)
This passage, like some others we’ve encountered in James’ letter, raises some difficult issues and, not surprisingly there is far from universal agreement about these matters. So I’m certainly going to get up here this morning and claim that I’ve got it all figured out. But as I struggled personally with some of those issues over the past couple of weeks, the conclusion I reached is that there is more than enough here that is clear that we can make practical use of it in our day to day lives. And I’m confident that is exactly what James would want us to do.
I don’t know about you, but I’m really struck by the bluntness of the close of James letter here. It’s certainly unlike the other letters we find in the New Testament. With the exception of 1 John, every other New Testament epistle ends with either some kind of greeting to the readers of that letter or a benediction or doxology of some kind. But it seems that James is more of a “get to the point” kind of guy. So instead of using some kind of flowery words at the end of his letter, he closes with one last call to action.
Before we move on let me just quickly address a couple of the controversies regarding this passage. I don’t want to waste our time arguing about the correct interpretation, but since you are likely to come face to face with these issues at some point, I want you to at least be aware of them.
Two questions that this passage raises:
1. About whom is James writing – believers or unbelievers?
When James refers to those among his audience that have wandered from the truth, is he referring to his fellow believers who have fallen into sin or is he referring to those within the body who claim to be believers, but who have never been genuine Christ followers? Well known scholars and pastors have made well reasoned arguments to support both positions.
On one hand James calls them “sinners” and in the New Testament that term is usually, but not always, used to refer to those who have never dealt with the sin in their lives through faith in the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. We’ll deal with the issue of what James means by death in just a moment, but at least on the surface, the idea of saving a soul from death also tends to lend support to the idea that James is writing about unbelievers here.
On the other hand, James does address his audience as “my brothers”. And the idea of bringing back someone who has wandered from the truth sounds more like James has a fellow believer in mind here.
2. Is James writing about physical death or spiritual death?
Although the English translation – “save his soul from death” – sounds like James is writing about spiritual death, the words that he uses could actually refer to physical death as well. In fact, James uses the same word “save” in verse 15 of this chapter when he wrote about one who was physically sick.
The rest of the words in that phrase really don’t give us any more help. The word translated “soul” can be used either to describe the immaterial part of man that survives death or it can be used to describe the entire person. And the word translated “death” is used in the New Testament to describe both physical and spiritual death.
Generally those who believe that James is writing here about believers also hold that James is writing about physical death. In that case, the sense of this passage is that bringing back a wayward believer can save that person from experiencing physical death, such as that which the believers in Corinth were experiencing because of the unworthy way in which they were observing the Lord’s Supper.
And those who believe that James is writing about unbelievers hold that James is writing about spiritual death. In that case, the sense of the passage is that by bringing an unbeliever to faith in Jesus, that person’s soul will be saved and he or she will experience eternal life.
So which one is right? I don’t know, but I would suggest to you that it really doesn’t matter. Let me explain why. In order to do that, let’s look at James’ closing verses in the context of his entire letter. As we’ve seen his letter contains a series of tests that his audience could use to evaluate their lives to see if they indeed were genuine, maturing Christ followers. By my count, we’ve looked at 12 of those tests as we’ve journeyed through James and it would certainly be helpful to review those briefly:
A genuine, maturing disciple:
• Cultivates joy in the midst of trials
• Triumphs over temptation
• Welcomes God’s Word by obeying the parts he already knows
• Prevents partiality by looking at every person through the lens of the gospel
• Demonstrates the faith that results in justification before God in a way that it results in justification before men
• Speaks words of life
• Exhibits heavenly wisdom with a humble heart and a love for the truth
• Engages in righteous discernment rather than unrighteous condemnation
• Becomes the person God wants him to be by following God’s will
• Acquires and uses wealth as a faithful steward
• Endures today’s hurts through tomorrow’s hope by treating others the way God has treated him
• Makes prayer the first response, not the last resort
We can use these tests in two ways. First, we certainly need to use them to evaluate our own personal lives. And my prayer is that all of us have been doing that for the last several months as these tests have been revealed to us throughout our journey. And I would suggest that it would be quite beneficial for all of us to continue to do that on a periodic basis even after we finish this series today as a way for us to identify that we have strayed from the truth.
But I think it would also be appropriate to use these tests to evaluate the lives of others in our body as part of a process of being used by God to help rescue those who have wandered from the truth. But here’s the catch: When we see someone who consistently fails one or more of these tests, there is no way we can know whether that person is failing the test because he or she was never a genuine believer in the first place or because that person is a believer who has temporarily strayed away from the truth. Only God is in a position to make that evaluation.
So do you see why I say it really doesn’t make a difference whether James is referring to unbelievers or believers who have temporarily strayed from the truth? Our responsibility is the same in either case. Perhaps that is why James has left some ambiguity in what he writes here. Regardless of whether that straying sinner is a genuine brother or sister in Christ or an unbeliever, our responsibility is clear:
Caring Christians rescue straying sinners
Certainly as James’ audience read his letter, God would have brought to mind some in their midst who had either left the body altogether or those who were still involved there but whose lives did not show evidence of passing the tests that James had laid out for them. And out of genuine love and concern for those people, James was calling on his brothers and sisters to go on a rescue mission in order to bring those people back into the fellowship.
It sure seems to me that James was thinking back to the parable of the lost sheep that his half-brother, Jesus, had told during His earthly ministry:
What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
(Matthew 18:12-14 ESV)
It’s instructive that the word translated “gone astray” is the very same verb that is translated “wanders” and “wandering” here in James. When we engage in rescuing those who have “wandered” from the truth or “gone astray”, we are actually partnering with God in the process of rescuing those stray sheep who God loves so much that He is willing to pursue a single lost sheep.
Caring Christians rescue straying sinners
Since that is true, then how can we be equipped to be those caring Christians who rescue straying sinners? Let me suggest four simple, but important things we need to do.
HOW TO RESCUE STRAYING SINNERS
1. Enlist
The task of rescuing straying sinners is not just given to pastors or elders or other leaders in the church. When James addresses this issue with his “brothers”, he makes it clear that every believer is responsible to enlist in a spiritual search and rescue team and engage in these efforts.
When we engage in rescuing straying sinners, we are merely fulfilling the command that Jesus gave to all of His followers:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
(Matthew 28:19-20 ESV)
An important part of developing disciples is to help others to recognize the devastating impact that sin has on their lives and to help them deal with that sin by developing the kind of faith that James has described throughout this letter. And that is a task that Jesus has given to every single one of His followers.
Earlier I asked you to write down the names of some straying sinners that God brought to mind. If God brought one or more people to mind and you wrote down their names, then this morning God is calling you to enlist in the rescue operations that He wants to launch in each of those lives.
2. Assist - in love
Although we have a responsibility to get involved in the lives of those who have strayed from the truth, we have to make sure we do that with the right motives. James has already addressed the need for right motives frequently throughout his letter.
In chapter 1, he exhorted his audience to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. And when we looked at that passage we discovered that he was referring to how we deal with God’s Word and how we need to make sure we put it into practice in our own lives before we go around telling others how to do that.
In chapter 2, James warned against becoming judges with evil thoughts, bringing to mind the warning that Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount to take the log out of our own eye before we try to deal with the speck in a brother’s eye.
In chapter 3, James deals with the tongue and emphasizes the need to speak words of life that build up, not words that harm and destroy.
In chapter 4, we saw the difference between unrighteous condemnation, which seeks to judge others in order to make ourselves look better and righteous discernment, which is the kind of evaluation that seeks the best interests of others.
When we apply all that we have learned in James to our rescue work, it is clear that this work must be done out of love for the other person and not out of a desire to drag that person down in order to make us look better. Paul provides us with some additional guidance here:
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
(Galatians 6:1-2 ESV)
As I read that, several things come to mind. First, Paul writes to those who are “spiritual”. So to me that means the first thing I need to do before I start evaluating someone else’s life with the tests we find in James’ letter is to evaluate my own life using those same criteria in order to see if I am truly spiritual myself.
Second, rescue work requires a spirit of gentleness. If you’ve ever watched firefighters or other rescue workers operate, one of the things you notice is how gentle they are. For instance when they find someone trapped in some rubble, they don’t just immediately start digging because they might cause even more debris to fall on the victim. Instead they proceed very cautiously in order to protect that person from further harm. That is to be the way we operate as spiritual rescue workers. Our goal is to bring restoration – not cause further harm.
Third, we have to approach our spiritual rescue work with a great deal of humility, understanding that we too, are prone to wander from the truth.
Peter also confirms this idea that our rescue work is to be carried out in love:
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
(1 Peter 4:8 ESV)
It’s quite interesting that Peter actually uses the same wording that James employs when he writes about “covering a multitude of sins”. And the way that is to be done is by loving others earnestly.
So as you consider those people that God has brought to your mind, remember that you need to approach the rescue mission that God has given to you with deep humility and genuine love for those people.
3. Subsist - on truth
A careful examination of the words James uses here to close his letter reveals the root issue that we must deal with. Let’s go back to our passage for today and let me call your attention to a couple of phrases:
My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
James uses the term wander to describe the nature of the problem here. As we’ve already discovered, that terms can also mean “to go astray” or even to “be deceived”. But the key here is to see what the person has wandered from and what he has wandered to.
First, we see that this person has wandered from the truth. At first, we might assume that James is referring here to someone who has been deceived by some kind of false doctrine. While that is certainly possible, as we’ve seen from his letter, James’ concept of truth is much more in line with the Hebrew idea of truth. The Hebrew word for truth means something that is firm and stable. To the Hebrews, truth is not just about correct doctrine, but it is also about the development of godly character in the life of a person. That is really the essence of James’ letter, isn’t it? A person who hangs on to the truth, rather than wanders away from it, will live in a way that reflects that truth in every area of his or her life.
The straying sinner, on the other hand, has not only wandered away from truth, he has literally chosen to cling to “his wandering” the key word there being “his”. In other words, he or she chooses to live by his or her own idea of truth rather than God’s truth.
I’ve shared with you frequently some of the really depressing statistics about how few people in our culture believe that there is any such thing as absolute truth. Unfortunately the church has not been immune to that trend either. According to a 2009 study by the Barna Group, less than one half of those who claim to be born again believers believe that truth is absolute and unaffected by circumstances. So it’s really not surprising that we have seen people leave our church body over the years because they didn’t like that we hold that the Bible is the inspired Word of God that contains absolute truth.
But in our attempts to rescue these people, we must not give into the temptation to stray from or “water down” the truth. As someone put it in our Monday morning Bible study a couple of weeks ago when we looked at this passage, it is our responsibility to be “truth dispensers.”
Attempting any kind of spiritual rescue without holding to the absolute truth of Scripture is really not love at all, even though that might seem to us to be the loving thing to do. There is no genuine love apart from truth. As Paul reminded us in his famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13:
Love…rejoices with the truth…
(1 Corinthians 13:4, 6)
And in Ephesians 4, when Paul is describing how the church is to equip all of us to be ministers, he emphasizes the importance of “speaking the truth in love…” (Ephesians 4:15)
When I was younger and got certified as a lifeguard, one of the things that we learned is that a person in need of rescue will almost always panic as their rescuer approaches. So the rescuer needs to take some time to calm and reassure the other person before they attempt the rescue so that they don’t become a second victim by being pulled under water by the person they are rescuing.
The same kind of thing often happens when we try to rescue someone spiritually when they have wandered from the truth. When we try to confront them with the truth, there is often a tendency for that person to panic and to lash out at his or her rescuer.
The practical implication for those of us who have enlisted in this spiritual rescue force is that we really need to bathe these situations in prayer. We need to ask God to prepare the other person’s heart to receive the truth and we need to ask God to help us hold firm to the truth, but also to be able to present that truth in the most effective way.
4. Persist
Last May a garment factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing over 1,000 people. But due to the persistent efforts of rescue crews, a woman named Reshma was pulled from the rubble 17 days later.
That’s the same kind of persistence that is required in spiritual rescue work. That work is hard and we often don’t see results right away. But because the consequences of straying from the truth are so damaging, we must persist.
The writer of Hebrews certainly understood the importance of being persistent in our rescue efforts because each day a person remains away from the truth, the greater likelihood that person’s heart will become so hardened that they will never be brought back:
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
(Hebrews 3:13 ESV)
Right now, I am in the process of pursuing several people who left our church some time ago because they apparently had some personal issues with me. Unfortunately, I’m not even aware of what those issues are because those people have refused to sit down and speak with me personally so that we can attempt to resolve the issues and bring reconciliation to our relationship. I continue to pray that I’ll have the opportunity to do that and I continue to reach out to these people periodically in hope that they’ll come to the place where they are ready to pursue reconciliation as well.
I can honestly say that I genuinely love these people. I also know, based on the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, that their worship is being hindered because of the animosity in their heart toward me. And I don’t want that to be the case in their lives. So I am committed to being persistent in my rescue mission with them.
Caring Christians rescue straying sinners
As our journey through the book of James concludes this morning, there is nothing more important that any of us can do than to enlist, assist, subsist and persist in our efforts to rescue those who have strayed from the truth.
So as we close our time, I’m going to ask you to do three things:
1. Continue to ask God to reveal to you those who you know who have wandered from the truth.
2. Commit to God to be a caring Christian who will be involved in rescuing these straying sinners.
3. Ask God in prayer to prepare these hearts to be receptive to the truth and to reveal to you the most effective way to be dispensers of truth in those lives.
