Genuine love requires speaking words of correction. But I’m afraid that one of the main reasons we’re so apprehensive about offering correction is because we’ve so rarely seen it connected to genuine love. Correction without love is cold, harsh, judgmental, and often cruel. We’ve all experienced this kind of correction before, and it hurts.
Correction without love comes from seeing ourselves as somehow different from those we’re correcting. We stand with God in judgment of the pitiful sinner standing in front of us… Our correct place is not next to God looking down in judgment on sinners. We belong standing side by side with our fellow sinners before a perfectly righteous and overwhelmingly gracious God.
As we stand side by side with one another, correction takes on a very different tone. We stand as fellow sinners similarly in need of correction and familiar with God’s amazing grace. We stand as fellow sinners who have taken the time to remove the logs out of our own eyes before beginning to help our neighbors with the specks in theirs (Matt. 7: 3– 5). We correct, not out of self-righteousness or self-importance, but out of brotherly love.
Just think about the power and
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