“If I don’t judge, am I compromising?”

Steve Brown:
“If I don’t judge, am I compromising?” The answer to that, and other questions on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them, anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions, so here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers to the Bible, that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Hi Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man. That’s controversial, I’m going to let you handle it and take all the flack.

Steve Brown:
No, I’m not. I’m going to, listen, this is my program. I’m going to be quiet and you’re going to answer, and I’m going to let you answer the letters.

Pete Alwinson:
We’ll see.

Steve Brown:
Okay. That’s Pete Alwinson and you ought to check out ForgeTruth.com. And if you haven’t been there in a while, there’s a new podcast that’s been going on fairly recently. And, you’ll find that very helpful. A bunch of guys sitting around, talking about guys and Jesus. And if you’re not of the male sex, and you want to check it out, it’ll let you know what your husband or your boyfriend are thinking. And that will be helpful too, at any rate, go to ForgeTruth.com. And, as you know, Pete and I answer questions on Friday and we love your questions. You can ask your question anytime, 24 7, by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. Record your question. And sometimes we put your voice on the air. Or you can write to

Key Life Network
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in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
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or you can e-mail us at [email protected]. And if you can help us financially, do. And we’ll rise up and call you, blessed. If you can’t, say a prayer for this ministry. And we’ll rise up and call you blessed too. Pete, lead us in prayer. And we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Sounds good. Our Heavenly Father, we do bow in your presence today, so glad that we are your sons and daughters, your children, that we belong to you and that you love us and that you are kind and merciful. And yet so powerful. We thank you that your power is filled with your love and mercy in our lives. And we have seen that and we rest in your forgiveness, and Jesus we rest preeminently in your death, burial, and resurrection on our behalf. And so, we honor you, we thank you that we’re your children, your disciples, your followers. We ask that you continue the great work that you began in us. We need you and pray, even now that this week-end, the process of meeting with your people, worshiping your Holy Name, sitting under the teaching of godly pastors and priests and leaders, would bring us, even one step closer to you. May your grace continue to triumph in our lives. And so, we give you honor, and we commit this time of Q&A to you. And thank you for Steve and the people at Key Life, who do so much to get the gospel out to people worldwide. We commit our time to you and pray that you would answer the questions of our minds and hearts, as we pray in Jesus’ strong name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this is an e-mail. What I want to tell Christians out there is that we are called to love people and not judge them, but am I compromising sin? That’s a good question.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. And well put, I think.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
How do you begin to approach that?

Steve Brown:
Well, I think you have to be careful, that there are those who are into admonishment big, and the importance of me keeping you straight, accountability groups, preaching in clearly being prophetic in what you say, even the hard things. And I get that, but I don’t think you can avoid what Jesus said about it. I mean, Jesus did say it after all. Judge not. You’ll be judged as you judge. The log in your eye, the splinter in your brother’s eye. You can’t say that’s just about salvation and some do. I mean, Jesus is giving a pretty clear teaching. But also on the other side of that, there is such clear teaching about sin in the Scripture. And you can become, you used a word when we were talking about this before, the tolerance that we do, becomes a weak and avoidance of the truth that Scripture teaches. And not judging can become a compromise.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
It really can.

Pete Alwinson:
It can. So, he’s on a very important subject. And many people in the church today understand grace in a powerful way. So, I guess sometimes the misuse of grace, is misunderstanding that we have a relational, a relationship responsibility in each other’s life, to hold each other accountable, yes. But to encourage us toward godliness.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. And Pete that isn’t going to work, if they’re good people around and their job is to help other people be good the way they are. If we do not start with radical and pervasive depravity. We were talking in my study earlier, we were just having a good time before the producer came. And, I was telling you that Fred Smith said, if you can’t say of any sin, I could do that. You haven’t understood. And so, we start with a pretty low anthropological view of human beings. And that doesn’t stop when people become Christians. There are sins, everybody who’s listening to us right now has secrets, that if they shared them with their church, they would have to become a Buddhist. I mean, they would’ve to leave in embarrassment. And we don’t admit that and we don’t understand it. But if you have, if you get Christian theology. And you get sin, you know that you are dirty.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
You know that you’re a sinner, you know what you’ve thought, you know what you’ve done. And once you get that, then Pete, if you do something, you get drunk tomorrow, I’m going to come to you. And I’m going to say, Pete, you know that that’s not a good witness and you did a bad thing. Now, I could have done it too, but I’m going to kick your posterior, the next time you do that cause we’ve just got to walk together. And we’ve got to do better. Or as Calvin Miller said, steal fewer apples from the orchard.

Pete Alwinson:
So, what you just modeled there, is the way to approach it.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is.

Pete Alwinson:
Because yes, we have to be involved in each other’s life because we love each other and because of obvious transgression.

Steve Brown:
That’s right.

Pete Alwinson:
But we are not the judge of the universe who has infinite knowledge of everything. That’s why, ultimately, judge not lest you be judged yourself is to say, Steve, I know why you did that.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, you don’t.

Pete Alwinson:
No, you don’t. No, I don’t. And so, but I can look at your behavior and I can say, I love you enough to not want you to continue in that way for the glory of God, for the good of your family, and for your own happiness.

Steve Brown:
And you’ve got to do that for me too.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. So, that’s how it is, but it’s not judging.

Steve Brown:
No, it’s not in the sense that we’re talking about.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. But it is seeing sin. And so, some people think that if you just, if you see a brother or sister sin and you point it out, that’s judging.

Steve Brown:
No, it’s not.

Pete Alwinson:
No, it’s telling the truth. It’s what you see. I saw you get drunk to use your illustration.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
And I don’t get drunk. But, I see it, it’s there, it’s a fact. It’s not a judgment of motive or

Steve Brown:
And I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to be your friend.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
We’re going to be together and we’re gonna get better together.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And we are better together. That’s how God assigned it to us. When you see somebody else sin, along what you just said, which is so good. There are two things you don’t know, you don’t know how hard that person tried not to sin.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right.

Steve Brown:
And you don’t know what happened before that person sinned.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Brown:
And a part of our being together is so we know those things about each other.

Pete Alwinson:
Right. Right. So boy, this is a big, big, but very, very important concept. One person was telling me the other day, he goes, you know Jesus hung out with sinners, you know as if to sort of tolerate

Steve Brown:
That’s dangerous.

Pete Alwinson:
Of course he did, but what did he do?

Steve Brown:
The attitude is dangerous.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Right.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. He hung out with sinners and some of them didn’t change. He still hung out with him.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And, he was trying to draw them away from the pitfall.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true. Okay, enough on that. I don’t wanna talk about that anymore.

Pete Alwinson:
Okay. Let’s talk about something better.

Steve Brown:
If God exists, how does one come to the conclusion that that God loves you?

Pete Alwinson:
Wow. Wow. You know, initially I’d say, look at the world and now there there’s a lot of brokenness in the world, but look at the good in the world. And you say, where did that good come from? And then we can move to certainly the person of Christ, you have to get there immediately.

For God so loved the world that he gave.

Steve Brown:
And it’s everywhere.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s everywhere.

Steve Brown:
Now, that’s dealing with truth and this question’s dealing with the emotion. And that’s a big step and I get that. If you believe and the Bible says, only fools believe there’s no God. If you believe that there’s a God, but you don’t think that God loves you, then you need to take the truth that Pete and I are talking about and apply it over and over to your life. But there’s more to it than that. First we’ve got to model that as believers, I’ve got to model that to you. And you have to model that to me because you can’t love until you’ve been loved. And then you can only love to the degree to which you have been loved. That goes with God and the Cross, but it goes with us too. Pete, I don’t care what you do or where you go or how bad you mess it up or who you hurt. I’m going to love you. And I really am.

Pete Alwinson:
And same here. Same here.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, exactly.

Pete Alwinson:
You know, but it is, that’s something that only God can produce.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
And he produces it over time.

Steve Brown:
He does.

Pete Alwinson:
And so, I need to experience it from a few people to get that. And yet the gospel has to be supernaturally implanted in you

Steve Brown:
Oh, it really does.

Pete Alwinson:
because we have so many of us have so much to undo from our birth families

Steve Brown:
So true.

Pete Alwinson:
of unacceptance and

Steve Brown:
dysfunction and anger and division. Oh, that’s so true. So, this is a hard process, but always stand and be anchored in the truth.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Pete Alwinson:
Amen. It goes back to that.

Steve Brown:
Even if I don’t feel it. You going to come back next week?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I will because you love me.

Steve Brown:
You’re a good man, Charlie Brown. We’ve got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.