Is Your Church Serving Up Yeasty Sweet Rolls or The Bread of Life?

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebukes the Corinthian church for failing to confront church members involved in sexual sin. 

He explains that “this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough,” and Christians “must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler.” 

Sadly, the yeast of sin is affecting the ministry of many modern churches, and we’re more apt to hear lessons about comforting sinners than confronting them. 

God expects us to interact with ungodly people, but not ungodly people who profess to be Christians.  If we don't confront such people, our entire church or fellowship will be tainted by the yeast of their sin.

It’s important to have an appropriate attitude and purpose when confronting people (Galatians 6:1; James 5:19-20), but confrontation isn’t meant to be comfortable for the sinner. It rebukes and restores the sinning believer or identifies the fake believer (1 John 3:6).

Sadly, some churches are more likely to scrutinize and criticize the person confronting a sinner than they are to scrutinize or criticize the sinner. 

 

I wonder if the modern church would have rebuked Nathan for the way he confronted King David and criticized Paul for the way he confronted Peter (2 Samuel 12:1-13; Galatians 2).

This failure to address sin means that many of our churches are serving up yeasty sweet rolls instead of the bread of life (John 6:35).  

Let's pray that Christians will see sin as God sees it.

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For more on this see Christians Body Snatchers and How and When to Confront People and Confronting Sin: With Right Intentions.

Our churches should welcome unsaved people even if they are living sinful lifestyles, praying that the preaching, teaching, and fellowship will convert them. 

But church members who are living ungodly lifestyles should be confronted as explained in Matthew 18:15-18 and 1 Corinthians 5. 

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