Isn't it unloving to tell someone he/she is sinning?

When wrong is present, wisdom will seek to bring the help that meets the wrong. Secret love may wink at the evil, but this is not the true love of God: it is no help to the guilty party. Candid open rebuke in a spirit of kindness, not of mere censure, is both honesty and goodness. It may wound to some degree, even when done in a lowly, friendly way, but even the offender should recognize faithfulness in this, and if he rightly takes it to heart, his wounds will heal well. Moreover, it may lead him to love the wise reprover. Again, this kind of work, to be rightly done, requires true self-judgment and communion with God.

*Part of our vocation as Christians, is perception: "Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things"; "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man." In judging one's self, as much as in every thing else, we have to discern things that differ: and it is the more difficult in this case, because it is SELF-judgment. Singular phenomena in connexion with this are observable. Thus, a young Christian will, when he is rebuked, take the feeling of mortified pride for conscience toward God, or for zeal against slander. Again, the excessive disgust at a sin in another, will be taken for the conviction that it does not exist; and I have seen the excessive pain produced, rightly produced, in an affectionate heart by a case of excision, mistaken, when the power of self-judgment was weak, for grief at the bad way in which it was supposed to be done, when really it was done quietly and graciously. The decision and unwaveringness of true love, are mistaken for harshness and unrelentingness. It is love alone which will not tolerate evil in an object loved. It was a wise word of Lady P — 's, "No one loves me enough to rebuke me, or enough to point out my faults." And in discipline in the church, I have uniformly observed, that restoration of a sinner from the evil of his ways, and decision in dealing with the evil, go together. If evil is slurred over, the sinner goes on in it, and it spreads; if in known evil, it is dealt with decidedly and firmly, as dangerous to the body of poor sinners whom grace has gathered, and as unworthy of the place into which they are gathered, there is often restoration.

Yet this does not mean that we should never speak to our brother for fear of stumbling him. The very opposite: if he should go astray into sin, we are to rebuke him, and immediately he repents forgive him; and this, even if it should repeatedly happen. We might imagine that we should run the risk of stumbling him by rebuking him, but we should really do so by not rebuking him. It is of course assumed that the rebuke is administered not in human anger but in the power of Divine love.

But more than that; it is the business of all Christians (and of some especially) to watch over each other in Christ and for His sake. So far from its being a presumptuous interference with one another, it is the revealed will of God (1 Thess. 5), the instinct of new life, and the sure fruit of love. Do you think, for instance, that a parent, or even an elder brother or sister, fail in love because they deeply feel and express their sense of a wrong done by one of their family? I need not tell you that sin is of such a nature, that, if there be none other, the youngest of all is entitled and bound to lay it as a charge on the oldest of all. Granted, that this would be a serious and an undesirable state of things; for we have always to consider in these matters the way of doing them. And one need hardly add that zeal or good intentions will not satisfy the new nature — nothing but the will of the Lord. It is always painful to have to touch another's wound. I press particularly this, because haste to find fault, whether publicly or privately, is the cause of as many practical difficulties as any other; and I cannot conceive a greater intrusion on Christian worship than the introducing of such topics habitually into seasons devoted to it. Surely, beloved friends, that is neither the time nor the place, nor the rule in ordinary circumstances, even supposing our thoughts may be ever so correct. What we have there to do is not to be finding fault with this person or with that thing: let us take another and more fitting occasion; let us seek alone and in private, if indeed we ought to do it at all. Would it become a woman to be forward in such matters? or, again, a young man with those older? There should always be the cultivation of the lowliness of grace, more particularly if you are obliged to blame another: there is no time that demands such love, and that calls for such humility.

"To thy brother." There is not the spirit of love in it. One cannot say "brother" sincerely in doing it, for indeed there is pleasure in seeing the fault, a spirit of comparison. The Christian spirit of teaching is delight of soul in the holy things of God there, and in spirit communicating them to others in love, and so even in finding fault. No man ought to find fault until he be able to say "Brother," in the spirit of, and because he loves him; see accordingly, the directions if a brother trespass against us. As to others, we resist not evil, but bear all things. Men may rebuke sin if they have authority. "Perceivest not"; it may be forgetfulness, but surely there is the very moral fault in this - we see our neighbour's and not our own. Not so the repentant man, he is full, until cleared, of his own sins, and then can speak in the spirit of love which knows forgiveness. Therefore He says elsewhere: "Thou hypocrite," for it shows our mind is not changed as to the thing, yet we find fault with it in another; therefore evidently not of love, nor indeed have we right in this to say: "Brother"; so Psalm 51, which see - you are bad enough yourself, and therefore it is impossible you can have a right moral judgment to direct others.

This is a reproach, yet instruction is treasured up in it.

The exhortation is as to our ordinary but God-fearing intercourse. The necessities of godly discipline are not in question. Holy love is bound to rebuke what is wrong in those guilty of it, and to warn those who may be endangered by the evil example. Wrong in these cases must be laid bare though it ought to be in sorrow; but it is due to the Lord, and for the profit of those concerned. If there be a public snare and peril, this makes a corresponding admonition to be a duty, and is love in truth.

Yet here again, Satan has been busy in setting up an imitation of Christian love which is too easily accepted for the original. To talk of Christian love while there is allowance of evil is to suppose Christian love in which Christ is dishonoured. Forbearance and forgiveness towards those who commit evil is surely a very different thing from connivance at the evil itself. Where did love manifest itself in forgiveness so marvellously as at the cross? and where was God's intolerance of evil so fearfully displayed? The blessed Lord's present dealings with us are expressly for the purpose of cleansing us from defilement by the washing of water; for He cannot endure that the least stain should rest upon His beloved people. So, too, the Father's chastening is directed just to this point, "that we might be partakers of His holiness." Under the Levitical economy an Israelite was told, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." (Lev. 19:17.) So, too, if one believer has been injured by another, he is to go to him and "tell him his fault," not with a view of getting redress for himself, but because "if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." In extreme cases, the discipline of the Church must be called into action, and the offender put out as a "wicked person;" but even here the motive is love, and the object to be sought is, "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." (1 Cor. 5:5.)

Yet here again, Satan has been busy in setting up an imitation of Christian love which is too easily accepted for the original. To talk of Christian love while there is allowance of evil is to suppose Christian love in which Christ is dishonoured. Forbearance and forgiveness towards those who commit evil is surely a very different thing from connivance at the evil itself. Where did love manifest itself in forgiveness so marvellously as at the cross? and where was God's intolerance of evil so fearfully displayed? The blessed Lord's present dealings with us are expressly for the purpose of cleansing us from defilement by the washing of water; for He cannot endure that the least stain should rest upon His beloved people. So, too, the Father's chastening is directed just to this point, "that we might be partakers of His holiness." Under the Levitical economy an Israelite was told, "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." (Lev. 19:17.) So, too, if one believer has been injured by another, he is to go to him and "tell him his fault," not with a view of getting redress for himself, but because "if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." In extreme cases, the discipline of the Church must be called into action, and the offender put out as a "wicked person;" but even here the motive is love, and the object to be sought is, "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." (1 Cor. 5:5.)

"But if thy brother sin against thee, go reprove him between thee and him alone. If he hear thee, thou hast gained a brother" (verse 15). The question is how sin in a brother is to be treated. What kind of a sin is meant, whether a sin against a person or sin in a wider sense of the word, we shall not attempt to discuss. He is a brother who has sinned and the first thing to be done is that the one who knows about it is to go to him personally and reprove him, that is, show him his fault. The object of his reprover is not perhaps to defend himself, if a personal matter, a false accusation, is the sin, but it is to restore and gain the brother. But to go to the brother who has sinned needs great caution, earnest prayer, meekness and self judgment. If the reproving is attempted in a wrong spirit it will work untold harm. The Holy Spirit has given us in Galatians the description of the brother who should go and reprove him who has sinned and the manner in which he is to do it. "Brethren, if even a man be taken in some fault, ye who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted" (Gal. 6:1). Alas! how little this is done. Instead of going at once to the brother who sinned, after earnest prayer and with the love and grace of God in the heart, the sin of the brother is often spread about and by this un-Christlike behavior magnified. Bitter feelings are stirred up, resulting in greater evils, slanders, backbiting, lying and other sins. If at last some one makes an attempt to see the brother, he finds the case perhaps beyond hope. How simply our gracious Lord has pointed out the way for us, what the first step is to be if the brother has sinned. It is to be treated as a personal matter and the sinning brother should not needlessly be exposed. Such grace manifested is able to gain the brother.

This is the only fully effectual corrective of the danger from any personal element, wherever (as in the present case is generally taken for granted) that may be found. In the presence of God sin is truly judged, but therefore judged in ourselves first and so it is we obtain that "spirit of meekness," in which alone we are able to "restore" those "overtaken in a fault" as considering our own proneness to temptation (Gal. 6:1). That is the first thought here, and always as regarding one who has sinned ― restoration: "if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." There is not to be the thought, as presently and plainly insisted on; of "pay me that thou owest," but of gaining a brother: of winning him back to all that belongs to Christian brotherhood. For sin means collapse, estrangement from this, ― a shadow over the glory of "what is really life," and dishonor to Christ and to God. How in the apprehension of this, could one even think of one's own things, save as one may truly find them in the thought of a "brother"!

And this governs all in this first step taken: "go and show him his fault" ― literally, "convict him," bring him to conviction ― "between thee and him alone." Let there be no needless exposure, no pain that can be spared, nothing that would arouse resentment, and so most surely hinder recovery. He is to feel that, as Elihu with Job, you desire to justify him, ― if that may not be, yet to put his case into his own hands for trial, and lift him up into the Christian place of judgeship, master of himself once more.