Paul’s Last Letter
229
any deviation from right. We must guard against undue severity toward
the wrong-doer. But while we should seek to encourage him in every
effort to correct his errors, we must be careful not to lose sight of the
exceeding sinfulness of sin. While there is need of Christlike patience
and love toward the erring, there is constant danger of manifesting so
great toleration for his error that he will consider himself undeserving
of reproof, and will reject it as uncalled-for and unjust.
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Ministers of the gospel whose characters are otherwise almost
faultless, frequently do great harm by allowing their forbearance to-
ward the erring to degenerate into toleration of their sins, and even
participation with them. In this easygoing way they excuse and palliate
that which the word of God condemns; and after a time they become
so blinded as even to commend the very ones whom God commands
them to reprove. The only safe-guard against these dangers is to add
to patience godliness,—to reverence God, his character and his law,
and to keep his fear ever before the mind. By communion with God,
through prayer and the reading of his word, we should cultivate such
a sense of the holiness of his character that we shall regard sin as he
regards it.
Godliness leads to brotherly kindness; and those who do not cher-
ish the one, will surely lack the other. He who has blunted his moral
perceptions by sinful leniency toward those whom God condemns,
will erelong commit a greater sin by severity and harshness toward
those whom God approves. Viewed through the perverted medium
of an unconsecrated spirit, the very integrity and faithfulness of the
true-hearted Christian will appear censurable.
By the pride of human wisdom, by contempt for the influence of
the Holy Spirit, and disrelish for the humbling truths of God’s word,
many who profess to be Christians, and who feel competent to teach
others, will be led to turn away from the requirements of God. Paul
declared to Timothy: “The time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves
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teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from
the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
The apostle does not here refer to the openly irreligious, but to
professed Christians who have indulged inclination until they are
enslaved by their own ungoverned passions,—“led away with divers
lusts.” Such desire to hear doctrines that will not interfere with their