Don’t shoot the wounded

According to Galatians 6:1, it is our job to restore those who have been overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort. This is one of those scriptures that really flies in the face of normal church tradition and exposes our Achilles heal. The fact is, when Christ called us to be His ambassadors to a hurting world, He equipped and commissioned us to operate in God’s mercy and grace. He intended for you and I to restore Satan’s victims to fellowship with our heavenly Father and His Body, the Church.

Who and how are we to restore?

Who are the people we’ve been called to restore and how do we do it? Those who need to be restored are the drug addicts, the adulterers, the murderers and anybody else who has succumbed to Satan’s schemes and traps. But what does it actually mean to restore someone to fellowship?

First of all, we must recognize the faults in a person’s life and be willing, out of compassion, to bring correction to them. The sole purpose of correction is so that the person can admit and repent of their fault. It takes a very mature Christian to care that much for another person. No one can be restored until they first truly repent. Repent means to bear fruit that shows we’re, not only sorry for our sins, but have completely turned away from them.

Restore also means to reinstate a brother or sister to their full rights of fellowship in the Body of Christ—not isolating them as a form of punishment or treating him or her like a second class citizen. 

Furthermore, we are to “restore such a one in the spirit of meekness.” We must reach out to the hurting with a Christ-like heart of humility and God’s unconditional love. We need to understand that There, but for the grace of God, go I. 

Turn over a new leaf

However, that has not been the Church’s reputation. The Church has fallen far short of her commission to restore, reinstate, reestablish and heal those who need it most. Instead, we are known for shooting our wounded. Blinded to our own sins and weaknesses, carefully cloaking them with fig leaves, we judge, criticize and condemn everyone else. We gossip about people and otherwise feed into an “us” and “them” attitude. It is an attitude which is nauseating, to say the least, to our merciful, compassionate God.

What we need is a fresh revelation of God’s mercy which He pours out on every one of us every day of our lives. How many of us can say we have perfectly served God since we received Him as Savior and Lord? I dare say none. It’s amazing how we, the restored, resent others being welcomed back into the fold. 

Yet, the whole Bible tells the story of a loving God restoring fallen humanity to Himself. How? By loving them back into relationship. Examine your life. How do you treat those who have fallen into sin and out of fellowship with God and His Church? Are you looking to restore such a one in the spirit of meekness? Or are you one of the self-righteous, gathering a posse to shoot the wounded among us?