why do you need to do it?...

paul the writer of much of the nt in the bible is a particularly good example of confronting someone you love in a loving attitude. he wrote two books that modeled this for us. we’ve been studying 1 corinthians 13 for the past few weeks. and that chapter is right in the middle of two letters that paul wrote – 1 and 2 corinthians.

corinth is a city in greece. paul had started a church there, and he’d moved on, and he was writing back to friends who had major problems in their lives. these people had really messed up their lives. he wrote two very tough letters. he was brutally frank. almost every chapter of 1 and 2 corinthians is about a different problem. he says, you’re blowing it here, you need help here, you need to work on this… he had to deal with one issue after another in brutal honesty, speaking the truth in love.

one thing we learn from these two tough letters that paul wrote is before you ever confront anybody in love, you must first check your own motives.

check your motivation. you have to make sure you have pure motivation. why do i need to talk to this person about this issue? why do i want to confront this person with the truth?

honestly, there are a lot of bad motivations, bad reasons for confronting. you might want to confront somebody just because you’re jealous of them. you might want to confront them because you’re irritated by them, frustrated by them, annoyed by them, angry. you might want to confront somebody just to get even with them. you might want to point out something wrong in their life to make yourself feel spiritually superior. or out of envy or many, many other wrong motivations.

so you must check your motivation.

just a thought from the front porch…