back to indexBoundaries for Non-Christian Friendships
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Pastor John, what balance or boundaries should we have regarding our friendships with non-Christians? 00:00:11.760 |
We have to find the line between ignoring two seemingly opposite commands. 00:00:40.620 |
Do you not know a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" 00:00:44.960 |
Paul is talking about tolerating people in the church that you should excommunicate. 00:00:54.440 |
Now on the other side, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of 00:01:06.160 |
"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, stands not in the way of sinners, 00:01:12.960 |
So you've got all these commands and wisdom proverbs on the one side that say, "Watch 00:01:20.400 |
out, hanging out with corrupt people can lead to your corruption." 00:01:26.840 |
Now on the other side, of course, you've got Jesus, who not only ate with tax collectors 00:01:31.840 |
and sinners, but he was called the friend of tax collectors and sinners because that's 00:01:39.760 |
And you've got Paul saying, "If you take me as me—when I say don't hang out or separate 00:01:46.800 |
yourself from sexually immoral people—if you think I mean the world, then that won't 00:01:51.760 |
work because then you'd have to go out of the world." 00:01:54.840 |
He doesn't mean don't associate with greedy swindlers, idolaters, since then you would 00:01:59.760 |
need to go out of the world, he says in 1 Corinthians 5. 00:02:03.000 |
So Paul is with Jesus in saying, "No, you're going to be thrown together with these people. 00:02:08.520 |
You should become all things to all people in a biblical way." 00:02:12.280 |
So we've got these two sets of admonitions, and we have to discern which ones apply when. 00:02:26.040 |
Which way is the transforming influence flowing? 00:02:30.600 |
When you're with someone, are they being transformed? 00:02:36.380 |
Are you being drawn to minimize the value of holiness? 00:02:43.280 |
Are you being made callous and hard towards things in movies, say, or on television, or 00:02:49.280 |
in language that you weren't once hard to, but sensitive to? 00:02:56.040 |
And the second question is, are we loving these people for their sake—that is, that 00:03:03.240 |
they would come to faith and they would become godly—or do we really love them because 00:03:08.960 |
we love what they enjoy and really just like being with them in their worldliness? 00:03:17.560 |
I think a lot of people justify hanging out with worldly people because they are worldly 00:03:24.580 |
Christians and they feel at home with those worldly Christians. 00:03:29.880 |
And the things they laugh at, they don't regard as offensive. 00:03:33.240 |
The things they watch in movies, they don't regard as a problem. 00:03:36.860 |
The language they use, they don't think it's a big deal. 00:03:40.380 |
The way they spend their time, that's the way they'd like to spend their time, which 00:03:43.300 |
really shows that they're not loving these people with a Christ-like love that's ready 00:03:49.640 |
to die to change their behavior and change their patterns. 00:03:54.200 |
They're just conforming to them and calling it love. 00:03:57.880 |
So those are the two questions that I think help us navigate between bad company corrupts 00:04:05.160 |
good morals on the one hand, and Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners on the other 00:04:11.760 |
Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. 00:04:14.080 |
Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. 00:04:18.000 |
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