Pastor John, over the months we have a pile of email questions from listeners who want to know about the certain boundaries we should have in place as Christians. Regarding our friendships with non-Christians, what are some categories to keep in mind here? Where would you draw the lines? We have to find the line between ignoring two seemingly opposite commands.

One is, "Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals," 1 Corinthians 15:33. Or "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Paul is talking about tolerating people in the church that you should excommunicate. Now on the other side, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm," Proverbs 13.

"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, stands not in the way of sinners, sits not in the seats of scoffers." So you've got all these commands and wisdom proverbs on the one side that say, "Watch out. Hanging out with corrupt people can lead to your corruption." Now on the other side, of course, you've got Jesus, who not only ate with tax collectors and sinners, but he was called the friend of tax collectors and sinners because that's, in fact, what he did so often.

And you've got Paul saying, "If you take me as me—when I say don't hang out or separate yourself from sexually immoral people, if you think I mean the world, then that won't work because then you'd have to go out of the world," 1 Corinthians 5. He doesn't mean don't associate with greedy swindlers, idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world, he says in 1 Corinthians 5.

So Paul is with Jesus in saying, "No, you're going to be thrown together with these people. You should take opportunities. You should become all things to all people in a biblical way." So we've got these two sets of admonitions, and we have to discern which ones apply when. And I would say, ask these two questions.

Which way is the transforming influence flowing? When you're with someone, are they being transformed? Are you being transformed? Are you being drawn to minimize the value of holiness? Are your standards being compromised? Are you being made callous and hard towards things in movies, say, or on television, or in language that you weren't once hard to but sensitive to?

So that's the first question. And the second question is, are we loving these people for their sake—that is, that they would come to faith and they would become godly—or do we really love them because we love what they enjoy and really just like being with them in their worldliness?

I think a lot of people justify hanging out with worldly people because they are worldly Christians and they feel at home with those worldly Christians. And the things they laugh at, they don't regard as offensive. The things they watch in movies, they don't regard as a problem. The language they use, they don't think it's a big deal.

The way they spend their time, that's the way they'd like to spend their time, which really shows that they're not loving these people with a Christlike love that's ready to die to change their behavior and change their patterns. They're just conforming to them and calling it love. So those are the two questions that I think help us navigate between bad company corrupts good morals on the one hand, and Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners on the other hand.

Yes. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books and articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

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