“14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.” (1 Thessalonians 5:14-15) [ESV]
The church is full of problems because it's full of problem people because everybody in it is a sinner, albeit saved by grace but nonetheless with unredeemed human flesh, consequently battling with sin. The church grows in direct proportion spiritually to how well it deals with the sin within it. The process of church growth then is the process of the elimination of transgression, the elimination of iniquity, the elimination of sin. If the church is to move ahead powerfully and be all that God wants it to be, then it has to be dealing with its own internal sin. The world has yet to see what an absolutely pure, holy church would do. The closest thing to it would be the early church. In the fire and the heat in the purity of its birth came an energy that perhaps has been unequalled in the subsequent history. Church growth from the spiritual standpoint, which is the only standpoint God has any concern about, is in direct proportion to how well we deal with the failures in our midst.
Paul wants to help us to do that by giving us these two verses that are referenced above. But if we were to sort of step back and take a look at the church and say, "Well, how could we categorize the problem people in the church?" We might come up with five categories of problem people that inhibit the growth and the power of the church.
Group number one we'll call the wayward. They're never in step. They're always out of sync. They're always out of line. They're never with the program. When everybody else is moving ahead, they're going backwards. When everybody else is filling up the ranks in proper order, they're outside that somewhere, failing to do their duty, not particularly interested in serving, sometimes not at all interested in giving, idle, perhaps even loafing. They're in the way of the progress, disorderly they might be, even AWOL they might be, apathetic they might be, sometimes contentious, sometimes rebellious. And I suppose they fill up the spectrum all the way from apathy to rebellion. They're the wayward, they're just never going the way everybody is going in the proper line. They're at odds with everything.
A second group we might identify that hinder the growth and the life and the power of the church we'll call the worried. This group is basically motivated by fear. These are the people in the church who have no courage, who will articulate, you know, the famous words, "We've never done it that way before." Who can give you ten reasons why you can't do anything you propose to do, they have no sense of adventure. They hate change. They love tradition. They fear the unknown. They want no risk. They worry about everything. All the issues of life are far more than they can bear. They're usually sad, always worried, sometimes in despair, often depressed, discouraged and defeated. They carry none of the zeal, the joy, the thrill, the exuberance that adventure brings.
We could probably identify a third group, we could call them the weak...the weak. They're just spiritually and morally weak. Christians who because of their weak faith, because of the weak disciplines of their life are susceptible to sin and they fall into the same sins over and over and you barely get them up and dust them off and they're back in the same hole again. They find it very hard to do God's will consistently. They embarrass themselves. They embarrass the church. They embarrass the Lord. They take an awful lot of attention. They test how good a church is at church discipline and usually run you all the way to at least step two.
If we were to identify a fourth group, we could call them the wearisome. Another word for that would be frustrating. These are the foot-draggers. They're in line but they're just going at the wrong speed. They never catch up. You keep teaching them and you keep training them and you keep discipling them and you pour all of this energy into them and every time you look around to see how close they might be, they look like they're farther away. Everything distracts them. They have a great difficulty concentrating, great difficulty focusing. They're just very exasperating because you make the maximum effort and you get the minimum return. They don't move and grow at the pace that would be considered normal.
Finally, group five would be the outright wicked...the wicked. They do evil. Christians who do evil. They commit sins against other Christians right in the church. They break up marriages. They defile daughters. They steal. They gossip. They slander. They falsely accuse. They're just wicked.
Now you understand as the church endeavors to grow it's got to deal with these five groups; the wayward, the worried, the weak, the wearisome and the wicked. And no wonder growing healthy flock is such a challenging enterprise because all these folks need healing spiritually. The wayward need to get back in line. The worried need to have a stronger courage and faith and boldness and confidence. The weak need to be more disciplined in the matter of holy living. And the wearisome need to get up to speed. And the wicked need to do righteously. There's a lot of work to do to bring all these in line. Will you help?
*Some excerpts from “Dealing With Problem People” by John McArthur
Discussion Questions:
- What causes you to “blow a gasket”? Why?
- From this passage, what people make up the Christian community?
- What attitudes underline Paul’s various commands here? Which build the church and which hinder the church? Why?
- What impressions of the Christian life do these commands give you?
- In dealing with the five groups that John McArthur highlighted, who’s responsibility is it to deal with these? (v. 14)
- What is your role and responsibility in all this?
