Christian or Not: How to Pray for Forgiveness

These days it is considered clearly out of vogue to judge people. Heaven forbid that we should have a strong opinion about whether or not something is right or wrong! But consider these words written by the Apostle Paul:

"I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner - not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore "put away from yourselves the evil person" (1 Corinthians 5:9-13).

It seems to be popular in both Christian and non Christian circles to "judge not." Avoiding judging others is the politically correct thing to do. First Corinthians five makes it clear that judgment needs to be done in the church, but there are two things that we need to consider in the above passage of Scripture. First of all, there is a difference in how we are to relate to other Christians (as well as those who claim to be Christians but may not be), and how we relate to those who are not part of the Body of Christ. We would have to not even be in the world at all if we were to avoid sinful people altogether! But what about believers who are openly participating in known sin? According to Paul, we are not to even eat with them, and are in fact to put them out of the church. Doesn't sound very politically correct, does it? And yet it is what the Scripture says!

The sobering reality of the passage in 1 Corinthians is that sin is serious. It is not something that should be tolerated among Christians - including each of us.