CLICK HERE FOR THE LIFE GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE CONTAINING DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Review:

• We asked the question “Are you with him, or against him?”
  
  
• By letting our desires and wants lead our life we come into opposition with God and others.
  
  
• We need to humble ourselves, resist Satan, and submit to Jesus as Lord.
  
  
• Draw near to God and let him lift you up.

Our wants and desires lead to conflict with God, but they also lead to conflict with others.  That is where we will go today.

Read James 4:1, 11-12

What causes quarrels and fights among you?  A: Your desires and wants. (1)

Selfish ambition and pride will lead to a tendency of speaking poorly of other people.  (11a)

• At play in slander is that we don’t trust God to handle that persons issues or that He will not take care of your standing among others.
  
  
• Pride delights in calling out other people for their flaws and lesser qualities than you.

A self-dependent person is more likely to judge others. (11b)

• To judge another is to assume you are superior in position and quality.
  
  
• To judge another is to assume it is your role to call into account their life.

When we judge a fellow believer, we have set ourselves over them and the law itself. (11c)

• We have come against a fellow believer.
  
  
• We have come against the law as well.
  
  
• We convince ourselves that we are more capable of true justice than the law.

By judging fellow believers, you are no longer submitting to the law, but you have assumed authority over the law.  (11d)

THERE IS ONLY…. One Lawgiver, One Judge, and One who can render a verdict. (12a)

• He is the one who has the power to save.
  
  
• He is the one who has the authority to destroy
  
  
• He is the only one who can call into account with sound judgement.

Are you that one? (12b)

How do we hold each other accountable?  How do we call out sin?  How do we keep the church from being the wild west without being able to judge each other?

Guardrails for confronting one another.

1. Submit to the Spirit’s leadership when making judgments about all things.

1 Corinthians 2:9-16

By the Spirit we can understand God.
By the Spirit we can discern that which is evil and that which is of God—a judgment.
We are subject to that Spirit’s judgment, but not to the judgment of men.

2. Let God judge the motives of the heart.  1 Corinthians 4:1-5
   • We are incapable of being accurate in judging the motives of our own heart.
   • We are not able know the thoughts or motives of a fellow believer.

3. We can judge behavior within the church, but let God handle those outside the church. 1 Corinthians 5:12-13
   • Judging not the motives, but evident sinful behavior.
   • We have the right to protect the body from an unrepentant person.
   • The world does not have the Spirit to deal understand sin for sin.
   • Our message to the world is to be the good news of Jesus, not declaring judgment over them.
     • We can still call sin, sin.
     • Our very lives under the Spirit will judge them for what they are not.

4. We bring account to each other humbly by beginning with ourselves. Matthew 7:1-5
   • We don’t take authority over another believer or the law.
   • We do a self-check for addressing personal sin, purifying our motives and to submit our spirit to the Spirit.
   • Humbly we address the behavior and not for motive.