“Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and
one convert him…Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the
error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of
sins.” James 5:19 – 20
In a believer’s life, their greatest
asset in life is truth of God’s word. Everything for a believer is “by faith” and
truly the bible is our earthly connection with God. We see God by faith, we
believe in Jesus Christ by faith, the Holy Spirit, heaven, and etc. is all by
faith. But the bible is not of faith, it is in our hands and the greatest
connection we have with all things our faith stands for. Outside of the bible
is the church, it our connection to God but it is also our connection to our
brothers and sisters in Christ. And while the church is one of the most
important things in a believer’s life, God’s word is the most valuable. Without
biblical truth a church cannot be a church, and fellowship in truth does not
exist. It is so important that a believer listens to, studies, learns, and in pray
seeking God’s Holy Truth. Satan has always imitated God, and Satan does his
greatest damage to believers by leading them out-of-truth. It must be true that
our learning of God’s word has a human element to it, because if it did not, we
would all believe the absolute truth without error. But we do not, therefore it
is incumbent on us to work hard to learn God’s word, that is by a lot of study
time, meditating, but the greatest part of all by a lot of prayer. This is why
attending church is so valuable to the believer, every service missed is like a
workout missed when you are exercising. You must be dedicated to learning at
the church that God has put you into, and sister churches of like faith. The
reason the Lord speaks about erring from the truth is because it is possible
for any believer to stray from the truth. If a believer plays around with errors
teachers and churches, then falling from truth is more and more possible. And if
a Christian does fall into error, we as other believers are not to separate from
them, we are not to get angry with them, were are not to disown them, we are to
love them and attempt to “…converteth the sinner from the error…” these are not
lost sinners here, these are saved sinners who need our help finding their way
home. Falling away from the biblical truth is so easy, and in the environment, we
live in, it is almost absolute because the truth so is demonized in this world.
It takes a dedication, and much prayer to walk in biblical truth in this world
today. This is why it is so important that we work together in restoring an
erroring believer, church, or pastor. We must be very careful of how we treat an
erroring or fallen believer, because they are still God’s dear child. I have
witnessed men of God mistreating believers that have errored, even saying “they
are not saved, be careful beloved”, God’s child is His to deal with, we are to love
them and attempt to restore them, even if they have been excluded from the Lord’s
church. “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and
not to please ourselves.” Romans 15:1 We are not judges of who are saved
and who are not, we simply cannot always know a persons heart by their actions.
Knowing a tree by its fruit should be and is an identifying factor, but if a
tree has no fruit is could be misleading to us or unrecognizable. All of us
need to make sure our own actions do not lead us astray from the truth and
cause us to act contrary to God’s word.
