Generosity That Confronts
Have put out of your fellowship the man who did this.
1 Corinthians 5:2 (NIV)
Paul rebukes Corinth with pastoral pain: you are proud! Shouldn't you grieve and expel from fellowship the doer? Tolerating grave sin with spiritual pride — calling permissiveness love. True generosity confronts: love never correcting is no love but made-up complicity. Church discipline aches and heals; proud tolerance kills smiling.
Courageous generosity gives what hurts: truth to erring, confrontation to sinning, tears for fallen. Cheaper to pat errors along; more loving to weep over them firmly. Corinth preferred cheap; Paul demanded loving. Generosity distributing only affection, never truth, impoverishes souls — feeding sugar to spiritual diabetics.
Confronting generously today someone loved and erring: speaking truth lovingly, weeping alongside, pointing ways. Generosity that confronts: donating correction donates healing.
Loving corrections rescue proud souls. Confronting today tearfully. Tearful truths heal more than silent complicities. Weep today over others' errors lovingly. Confrontations wept restore; cold tolerances kill. Love confronting always. Confronting always with tenderness and firmness. Speak truth tearfully today. Cowardly silences damn souls gradually. Correct courageously and lovingly. Weep interceding. Generous confronters mirror heavenly Fathers faithfully. Give hard truths as gifts. Wounds from friends heal reliably.
And receiving confrontations humbly: generous people also need confronting.