The Importance of Admonition

When you go the doctor’s office for a physical checkup, they do a series of examinations in order to gauge your health. As a kid, I had to do this every year for school. As an adult, I get to pick how often it happens. What does the doctor look at?

Well, they are going to measure your height and your weight. They will probably ask about your medical and family history. They might check your vision and your hearing. They’re going to listen to your lungs and your heart. And they will take some vital signs like your temperature, your blood pressure, and your heart rate.

Sometimes, the physical exam includes lab work, and the doctor will test your blood sugar and your cholesterol and things like that. All of this is designed to help the doctor have a better idea of your health. What kind of shape is your body in?

But what if we wanted to measure the health of the body of Christ? What is we wanted to evaluate a church? How would you do that? What would you be looking at?

If the church were a company, you might look at objective indicators like the budget and the savings account and the number of attendees. Those aren’t wrong to measure, but the church is not a company. Those indicators don’t really get at the heart of what it means to be a faithful, healthy church. For example, a church can honor God and yet be lacking in both finances and attendees.

When a church begins to rely primarily on measurable indicators as the measurement of success—when a church makes numbers its focus—it will begin to drift away from the principles of Scripture because it will do whatever is necessary to lead to better numbers.

The largest church in the United States, for example, has a weekly attendance of about 45,000 people. And to some, that’s an indication of success. But the preaching there ignores or redefines sin, and it promotes health, wealth, and emotional prosperity in Jesus’ name. It’s not the real gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ; it’s the prosperity gospel. Numbers are not the true measure of success or health.

During the ministry of Jesus, as he went from city to city heading toward Jerusalem, someone noticed that most people were content to see miracles and healings, but they weren’t surrendering their life to Him. So, this person asked Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” This is from Luke chapter 13. And Jesus’ response was, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” Numbers alone are not a trustworthy measure of a church’s health.

So, what is? What should we be looking for if we want to know if a church is healthy?

Seeking answer that question, pastor and author Mark Dever has written a helpful book called Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, which is now in its 4^th edition. Here is what he says you should look for in a healthy church. You don’t need to write these down, but you can if you want. I’m just going to move through them very quickly.

The first mark he lists is expositional preaching. You want a church committed to systematically teaching the Bible. Number two, you want gospel doctrine; that is a true understanding of the gospel and of the Christian faith.

Mark number 3 is a biblical understanding of conversion and evangelism. Number 4 is a biblical understanding of church membership. Number 5 is biblical church discipline. And number 6 is a biblical concern for discipleship and growth.

Mark number 7 is biblical church leadership. Number 8 is a biblical understanding and practice of prayer. And number 9 is a biblical understanding and practice of missions. I think that’s a helpful list, and Mark Dever unpacks and develops them more in his book.

What is important to keep in mind, however, is that a healthy church isn’t just defined by its affirmation of certain principles or doctrines. It is also going to be defined by its culture. How have a church’s doctrinal affirmations shaped the culture of the church? How has the ministry of the leaders made its way into the lives of the rest of the people?

I’d like you to turn with me to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. First Thessalonians chapter 4. Based Paul’s letter to this church, I don’t think he would categorize it as an unhealthy church, but that doesn’t keep him from encouraging them to continue on that path. Paul says that they are a church that knows how to please God and how to love one another, but twice in chapter 4, he tells them to do so more and more. They need to keep growing in love.

Our culture doesn’t understand biblical love, and that is especially evident now during Pride month. The culture says that love means letting people follow their own path in life. Let them determine their own truth and follow their own desires. That is one of the most unloving things we can do for someone else, because the heart is deceitful, and our sinful desires lead only to judgment and the wrath of God.

Biblical love means stepping into someone else’s life for their good. Biblical love means calling people to the path of righteousness and helping them stay on it. First Corinthians 13 says love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.

This loving desire to see others walk more closely with Christ is a vital characteristic of church leaders, but that doesn’t mean that they are the only ones who express it. In chapter 5, verses 12-13, Paul asks the church to honor its leaders. That honor includes taking part in what the leaders are doing. At the end of verse 13, Paul tells everyone, “Be at peace among yourselves.” It’s not just the pastors’ job to try to keep the peace; it’s everyone’s job. Every members is supposed to be helping make the church healthy and strong.

Continuing that idea, look with me, now, at verse 14 of chapter 5. First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 14. It says this: And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

Paul uses the term “brothers” over 15 times in this letter. Many of those times, it’s a word he uses to shift subjects a little bit, which is part of what’s happening here. But the word is also a signal that what he’s about to say applies to everyone in the church, and it applies because we are a church family.

As a brother or a sister in the Lord, we need to pursue Christ in our own lives, and we need to be helping others follow Christ as well. What does that look like in a local church? What kind of culture does that create?

It creates a spiritual family in which those who are straying from the path are addressed. Specifically, Paul mentions three groups that would fall in that category: the idle, the fainthearted, and the weak. Those are three examples of groups who are not flourishing in their spiritual growth.

Our study of this verse is going to take a couple weeks, but at the outset, before we get more specific, let me share with you four preliminary observations.

Observation number 1 is what I’ve been saying already. You need to respond. That’s God’s intent. You need to respond. If you were to leave these people alone, you would not be working toward the purpose and plan of Jesus Christ. You can’t just sit back and do nothing, expecting people to improve or correct their spiritual life all by themselves. You need to do something. You need to respond.

The second observation is this: You need to adjust. You need to adjust. Notice that Paul adjusts the response to the specific kind of person. Not every person gets treated the same way. The idle need to be admonished. The fainthearted need to be encouraged. And the weak need to be helped.

In other words, the first phase of your response should be identifying what kind of person you’re dealing with. And once you’ve identified them, then you’re in a better place to respond appropriately and personally. You need to adjust.

You don’t use a baseball bat to kill a fly, right? There are specialized weapons created for that. You don’t treat gangrene on someone’s foot the same way you treat a sprained ankle, right? Different issues necessitate different responses. You need to adjust.

Observation number 3 comes from the end of the verse: You need to be patient. No matter what kind of approach you decide to take with a person, Paul says, “Be patient with them all.” This is not necessarily going to be a quick fix, so the heart behind your response should be one of patience.

Lastly, observation number 4 is simply the recognition that these labels are not intended to be permanent or fixed on an individual. I don’t think Paul was saying take your list of church members and divide them into three groups. “Here are the idle, here are the fainthearted, and here are the weak. That’s your group and you’ll be there for the rest of your life.” He’s not saying that.

This seems to me to simply be three possibilities that we might encounter with others in the church.

There are times in my own life when I am idle. There are times when I am fainthearted. And there are times when I am weak. If you are going to help me in those times, you should be ready to face all of them. So, I think I can summarize this final observation by saying, “You need to be ready.”

You need to respond. You need to adjust. You need to be patient. And you need to be ready. That last exhortation is really what’s behind our lessons for today and next week. I want us as a church to be ready and equipped to minister to one another.

I will admit upfront that teaching from the pulpit is one way to speak into someone else’s life, but it’s not the only way, nor should it be. I only get 40 minutes or so each week, but I assume, and hope, you get more time than that with other Christians, whether they be in your family or through some other connection.

I am going to teach principles from the Bible about these responses, but that doesn’t mean that I will be the most effective in doing it. Some of you here are going to be far more effective than me in admonishing or encouraging or helping others.

All that being said, my goal for today is simply to teach a little more on the first category Paul gives—admonish the idle. Who are these people? And what does it mean to admonish them? Let me answer those questions one at a time?

First, who are the idle? The Greek word Paul uses literally means “out of order.” In the military, it referred to someone being out of rank. You’ve got all the soldiers lined up in a straight line, but one guy isn’t in his proper position. That’s a visible or literal understanding of this word. In a broader sense, this word referred to people who were disorderly; they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing.

The ESV translation, idle, highlights the aspect of laziness, which certainly qualifies, but other translations refer to them as the unruly, the irresponsible, the disruptive, or the undisciplined.

This is someone who knows what he’s supposed to be doing but doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want to. Rather than fulfil his responsibilities, he follows after his own desires, whether that be for sleep or comfort or pleasure.

Paul conveys this idea again in 2 Thessalonians 3 by using a related word. Apparently, this kind of lifestyle or behavior had become a pattern for some in the church.

What does an idle or a disorderly person look like today? How do you identify him? This rebellion can have all kinds of manifestations, but the main characteristic is the heart behind what someone is doing or not doing. The disordered person is someone who willfully and intentionally does not obey Christ or pursue His calling in their life.

For example, we have members of our church who regularly do not attend our Sunday services. Some of them haven’t come for over a year! Is that a disordered life that requires admonition? The correct answer—and it’s the correct answer in many other cases—is “It depends.” It depends.

The only way you can answer that question is if you have more information about the person. The 30-year-old member who lives nearby and has a car and only works Monday-Friday and is healthy most of the year is going to have to make a really good case for why he hasn’t come to church in a couple months. But for the elderly lady who doesn’t drive and who suffers from multiple health issues of the body and the mind, there’s going to be a different approach, right? Does that make sense?

So, you don’t get to immediately label someone. You have to take the time to know more about them. If someone’s detachment or sinful decisions are due to deliberate rebellion or laziness, then you’ve got a disordered brother.

And what does Paul say to do in that case? Admonish him. Admonish him. What does that mean? That’s the second question. What does it mean to admonish?

Merriam-Webster’s definition is helpful here. Admonish, it says, means “to indicate duties or obligations; to express warning or disapproval to, especially in a gentle, earnest, or solicitous manner.” Solicitous means there’s a concern. It is “to give friendly earnest advice or encouragement; to say something as advice or [as] a warning.”

So, to admonish someone is to give reproof. It is to warn them. The Greek word Paul uses here is the same word he used back in verse 12 to describe the function of church leaders. It’s a verb that means to set someone’s mind straight. It’s an attempted correction. It’s a warning.

People who are willingly straying from their devotion to Jesus Christ need to be warned. They need to be corrected. And you should be ready to do it.

In Romans 15:14, Paul says to the entire church, “I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” or admonish one another. It’s the same Greek word. We’re all expected to be doing it.

Colossians 3:16 says: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.” This is Christ’s calling on your life as a part of His body. A healthy church has a culture of admonishing.

We still have a few more minutes, but as I draw this message to a close, I simply want to give you three closing encouragements in regard to admonishing others. These are more reminders than anything else.

Number 1, you need to speak up. You need to speak up. The heart of admonition is basically the same as the heart of evangelism. You are trying to correct the course of someone’s life.

Some of you, under the label of politeness and gentleness, have decided that you aren’t going to correct someone else. But that’s really just an excuse. If you don’t want to speak up, the Bible calls that fear of man or a lack of love. It’s a privilege to be used by God to help a brother or sister.

The closing verses of James says: My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

If the other person is really seeking to honor Christ, they will be grateful you spoke up because they know their own tendency to stray

Proverbs 25:12 says: Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.

If they respond poorly, then at least you’ve got an idea of how dangerous their situation is. But you need to speak up in the love of Christ.

A second encouragement is that you need to be considerate. You need to be considerate. We need to admonish one another in a way that reflects the love of Christ. You shouldn’t ignore what’s happening in that person’s heart, but you also can’t go after them like they’re an enemy. That’s what Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 3.

Some of you hear this sermon and you’re eager to go correct others. That could be a legalistic heart. And it will lead to your correction being unnecessarily harsh or rough.

A warning can be true, but if it’s too harsh or aggressive, it can have the opposite effect; it turns the person away from Christ rather than drawing him back. It takes wisdom to know how to correct someone well. Find someone who does it well and learn from them.

Proverbs 25:11 says: A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. In other words, being able to say the right thing at the right time in the right way is priceless. It’s beautiful. Again, find people whom you’ve seen do it well, and learn from them.

There will come times when a correction should be stronger than usual. And that is going to be related in some measure to your relationship with the other person, to the other person’s personality, and to how dangerous the error is, either for the person or for the testimony of the church.

In Matthew 16, Jesus corrected Peter very strongly when Peter said Jesus shouldn’t go to the cross. Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Those are strong words, and they could be a reflection of Peter’s personality, but they are definitely a reflection of the significance and the centrality of the cross.

There’s another strong correction in Galatians 2, and again it’s also at Peter. Evidently, he evidently needed them and could handle them. Paul says, “I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Paul did that because Peter was leading men into legalism. He was leading them to believe that they needed to follow the Old Testament law in order to be accepted by Christ.

Again, that’s a major doctrinal error, but in both cases, I’m sure Peter understood the love Jesus and Paul had for him. It was a strong correction, but it was in the context of love and service. Paul had risked his life for the gospel. Jesus had given His life for His disciples.

The true heart of correction, like Paul mentions at the end of 1 Thessalonians 5:14, is a heart of patience. It’s a heart of love. Galatians 6 says we should restore one another in a spirit of gentleness.

In 1 Timothy 2, Paul says “the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.

If that’s how Paul wanted Timothy to respond to dangerous, false teachers, sure we should have a softer heart for our own brothers. And that’s what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5. We need to think about the relationship we have with the other person and be appropriate.

Paul says to Timothy, “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.”

The final reminder I will give you is that in admonishing someone, you need to be biblical. You need to be biblical. You either need to point to a biblical passage or to a biblical principle.

We use the word of God because, number 1, that’s how the Spirit is going to work, and, number 2, it demonstrates that you’re not the final judge. We’re not just out here correcting people with our own preferences. We are using the standard of Christ. So, if you want your admonition to be faithful and effective, you need to make it biblical.

Listen, you know that there are times and seasons in your own life when your heart strays from God. There are warning signs in your heart, and if you don’t listen, you can end up in a bad place. What a joy it is to have a brother or a sister in the Lord who can see it happening and lovingly call you back. God will use them to bring you back to your senses.

In closing, I want to read a passage that I’ve pointed to a number of times. Hebrews chapter 3, verses 12 and 13. Hebrews 3:12-13. This is a passage that remind us of the importance of speaking into one another’s lives.

Hebrews 3:12-13—Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

May the Lord move in all of us so that, more and more, this becomes part of the culture of our church.