Matthew 7:3-5- 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
A plank in our eye would make it impossible for us to see anyone else’s speck correctly, right? Jesus was saying, examination and judgment start with us. I mean, how can I really help you and try to make a move toward you to get something out of your eye when all the while I have a big stick in my eye? Perhaps a next-level thought is, Are we tolerant of our own sins, but easily incited by the sins of others? Do we take some kind of pleasure in exposing other people’s failures, all the while, concealing our own? Sometimes our rush to point out the flaws of others could be an attempt to take the spotlight out of the branch that is growing out of our own eye.
If your goal is to be a help to people and not a hindrance, Jesus says, you will deal with your own stuff first. In other words, there will be a recognition on your part that you aren’t perfect and that will create a spirit of humility which lays the foundation for you to go to someone else. No one wants to be confronted by someone with a haughty spirit, but many will receive someone with a humble spirit. Humility keeps us from coming across as “holier than thou.” Humility keeps us from having a critical spirit. If we are about speck removal, it always must be from a position of concern and compassion and not condemnation.
So, to be clear, you don’t have to be 100% perfect in order to confront someone about something. You simply need to be addressing your own issues and in humility seek to share with others. Otherwise, not only will you not be received well by the other person, but you could likely do more damage and even hurt the cause of Christ in the process. That’s how seriously we have to approach confrontation. Our goal with any confrontation should be to bring peace to the person and the situation.
So, how do we do peaceful confrontation?
We confront people prayerfully. Let prayer prepare your heart and the heart of the person you are confronting.
Prayer paves the way for peace in the midst of conflict. You could even ask the person you want to talk to if you could offer a prayer before you share something with them. Just explain that you want God to be present and you want to make sure you are staying submissive to Him during the conversation. I say all of that to say, “Don’t try to confront anyone without praying.” It won’t go well if you do.
We confront people privately-Nobody wants their transgressions blasted on social media. No one. And yet I continue to see, even believers, do a lot of outing, a lot of exposing, a lot of finger pointing, a lot of confrontation on social media. Believers need to be in the conversations on social media, for sure. 100%. But when the conversation turns to confrontation, it needs to be done privately.
The Bible says, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” I Peter 4:8 Love keeps things private. Love keeps people from gaining a bad reputation and being hated on by others. If that is true, then the converse is also true. It is unloving to uncover a multitude of sins. It’s easier for someone to process what you have to say when you are the only one talking to them. It is also easier for people who have been covered by love to recover and start over after a personal failure. Once you expose them and invite public opinion on social media, you have just ganged up on the person and their natural inclination says they only have two options which are fight or flight. We can avoid putting people in that position if we will speak to them privately, one-on-one. What is the purpose of painting someone into a corner? What is beneficial about that? Nothing. Matthew 18:15 says, 15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
Matthew 18:15 says we are to go to someone and point out their fault. If we want to do confrontation well, we should confront people personally. More messes are made by emailing and texting. If you can’t do a face-to-face meeting, pick up the phone, but Christians, do the Bible. It will take less time and besides that you won’t be out of memory on your phone because you feel the need to hold on to all of the texts as evidence against the person for the next time you might not see eye-to-eye. I’m just sayin’.
We need to confront people purposefully-What I mean by this is that first and foremost our purpose in all things should be to glorify God. “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” I Corinthians 10:31 We will get it more right than wrong when we are concerned first and foremost about advancing the glory of God.
In addition to wanting to glorify God, identify what you want to achieve as a result of the meeting. Make sure it is a godly purpose and then go into the meeting with that purpose in mind, so you don’t lose sight of the purpose and get off on tangents that lead to muddied waters.
Finally, we should confront people peacefully. No Christian should be yelling or name calling or cussing at someone. And if we aren’t sure we can behave and discuss something in a self-controlled manner we might need to get some help with that. I know this: Peace won’t result from a war of words.
James 3:18 says, “Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.” If you want to reap something good from the confrontation, be sure to sow it and seed it with seeds of peace.
Here’s the bottom-line takeaway: Remove the plank, get prepared and pass the peace.
