Relational Sin Part 1

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Meditate

Relational sin can do tremendous damage in a church. It wounds people, distorts the truth, and tears at the unity, communion, and fellowship of Christ's body. Yet one of the most sobering truths about relational sin is that our response to someone else's flesh can quickly become another work of the flesh.

For this series, relational sins are attitudes, words, and actions that violate Christlike love, distort the truth, wound others, recruit allies, and damage the unity of Christ's body.

But relational pain is not automatically relational sin. Being hurt is not a sin. Disagreement handled in love is not division. Asking for real help from people committed to a biblical solution is not gossip. Reporting abuse, manipulation, dishonesty, or misconduct to people who can actually help resolve it is not slander. Establishing necessary boundaries is not unforgiveness. Maintaining unity does not mean uniformity, silence, or pretending nothing is wrong.

Relational sin is about how we handle these difficult things-especially our own attitudes, words, and actions.

M.I.P.
Before we address relational sin around us, we must bring our own flesh to the cross and walk by the Spirit.

Galatians 5 gives us both the diagnosis and God's answer. The diagnosis is an inner conflict between our fallen nature and the Holy Spirit. Our flesh pulls us toward self-centered reactions, while the Spirit leads us into the life and character of Christ.

When the flesh is allowed to lead, its results become visible. Some works of the flesh are obviously immoral. Others appear in our relationships: hostility, quarreling, jealousy, angry eruptions, selfish ambition, dissension, division, and envy.

Hostility is a settled attitude of opposition that keeps the heart resisting, criticizing, and attacking. Quarreling turns disagreement into conflict by insisting on winning, proving a point, or keeping strife alive. Jealousy is the resentful fear that another person's position, attention, relationship, or blessing threatens something we want.

Outbursts of anger use emotion, volume, words, or actions to overpower another person. Selfish ambition advances our own interests even when others are damaged or the body is divided. Dissension spreads disagreement in a way that stirs unrest and weakens trust. Division separates people into competing sides and loyalties. Envy resents the blessing, recognition, success, or relationships another person has received.

Scripture also places gossip and slander among the sins that injure relationships within the church. These sins frequently become the delivery system through which the other works of the flesh spread.

Gossip is sharing damaging, private, or inflammatory information with someone who is not part of the problem or part of the biblical solution. Slander is communicating accusations, distorted truth, exaggerations, or unverified claims in a way that damages another person's character or reputation.

Gossip spreads a story without a biblical purpose or concern for the whole truth. Slander shapes the story to damage the person. Like the game of telephone, one person repeats what was felt, heard, or assumed. Another person adds embellishment. Soon the story is repeated as fact, and the enemy has the fire spreading exactly where he wants it.

Galatians 5 also gives a serious warning about a life persistently characterized by the works of the flesh. This is not teaching that anyone who has ever committed one of these sins is beyond salvation. If that were true, none of us would have hope. The warning concerns a person who settles into these sins, justifies them, spreads them, and continually resists the correction of the Holy Spirit.

There is a great difference between a believer who is convicted by relational sin and a person who is comfortable continuing in relational sin. The question is not merely whether we have ever failed in this area. The question is whether we are continuing without conviction, repentance, surrender, or evidence of the Spirit's transforming work.

Apply

God does not expose relational sin in order to shame or crush us. He exposes it to deliver us. His answer is not self-improvement, religious behavior modification, or learning to hide our sin more carefully. His answer is the life-transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

1. Apply the definition to yourself first.
   Before examining someone else's attitude, words, or actions, honestly examine your own. Is your pain becoming hostility? Is disagreement becoming quarreling? Are you recruiting allies, spreading a story, assuming motives, or insisting that you must win?
2. Call the flesh what God calls it.
   Do not excuse it, defend it, rename it, or make it sound spiritual. Anger is not automatically righteous because we feel justified. Gossip does not become godly concern because it begins as a prayer request. Division does not become faithfulness merely because we believe our side is right.
3. Guard against gossip and slander.
   Before sharing a story, ask whether you are part of the problem, part of the biblical solution, or simply another person carrying the damage farther. Refuse exaggeration, missing context, assumed motives, and unverified claims. Protect truth, people, and the unity of Christ's body.
4. Take the warning seriously without losing sight of grace.
   A believer may fall into relational sin, but the Holy Spirit brings conviction and calls us to repentance. Do not become comfortable with what Jesus died to free you from. At the same time, do not confuse conviction with condemnation. God reveals the sin because He intends to change us.
5. Bring the flesh to the cross.
   The flesh does not need a better excuse. It must be surrendered and crucified. Because you belong to Christ, your anger, jealousy, defensiveness, gossip, slander, need to win, and need to gather people to your side do not have the right to rule you.
6. Let the Holy Spirit lead every part of your relational life.
   Let Him lead your conversations, reactions, texts, phone calls, assumptions, and responses when you are hurt. Stop long enough for the Spirit to check your flesh before the flesh takes over your attitude, mouth, or actions. Be quick to surrender your feelings, slow to speak your mind, and determined to control your actions.

The works of the flesh come out of us naturally. The fruit of the Spirit comes out of us supernaturally. Notice how relational that fruit is. It changes how we see people, speak to people, respond to people, handle offense, receive correction, and walk through conflict and pain.

The Spirit replaces hostility with love, quarreling with peace, anger with patience, selfish ambition with goodness, and a loose tongue with self-control. This fruit is not manufactured by human effort. It grows as we surrender to the Holy Spirit and allow the life of Christ to work in us.

Respond

The first place relational sin must be addressed is not in the person across the room. It is in our own hearts.

• Ask the Lord to reveal any hostility, jealousy, defensiveness, anger, envy, gossip, or slander in you.
• Confess where pain or disagreement has become a work of the flesh.
• Stop repeating any story that you are not responsible to carry or biblically equipped to resolve.
• Bring your need to win, be right, defend yourself, or gather people to your side to the cross.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to interrupt your flesh before it controls your attitude, words, or actions.
• Choose the next response that reflects the character of Jesus and protects the unity of His body.

In the coming messages, we will consider correction, restoration, reconciliation, and protecting the unity of the church. But today we begin here: relational sin begins in our flesh, the enemy exploits it, and people are damaged by it. Yet God has given us a powerful answer. The flesh can be brought to the cross, and the believer can live under the Spirit's transforming leadership.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation.