S153P6 – These we must accept: we cannot invite all
2 Tim. 3:1-5
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
When I became a Christian, I thought that my job was to reach everyone I encountered. I would survey all my conversations with people throughout the day and wonder what I could have done to inject my faith into this one or that. I sometimes felt a burden to evangelize wherever I was, as if going through the checkout line at the grocery store without sharing my faith with the cashier was a sin. I carried a burden I did not need to carry, but I think many of us have the same questions. We wonder how we could have reached one more person today. It can be difficult to reconcile this desire to reach the lost with clear instruction to keep our distance from some.
We have a desire to seek and save the lost, which we should have, but we must carry that out with wisdom. The truth is that influence flows in both directions. Just as we are trying to nudge someone closer to God, that person might be trying to nudge us in the other direction. The interesting thing is that this passage appears not to be warning us simply about those who are obviously lost. It warns us about those who give the appearance of godliness. A review of the verses immediately before this seems to indicate that this warning must be heeded within the Church as well. Perhaps that is part of the difficulty. We will need to be wise to keep our distance even from those we thought were fellow saints.
Although we are not to fear this world, we certainly are commanded to live carefully. As we distance ourselves from the sins the world practices, that will mean that we often will need to distance ourselves from the ones sinning. We would be wise to review this list so that we would not be lured into practicing such things. One cannot be deceived without the appearance of a deceiver, and sometimes the deceiver looks anything but. We must seek discernment to know when it is time to turn away from those who need the Lord so desperately. Father, help us to walk out this instruction faithfully and wisely, guarding ourselves from the ways of sin while still reaching the lost world.