A New Look at Reproof

For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. (John 3:20-21)

For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. (John 3:20 KJV)

And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. (John 8:8-9 NKJV)

Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? (John 8:46)

And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; (John 16:8)

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. (Matthew 18:15)

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. (Matthew 18:15 NKJV)

I found something very insightful when I looked up the Greek words in this text. The word translated go lends significance to the attitude with which this event is entered into.

Go – to lead (oneself) under, i.e. withdraw or retire (as if sinking out of sight).

Tell him his fault – to confute, admonish:--convict, convince, tell a fault, rebuke, reprove.

In the original it actually says to reprove his reproof; it uses the original word twice in a row.

What is the right way to convict/reprove someone of a fault when convicting people is the role of the Holy Spirit?

Does this mean that we must be so full of the Holy Spirit that it is not really our desire to force others to agree with us that motivates this encounter? Maybe if we are going with the attitude of humility, as if sinking out of sight that we might be used by the Spirit simply as a agent, a messenger sent to expose them to His presence.

What is the difference between conviction and reproving? In my mind there is a difference but both words are used by translators in these verses. Maybe I don't have a correct idea of what reproving really is all about. Or maybe I am not seeing this verse in the right context or from the right perspective.

It is extremely easy to think that we are doing God's will by pressuring others (trying to convict them) to conform to our ideas and beliefs and even customs when it is really not God's Spirit in us at all. We are so prone to doing and saying things motivated from the influence of subtle deceptions in our own heart while believing we are carrying out God's will. So how can we know that we are doing this from the right motive – from God's motives and desires instead of our own? How can we avoid usurping the job of the Holy Spirit and yet still be involved in allowing Him to use us to accomplish His work of reproving in someone else?

Most of us at times are eager to expose other people's faults. But if the truth be really seen, much of the time this desire to expose others is the kind of judging that Jesus warns against doing. So how does this instruction in Matthew 18 integrate with other instructions to not judge others?

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. (Matthew 7:1 NRSV)

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. (Luke 6:37)

Or is this a situation where we must be willing to be judged ourselves when we are causing judgment to take place for someone else? That would put this whole thing in a different perspective. If we get involved in judgment we must be keenly aware that it is not just others who will be judged but everyone involved. God's light in judgment is not like a spotlight designed to only highlight our sins but nothing about the character of Him who is hiding behind the light. God's light is His character and illumines everything and everyone including Himself like the pervasive nature of the light that comes from the sun. So if I choose to follow these instructions and go to a person who has sinned against me to bring exposure to their fault, I must be prepared to be as fully transparent and exposed as I am asking them to be if I am really serious about bringing about reconciliation between us.

Look again at the verses in John 3. This is judgment... Judgment is just what happens when the light of truth shows up. But that light is going to light every person involved, not just others without involving us. The true Light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9 NRSV) Real judgment has as much to do with how we react to the presence of that exposing Light as it has to do with the approaching of the Light itself.

What the Light exposes is not just the symptoms of our outward behaviors that are produced by sin, but far more importantly it exposes the motives hidden deep in the heart. It is easy to point out external faults either in others or even in ourselves sometimes. But it is a whole different thing to have the secret motives of our heart that are often very hidden even from ourselves to suddenly come out into the open. That very often is quite shocking and surprising to everyone involved. And that too can produce an event of judgment in the way that others react and interpret what they think is going on.

So again, am I prepared to have the secret motives of my own heart of which I may be totally unaware, to be exposed by the light of real truth in the process of judgment? The real question here is, what is my attitude about being exposed. Will my discomfort about being exposed and having things come out from the inside of my heart that might embarrass me, that could be cause for potential shame or that may contradict my assumptions about myself – will that fear of being exposed prevent me from being willing to come to the light? Will my fear of being exposed cause me to take any other option rather than relying on God to be my source of true identity?

This fear seems to be the major source of keeping us away from light and immersed in deceptions about ourselves. Remember, deceptions are very seldom detected by the person who is deceived unless the Spirit brings conviction. The very nature of deception is that we don't know we are deceived; we honestly think that what we assume about ourselves is really the way it is. But by nature our professions and assumptions about what we believe are many times at odds with what our hearts really believe and feel deep inside. The purpose of the light of God's presence is to expose those discrepancies and reveal to us the conflicts between what we thought was true about ourselves and what our hearts really feel and believe.

If I am willing to go through this kind of exposure without giving in to fear that keeps me away from it, then I may become available for God to use me in turn for Him to bring light and conviction to someone who is at odds with me. This seems to help unpack part of this passage. He who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. If I am willing to go through a time of judgment along with the one I am approaching with light, then my very willingness is what is being described here as having been wrought in God. That sounds a lot like true humility.

I guess what is confusing about this is the seeming conflict in calling a sense of willingness a deed. What I can't accept at this point is the legalistic interpretation that would imply that my deeds become so righteous that I am justified by them as being a good person in God's eyes while trying to make the other person look bad by comparison. What I can see however is that if deeds are symptoms of the real condition of the heart, then if my heart is willing to be exposed to the light of truth in God's presence I am practicing the truth. In fact, I like that phrase practicing the truth because it implies that it is an ongoing process or experiment of learning to be vulnerable and honest in the light and not running away from exposure.

I heard someone note recently on the way that God brought judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. I had never thought about it from this perspective before. God did not take the reports of angels complaining about how bad people were in those cities and based on that hearsay summarily impose punishment. The way that God induces judgment was demonstrated very clearly in that situation. Angels showed up as normal-looking people and simply provided opportunity to see how the people in the city would treat them. They came as first-hand observers of what would happen when someone apparently vulnerable came within reach of these people. The people's reaction and treatment of vulnerable strangers became the opportunity to expose what was in the hearts of these people.

We typically assume that judgment was the fire that destroyed these cities of the plain. But now I am starting to see that this may be a mistaken notion, a common misinterpretation of the concept of judgment. Real judgment took place when the people of the city followed the lusts of their hearts without inhibition and wanted to rape and abuse these new strangers who showed up in town. Judgment took place when everyone who was watching saw plainly that there was no righteous restraint left in the lives of the people of these cities by the actions that they did when given opportunity.

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

The angels who went to Sodom were angels of light from heaven. So it only stands to reason that when they arrived at Sodom they brought light with them in the way that they acted, the way that they presented themselves to the city, the vulnerability with which they appeared to have as they approached. We don't typically think of light and vulnerabilities as being similar, but now I am rethinking this. God seems to always take notice of vulnerability in people and everything about true spirituality often seems to us to be too vulnerable for our liking. We recoil from the humility, the apparent passiveness, the seeming weakness of true Christians. But come to think of it that is what got Jesus killed too.

Jesus was the greatest light that has ever come into this world. And one of the most striking things about His life was the seeming weakness and vulnerability with which He lived according to the standards of this world. His meekness, His kindness, His compassion and tenderness all appeared to humans who viewed Him through the distortions of sin to look like weakness. They deeply resented His ways of dealing with sin and sinners because He did not reflect the popular views of a powerful God by employing force and fear in bringing about what they thought was righteousness.

Likewise, I don't read anything in the story of Sodom that the angels introduced an attitude of force or antagonism or even trying to incite people to do anything to incriminate them. They simply showed up as quiet observers, as gentle visitors and then watched to see how they would be treated. The reaction that they received from the city became the deciding factor in the act of judgment that took place during the exposure of the darkness in the hearts of the people in Sodom. Those people demonstrated that they loved darkness and hated the light of gentleness, kindness, humility and love that could clearly be seen in the demeanor of the angels in human form. They hated that light so much that they wanted to gang-rape and abuse these angels.

So I see something emerging here. Judgment seems to occur whenever light is brought into proximity to people who love darkness. Of course it also occurs to people who love light even if they are caught in the traps of darkness. Light does not come to condemn but to expose what is really inside. If we are willing to have the ugliness exposed and seek healing from the Source of the light, then judgment will actually work for our benefit. If we resist the light that exposes our true condition and choose instead to live in bondage to fear, then we will end up fighting against the light, hardening our hearts and eventually acting out the deeds of darkness that always results from estrangement from the true light of love.

When the world seeks to expose our faults it is for the purpose of shaming us, devaluing us, humiliating us and driving us to hopeless despair. This is one reason we are so afraid of exposure. But God's motives for exposing us are diametrically opposite to the motives of the world in this regards. When God's light comes to expose it is not in order to shame us but to expose the lies inside our hearts that keep us afraid of Him. It comes to reveal how much we are out of sync with our Creator and Lover. It comes to give us opportunity to allow God to come in and replace our heart-based lies about Him with the real truth and His presence so that we can move from living in fear to a life of thriving in love and joy.