Active Faith (Part Twenty-Two): Returned to the Fold

Transcript

JRNT 22
05/28/2023
Active Faith (Part Twenty-Two): Returned to the Fold
James 5:19-20
Jesse Randolph


Throughout the Scriptures we see repeated use of metaphors and stories and illustrations to describe people, people like you and me, people who are composed of flesh and blood but yet are spiritual creatures, as being sheep. We think of what the prophet Isaiah said back in Isaiah 53:6 about our spiritual plight, our spiritual condition and why we are in such desperate need of forgiveness and salvation. Remember the prophet said this, he said, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord had caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” We think of the fact that forgiveness and salvation would come through the One of whom Isaiah prophesied—the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it is said in 1 Peter 2:25, “[We] You were continually,” we believers, we people, “straying like sheep but now [we've] you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of [our] your souls.” We think of what our Savior, Christ Himself, the Chief Shepherd, would say about His sheep in Matthew 18:11-12 where He says, “If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?” We think of how Jesus referred to His sheep in John 10:26-28 where He says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” Of course, we think of God Himself, Yahweh, being described in Psalm 23:1-2 as our Shepherd. “The Lord is my Shepherd,” it says, “I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the quiet waters.
He restores my soul.”

We are sheep, the Lord is our Shepherd. For those of us who have trusted in the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross, He has placed us squarely and securely within His sheepfold. He has placed us within this community of redeemed people which we now know today as the church. That universal body of believers which has existed from the day of Pentecost, and which will exist up until the time that the Shepherd takes us out of this world. That gathering being visibly expressed, the church, in local assemblies like we are a part of here this morning. Well, there are times when, though we are of Christ's sheepfold, though we are of the family of God, though our salvation is secure -- not based on our own inherent deeds or efforts or works or goodness but instead based on our trust in the all-sufficient work of Christ on the cross – that we find ourselves drifting and we find ourselves wandering and we find ourselves straying. Keeping up with the sheepfold analogy, some of us start entertaining these creeping doubts about whether the whole idea of a sheepfold or there being a divine Shepherd might be a figment of our imagination. Maybe we've been duped, maybe we've been conned, maybe Marx was right in that religion is the opiate of the masses. Or there are others of us who think about leaving the security and the comfort of the sheepfold, at least just for a little bit, at least to go explore what it might look like to go out and graze elsewhere. Though we are currently physically within the sheepfold, and we attend Sunday dutifully, we check the box each and every week, mentally we've checked out and spiritually our hearts are adrift. Yet for others of us, we will sidle up as close as humanly possible to the fence that is enclosing that sheepfold and we'll think to ourselves, maybe I should give it a shot, maybe I can clear that fence, maybe it is an electric fence or a wire fence and I might get a little charge or I might get a little cut, but the excitement of running free and doing what I want when I want with whomever I want is just too alluring. I can always run back into the sheepfold on my deathbed and just sort of eke my way across the finish line like the thief on the cross.

If you've ever struggled with those thoughts, if you've ever grappled with those thoughts, if you're currently wrestling with those thoughts, or if you've ever ministered to somebody who is having those thoughts, or ministered to somebody who is currently grappling with those thoughts, wrestling with those thoughts, today's text is going to resonate. Turn with me to your Bibles, please, to the last two verses of James' letter, James 5:19-20. God's Word reads, “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

This morning's sermon is titled “Returned to the Fold.” As we wrap up our series in the book of James this morning, I want to remind us of the terrain that we have covered since we first launched our study of this short book eight months ago. We've seen that James was the half-brother of Jesus and would later be called to be one of the Lord's apostles. We've seen that James' audience was this group of early Jewish converts, a group who had come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was in fact their Messiah. But we've seen that this was an early group of believers who still had all these various spiritual kinks to work out as they realized and learned what it means to faithfully live for the One who had called them to saving faith. As we've seen for multiple months now, James packed this letter with exhortation after exhortation to these early Jewish converts, exhorting them to live out their faith and to have an active faith. James, you recall, has given instructions on the trials that one would experience on account of their faith.

In fact, why don't you go back with me to James 1, we're going to do sort of a hit-the-highlights, hit-the-mountain-peaks sort of review as we back into our text. He exhorts them as it relates to trials, James 1:2, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” He has exhorted them on the source of temptations that will arise inevitably when we walk after and seek after the Lord. Look at James 1:13, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” He has exhorted them on the need for wisdom in their trials. That's James 1:5, it says, “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” And the need for perseverance in our trials, James 1:12, “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial.” He has exhorted them on the need to be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger, like we saw back in James 1:19. He has exhorted them on the importance of being doers of the Word and not mere hearers who deceive themselves as we saw in James 1:22. And he has shown them their need to exercise, James 1:27, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father” which is this, “to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” And that was just chapter 1.

In chapter 2 James would go on to call out the sin of partiality in the body of Christ. Look at James 2:1, “My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism.” In other words, don't favor the rich man in your assembly just because he is some sort of political power player or some sort of loaded lever puller, and he can do a few extra favors for you out there in the world. James then called out the folly of yoking oneself back under the fetters of the Old Testament Law, when as followers of Christ we've been given a new law, a simplified law, a streamlined law called the royal law of liberty, James 2:8. And that law we see in James 2:8 is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But just as he cautioned this group of early believers about tying themselves back to the Old Testament Law, and when they stumble and violate that Law facing the weight and judgment of that Law -- which we saw in James 2:10, “whoever keeps the whole Law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all” -- James also cautioned against swinging the pendulum in the complete opposite direction to that libertine, hands-off, Jesus-take-the-wheel sort of easy believism which passed for so-called faith not only in James' day but in our day today. Which is why in the second half of James 2 he says things like verse 17, “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead,” or verse 26, “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.”

In James 3 we saw the many perils and dangers associated with the tongue—the use of our words, the use of our mouths. We saw in James 3:5 that “the tongue … boasts of great things.” In verse 6 we saw “the tongue is the very world of iniquity.” Also, in verse 6 we saw that the tongue sets on fire the entire course of life “and is set on fire by hell.” In verse 8 we saw that the tongue “is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.” Verse 9 we saw that “we bless our Lord and Father” with that tongue “and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.”

Then as we move deeper in James 3 and on into James 4, James took us from the tongue to the heart. As we saw it's not a very long journey from the tongue to the heart because of what Jesus said in Matthew 12 [verse 34] that it's out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. James then proceeded to call out various sins of the heart later in chapter 3 and on into chapter 4. James 3:14, look at that with me, he says, “But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder in every evil thing.” Then look down at James 4:2, he calls them out and says, “You lust and do not have; you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so, you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?” Then as James 4 progressed we saw James dealing out various additional commands. James 4:7, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” James 4:8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” Verse 9, “Be miserable and mourn and weep.” and verse 10, “Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord.”

Chapter 5, the final chapter of this brief letter. We've already seen James address a variety of different subjects and topics in this clipped, rapid-fire format as he concludes. He has addressed the evil of the rich of the assembly who were oppressing and taking advantage of their less well-to-do brothers in the Lord. We see in James 5:3, he says, “Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!” He addressed the reality of the Lord's soon coming return and our call to be patient in the meantime. That's James 5:8, “You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.” He stressed the importance of our yes being yes and our no being no, and not making rash, foolish oaths in James 5:12. Our last time together, we saw in James 5:13-18 he stressed the importance of prayer and confession and elder involvement in the lives of spiritually suffering individuals in the local expression of believers, i.e., the church.

That catches us up and brings us back to the front door of our text for today, the final two verses of James' letter, verses 19 and 20. We'll read them again. It says, “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” Here we have in both the original Greek and in our English Bibles one sentence spanning two verses from which we are going to get three points or three thoughts. First, we're going to encounter “The Runaway,” second we're going to meet “The Rescuer” and third we'll see “The Reward.” Our three headings for this morning are “The Runaway,” “The Rescuer,” “The Reward.”

Let's start with “The Runaway” at the start of verse 19. Look at what he says, “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth.” Now, the first order of business at the outset here is to ask a question, to answer a question that we've been asking several times through this series which is this: who is James talking to, who is his audience? These aren't mere academic curiosities, by the way, because getting the question of James' audience right and understanding who he was writing to and the reasons he was writing them helps ensure that we don't take a passage like this and treat it like a square peg that we're trying to jam into a round hole. It helps us ensure that we don't try to jam this passage into a context for which it was never intended. See, you'll find people who will take this passage to support an otherwise well-meaning intent to evangelize the lost as we witness to and share the Gospel with non-believers. But is that the context here? Is that the setting here? The answer is no.

Let's look carefully at the language James uses here in verse 19. First, he calls his audience, addresses them as “my brethren.” Those two words pretty much settle it. In fact, this is the 15th time in this short letter that James addresses his audience as “my brethren.” I won't go through all of them up here right now, but a few. James 1:2 where he says, “Consider it all joy, my brethren.” Or James 1:19, “This you know, my beloved brethren.” James 3:1, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren.” James 4:11, “Do not speak against one another, brethren.” James 5:9, “Do not complain, brethren.” And then here in verse 19, “My brethren, if anyone among you strays from the truth.” Throughout this letter those words, “my brethren,” have always had a Christian audience in view. As has been true throughout this letter, James in our passage for this morning is addressing believers, addressing Christians. Now these are admittedly new-in-the-faith Christians, these are Christians who like you and me were putting one foot in front of the other in terms of their daily walk with Christ and their progressive sanctification. These were Christians who like you and me had not yet achieved perfection and certainly didn't have their glorified body by this point. These were Christians who like you and me as it says in James 3:2 still stumbled in many ways. But they were Christians. These words, “my brethren,” should seal the deal for us on this point about who is James addressing.

But it's almost as though he anticipates the objection because look at what comes next. He goes on to say, “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth.” Now we've already seen James use that formulation of words, “if any among you” in at least a couple of other places. Look up the page to James 5:13 where he says, “Is anyone among you,”
same verbal formulation there, “suffering?” Who is he referring to there? Christians or non-Christians? It's Christians. A part of the reason we can say he is definitely referring to Christians in verse 13 is the solution he provides right after. “Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray.” See, that admonition only makes sense if James is addressing believers, that is those who have access to God through prayer, those who can actually draw near to the throne of grace that they have been given through Jesus Christ. Then there is the same formulation in verse 14. It says, “Is anyone among you sick?” Again, who is he referring to there? Christians or non-Christians? Once again it is clear from the context that he is talking to Christians here and we get the answer to that based on what he says next. He says, “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church.” Who are elders responsible for? Who are elders responsible for tending to and for caring for and praying for and shepherding? Non-believers? Absolutely not. Elders are responsible for the spiritual care and shepherding of the followers of Christ in their local assembly. 1 Peter 5:1-2 says, “Therefore I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God among you.” Did you catch that? Elders shepherd Christ's sheep. Elders don't shepherd goats; elders don't shepherd wolves. Pastors and elders are shepherds and shepherds shepherd sheep, meaning those who belong to the Great Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. So, in verses 13-14 when James here says, “If anyone among you” or refers to “anyone among you,” he clearly has Christians in view. Now as we go back down to our text in verse 19 when he says, “If any among you strays from the truth,” again he clearly has Christians in view. He doesn't say here, if anyone out there is astray or if anyone on God's green earth is astray. No, it says, “If anyone among you strays.” All this to say that those words, “If any among you” point back to the brethren that he mentions at the beginning of verse 19 and that only cements the conclusion that James here is addressing Christian believers. These verses are not about evangelism or soul-winning, there are other verses for that. These verses are about reconciliation and spiritual restoration within the body of Christ, turning the prodigal around.

With that now cleared up we move on to what James says next here in verse 19, that this person in this early gathering has, it says, “strayed from the truth.” “Strays from the truth,” it says. Now that word strays is from a Greek verb, planao, and it means to wander, to go astray. Another place we see that verb used in the New Testament is in the book of Jude. In fact, why don't you turn with me to Jude, just one book before the book of Revelation, second to last book in the Bible. We'll look at Jude and we'll pick it up in verse 12. Look at Jude 12, it says, These are the men who are “hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves. Clouds without water, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam, wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.” The word that Jude uses here for wandering when he refers to wandering stars is the same word James uses back in James 5:19 when he describes those who are going astray within the body of believers. In Jude the context was these unconverted false teachers, in James the context is those who are saved but drifting. Now here is a fun fact. That Greek verb in James 5:19 or here in Jude 12-13, planao, is the same word from which we get our English word, planet. Planets were given that name because as they revolve around the sun, from our appearance they seem to be wandering throughout the sky. James' point here is that there were some in this early gathering who were in danger of wandering, they were in danger of going astray. They needed to be brought back into the fold. They were in this orbit of fellowship with other believers, but they were at risk of wandering. They were in danger of drifting, of slipping, of becoming spiritual runaways. Note what it was they were in danger of straying from. It says, they “stray from the truth.” See, they had been brought forth, we see in James 1:18, “by the word of truth to be a kind of first fruits among God's creatures.” But now there were cracks in their convictions, and now there were fissures in their faith, and now there was this real risk that they would go astray or be led astray. Again, these are believers that James is talking to here. These are those who had received the word of truth, that is the message of the Gospel. These are those who had placed their trust in the One who calls Himself the truth, the Lord Jesus Christ. These were those who knew the truths which God had revealed about Himself through His Word, including what we have here in the letter we now know as James.

Now thought exercise time. Not responsive, you don't have to put hands up, but can an unbeliever stray from the truth? Can an unbeliever stray from the truth? No, the answer is no. An unbeliever can reject the truth, but an unbeliever cannot stray from the truth because he has never come to the truth, he has never accepted the truth. Rather, the Scriptures testify that he has put a wall up to the truth. II Corinthians 4:4 speaks of his “mind being blinded.” II Thessalonians 2:10 says that the unbeliever “does not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.” A more familiar verse to many of us would be Romans 1:18, that the unbeliever “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness.” See, the only person who can wander from the truth is a person who at some point has believed the truth, i.e., a Christian. A Christian, then, is actually the only person, the only category of person that can actually wander away from the truth. That is what is being described here. James is describing a prodigal situation, he is describing a Christian, someone who knows the truth, at one point has embraced the truth but since has lost their sight of and focus on and grip of the truth. As that has happened, they have found their judgment clouded. As that has happened, they have found themselves becoming entangled in sin and now they find themselves in this place of spiritual danger and decline. That's always the pattern, is it not? That's always the pattern. When we lose our grip on, our sight of what we know about God through the truth of His Word, what happens? Our spiritual walk will inevitably slip. That's because knowledge of the truth and godly conduct are inseparably joined. Titus 1:1, Paul there speaks of the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness. The one always leads to the other, the one always breeds the other. When biblical truths grip our minds, it produces godliness. But to the contrary, when those truths slip from our minds, or when we stray from the truth, the result will inevitably be ungodliness. Ungodly thoughts, ungodly behaviors. I mean, isn't that what we've seen throughout the book of James? Isn't that the root of every exhortation he has had to give from chapter 1 all the way through chapter 5? Isn't that at the heart of what James has addressed throughout this book, that true faith, that saving faith, a faith that is rooted in the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a faith that has grown and matures through a steady diet and intake of God's perfect Word, that that is an active faith? A true faith, a saving faith will always be an active faith, a faith that produces works and a faith which inevitably will with time lead to growth and godliness. Genuine saving faith will always result in a transformed life. The truth that we know will always bring about a transformation that is noticeable.

By contrast when there is a slip in our knowledge of the truth, whether it is on account of a slip in our own spiritual disciplines or whether it is on account of being deceived by some form of false teaching, what is going to happen? There will be a corresponding slip in our conduct. The person who is deficient in their intake of the Word, the person who is deficient in their search and study of the Scriptures, the person who rarely meditates and reflects upon the glorious truths of the Gospel of grace, the person who has become spiritually famished and starved will always, will inevitably become adrift and stray. They are always going to start at some point down the line making foolish and selfish and sinful choices. Without the mirror of the Word right in front of them, highlighting for them all of their blemishes and the distortions that still exist and the sin that still clings, a spiritual drift, a spiritual decline into those old ungodly thoughts and patterns and practices is sadly inevitable. Can anyone here this morning relate to what James is saying about wandering, about straying, about becoming adrift? You have the marked up Bible, you still pray at mealtimes, you still drag yourself in on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings, you still make sure from time to time you get to that midweek Bible study, you're kind of checking in and doing the things you've always done at church just because you have always done them or mom and dad always did them or grandma and grandpa always did them. You're just sort of drifting along, going through the motions, living from Sunday to Sunday. To borrow a line from the book of Hosea which we'll also be finishing tonight, you are like a stick floating on the surface of the water. You're just kind of going with the flow, not open to any sudden movements. You're just trying not to sink and trying not to capsize. But is that truly the way of the Christian pilgrim? Is that how the abiding and growing follower of the Lord Jesus Christ ought to function? Absolutely not. Recall what the author of Hebrews said in Hebrews 2:1, he said, “We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it.” I love what D. A. Carson said on this topic of drifting, he writes, “People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance. We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom. We drift toward superstition and call it faith. We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism. We slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we've been liberated.” He's absolutely right. We don't move forward in our faith by drifting. We don't stumble into holiness. We don't naturally gravitate in the direction of godliness which is why we are told over and over in the Scriptures to press on, to lay hold, to strive. That is Paul in Philippians 3:12, “I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.” Are you like a stick floating on the surface of the water? Or are you striving in your faith? That's the question James has been challenging all of us to answer throughout this letter. In our text for this morning he is saying, don't drift, don't stray from the truth. Rather, hold firm, hold fast.

With that we turn our attention now from The Runaway, the one who strays, the stick on the water to The Rescuer. That's our second point for this morning. Look at the end of verse 19. After referring to the one who strays from the truth, look what comes next. “And one turns him back.” With those words James' focus shifts away from the one who is astray, whom we have called The Runaway, to now the one who is turning him back, whom we've called The Rescuer, where he is described further in verse 20, by the way, as “he who turns a sinner from the error of his way.” Now just a few observations about this rescuer. First, note this repeated use of the verb “turns.” We see it both in verse 19 and in verse 20, and the verb there is epistrepho. There won't be a spelling test, but it is epistrepho. That verb means to turn around, to turn about, to turn towards. In some cases, it can mean to turn oneself around, but here it means to turn someone else around. This verb, epistrepho, can be used in different contexts. It's used in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 to refer to an unbeliever being turned around. 1 Thessalonians is speaking to the early church at Thessalonica and Paul there says, “how you turned,” epistrepho, “to God from idols to serve a living and true God.” But it can also, this verb, be used to address a Christ-follower being turned around. In fact, Jesus Himself uses this verb to speak of Peter in Luke 22:32 where He says, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and you, once you have turned,” same verb, “strengthen your brothers.” That's the idea here in James. The picture is of this wandering believer, this Christian who has gone astray, this spiritual runaway and they are facing in the wrong direction, and they are walking in the wrong direction and now this other person, the rescuer, grabs them by the shoulders. I struggled all week to think about a good illustration for this idea of grabbing by the shoulders and the best I could come up with was the idea of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Have you ever been behind your toddler, or a toddler and they are playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey and they are walking into the wrong wall? You know, the donkey is pinned over there but they are walking this way. What do you do? You grab them by the shoulders, and you turn them around. That's the picture here with epistrepho—grabbing them by the shoulders, squaring up their shoulders and turning them in the right direction.

Here's another thing about this rescuer. Note who it is the rescuer is turning, the one they are grabbing ahold of and turning around. He is called a sinner. Not a pagan, not an unsaved person, not an unbeliever but a sinner, a sinning Christian, a Christian who sins. Have you ever met one of those? Well, this is not the first time that James has addressed members of this gathering of believers in this way, calling them sinners. James 4:8, he says, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners.” Nor is it the first time that he has referred to sin by name in this letter. James 4:17, he says, “To one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” Or James 5:16, just a few verses up, says, “Confess your sins to one another.” The person who has strayed from the truth, as we see in verse 19, has now, verse 20, fallen into this ditch of error. Note who it is that God is now using to pull this person out of this ditch of error to turn them around to square up their shoulders so that they can resume walking on the path of truth and of righteousness. It's the rescuer, the person described at the end of verse 19 as the one who “turns him back.”

By the way I want us now to just sort of camp out on this for a minute. Note how much theology and specifically ecclesiology is layered into that statement, “one who turns him back.” Note it doesn't say the pastor turns him back or the elder turns him back or the super spiritual saint turns him back. No, it says one turns him back. That's it. That is such a nondescript, generic way to refer to a person—the one. But at the same time James' use of that generic word, one, tells us so much because what he is doing is he is highlighting for us the fact that in a healthy assembly of believers, i.e., in a healthy church we are all called to function as this one. We know ultimately that it is God who through His Holy Spirit will convict individual hearts of sin. We know that it is God who will bring about this needed repentance in the life of the believer, but He uses His children, namely other believers, a bunch of ones like you and me to bring about that conviction, to bring about that repentance, to bring about that restoration. What this means for us practically as a church is that when we see that brother or sister who is in the Lord but is adrift, and when we sense and are concerned that they may be straying, we need to do all that we can in humility, through prayer, through the identification and removal of any logs in our eyes which might be impeding the vision of the speck in theirs and in love to turn him back, to turn our brother or sister from the error of his way. Now I can already hear the objections, I can already almost imagine the e-mails that are going to come when I say this, that it is all of our jobs to go after that brother or sister who is in sin. I’m going to address the objections, I'm going to cut them off at the pass right now, okay?

Here is one objection that will come. But he or she didn't invite me to involve myself in their business. Maybe not, but no invitation is needed to help a wayward brother or sister back onto the path of truth and of righteousness. Societal conceptions of rudeness and politeness and minding our own business don't always line up with biblical standards. And guess what gives way when measured up against Scripture? Societal conceptions of politeness. There are times when in love we are called to mind the business of others, and that certainly is the case when we have a brother or sister in the Lord who is wayward and is spiritually adrift. That is our business, and it is our business because we love Christ, we love His church, we love the people who make up the church and we earnestly desire to see them presented holy and blameless before Him.

Here is another possible objection. It just doesn't seem very loving to involve myself in other people's affairs. Whether it seems loving isn't the issue. Whether it is loving is what matters. And just as sharing the Gospel with an unbeliever is the most loving thing you can do for them, and just like that oncologist sharing the cancer diagnosis is the most loving thing they can do for their patient, turning a sinner, a sinning brother or sister from the error of his way is one of the most loving things you can do for them. Now the tone doesn't need to be nasty, your approach to them doesn't need to be harsh, but you do need to tell them the truth because you love them as a brother or sister in the Lord.

Here is another possible objection. Isn't that the pastor's job? Isn't that your job, Jesse? Shouldn't the elders be doing this? Are you ready for my very short answer? No. No. Ephesians 4:11-12 gives us our road map. Ephesians 4:11-12 says that “pastors and teachers equip the saints for the work of service to build up the body of Christ.” In verse 13 it says that we do so, so that we all, all of you, all of us, “attain to the unity of faith.” That then gives us the authority, Ephesians 4:15, “to speak the truth in love as we all grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.” So, as it relates to bringing a sinning brother or sister back into the fold, turning them away from their error, the old leave-it-to-the-professionals excuse simply doesn't fly. It's the job of all of the members of the body to identify those straying and wayward and wandering brothers and sisters and to bring them back. To bring them, note this, in a very specific way and with a very specific spirit, namely the one that is given to us in Galatians 6:1. “Brethren, if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.”

Back to our text. When James speaks here in verse 19 of “one turning a wayward believer back,” what this is telling us again is that this important ministry is not the responsibility of pastors and elders and church leaders only. Rather, it is the responsibility of all believers in the assembly. We love Christ and because we love Christ, we love His people. John 13:35, the Lord Himself said, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another.” Because we love Christ's people, we tell them when their conduct is dishonoring of our Lord. Because we love Christ and because we love His people, we tell them their behavior is unfitting of the profession of faith they have made in Him. This is at the heart of what Paul says in Romans 12:5 of what it means to be part of a body of Christ, a body of believers and members of one another.

Okay, we've looked at what our text says about The Runaway, the one who strays from the truth; we've looked at what the text says about The Rescuer, the one who turns him back; next and last we are going to consider The Reward. Look at the last part of verse 20, it says, “He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” Here is our third and final point for this morning—The Reward. Now, I've already highlighted this earlier but as we have seen at various places in our study of James there will be those who will say here as they have said of other sections of James that James is now scrapping all that he said to believers and is suddenly addressing nonbelievers here. They'll say that because of what it says at the end of verse 20 when James refers to saving one's soul from death and covering a multitude of sins, that that must somehow only relate to the non-believer. I don't buy that logic. Going back to verse 19 which we started with, we've seen this clear language. “My brethren, if any among you strays.” He's talking to believers here. We have to remember that this section of James' letter just like all of James' letter is addressed to a Christian audience and it is restoration not redemption that is in view here. So, in what sense then can it be said that this runaway who is being turned by this rescuer, if that runaway is a Christian is having his soul saved from death? Wasn't his soul immediately and once and forever saved from death when he placed his faith in Jesus Christ? Indeed. His soul was indeed saved from death at that point. We already saw back in John 10:27-28 when our Lord says, “My sheep hear My voice and I know them, and they follow Me and I give eternal life to them. And they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of My hand.” But here is the thing, while God does the saving, Ephesians 2:8-9, and while a Christian's salvation is eternally secure, the reality is that God uses other believers in the process of carrying His people all the way to glory with Him. God uses other believers to help us endure. God uses other believers to help us persevere. How does the Lord protect His sheep from wandering away from Him? How does the Lord preserve our salvation to the end? One of the ways He does so is through His people. In fact, we've already seen glimpses of this elsewhere in James 5 as James has exhorted these early believers to be patient toward one another, long suffering, forbearing toward one another, mirroring the character of God in doing so. He has exhorted them not to complain against one another. He has exhorted them to pray for one another. As we saw last time, he has exhorted them to involve the elders in the lives of those who have become spiritually weak. What would each of those activities that I've just rattled off from James 5 ultimately accomplish? Well, what they would do and what they would affect would be to keep the one who has trusted in Jesus Christ, the one whose salvation has already been settled in the courts of heaven and who is eternally secure on the right track. It is with that same spirit here in verse 20 that James brings us to another one another, the turning of another from the path of error and the path of apostasy. God has already saved that person's soul from death if they have trusted in Jesus Christ, but He uses other members of the body of Christ to bring about His predetermined end. God is sovereign, He does the saving, He does the preserving, but He does so through His people as they look out for and care for and love one another by turning them away from the path of error, the path of ungodliness.

So that's one piece of the James 5:20 puzzle. Here is the other piece that we have to put in place, and it involves the last few words here, the last words of the latter in fact, where it says, “and he will cover a multitude of sins.” James' Jewish audience immediately would have recognized that concept of covering sin. They would have remembered places like Psalm 32:1, “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and whose sin is covered.” Or Psalm 85:2, “You forgave the iniquity of Your people, You covered all their sin.” But here the word James uses for cover has some additional nuance to it, some additional texture to it. It doesn't mean cover in the sense of concealing or hiding or sweeping under the rug. Rather, the word he uses here for cover, it has a connotation of exposing and confessing one's sin. The sinner, the wayward believer, in other words, is coming clean. As a result a multitude of his sins are covered and thus forgiven. They are not forgiven by the human agent, the human rescuer, the one who has turned him back. That person, a mere human, has no ability to forgive sins, but he is forgiven by the divine rescuer, God Himself who has forgiven all his sins at the cross of Jesus Christ. I John 1:9, “If we confess our sins he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” As an act of love, as an agent of reconciliation this rescuer pursues the runaway as God working through this rescuer turns that runaway around and now the runaway is back on track and his sins are confessed and covered and he is walking back on the right path. The wayward sheep is back in the fold, and he can move back on that path toward spiritual maturity.

So to summarize in these two verses, in this single sentence, we've seen these three ideas come off the page. First is this reality that Christians can and sometimes do drift. That's the idea of The Runaway. Second is the idea that others in the body can help bring that person back into the fold. That's the idea of The Rescuer. Third is the reality that there is great reward in doing so. “He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

Let's pray. God, thank You for these timeless and precious reminders from Your Word. Thank You that You are a God who pursues, follows, and chases down to the uttermost rebels like us. You did so when You saved us. You pursued us, You redeemed us, You granted us eternal life as we were astray. But thank You that You have placed us in a body of believers, and we have brothers and sisters in the Lord who love You first and foremost and love each other and out of that love have a desire to honor You by pursuing wayward brothers and sisters. May we be a church which is continually marked by that type of love. Not beholden to the world standards of love or politeness or boundaries, but rather seeking to honor what Your Word says. God, I pray that we would be a church that is a restorative church, a church that pursues those in our body who are adrift because we love them and care for them and want what is best for them and we want to see them growing and maturing and thriving in the Lord. Thank You for the book of James, thank You for the many months we have had in it and the truths that You have revealed through it. I pray that we would be a body that is marked by not a dead faith, but an active faith, a living and abiding and a thriving faith in the One who has saved us, our Lord Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.