Hate the sin, not the sinner.

After taking my spiritual giftings test and doing research I found one fact shocking, but accurate. I was not happy about my findings, but it happens. One of the weaknesses of my giftings is that I tend to see the person and their sin wrapped together in a package and not as I should see them.

I thought about all the times I had seen someone fall into temptation, fail, and that was forever the event I classified them with. Or when someone hurt me, how I'd put a cold shoulder towards them and avoid their fellowship at all costs. There are many situations from my past that I sat and combed through this morning and thought about how wrong I was for feeling as I do.

Being someone who is standoffish isn't something God desires for our lives. It causes division and a wedge between people, denominations, and His people. Another weakness I was affiliated with was that I tend to be around people with like doctrine beliefs. In this season of my life, I'm around MANY with different beliefs that aren't exactly the same as mine. But I have come to the point to realize it's less about being doctrine correct than it is about reaching lives.

 That is the great commission after all. I spent some time in Jude yesterday. Not a lot of time it's pretty short. But something's stood out to me. Specifically Jude 23.

Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgement. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sin that contaminate their lives.

Which threw me for a loop. Sin contaminates a life. Gets into different areas of your life and starts to poison them. If you have a cup of water and add drops of food coloring, over time it will completely corrupt the water and change its color. Sins the same way. We, as Christians, have to make sure we keep the two separate. The person and the sin. Even though the sin can boil over into other area's of our life, it doesn't define us. Food coloring doesn't change the fact that the water is still water.

I do tend to look at the water as green or blue or red. It's a characteristic I don't like about myself, but at least I acknowledge that it's there. We HAVE to start seeing others as people and not the sin they commit. The sin isn't who they are, who they are is who they are.