The Benefits Of Truth Clothed In Tenderness

Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you … We dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children.
1 Thessalonians 2:7,11

Parenting a child. Nurturing a church. It’s no accident Paul uses the first to illustrate the second. And in each case, the key is love.

Love begets love. It’s a principle Paul embodied in his parent-like care for the Thessalonians. Albert Barnes gleans this lesson for today.

WALK WITH ALBERT BARNES
“Those who minister the gospel should be gentle, tender, and affectionate.

“Nothing is ever gained by a sour, harsh, crabby, dissatisfied manner. Sinners are never scolded into either duty or heaven. No man is a better or more faithful preacher because he is rough in manner, coarse or harsh in his expressions, or sour in his speech. Not thus was either the Master or Paul.

“There is no crime in being polite and courteous; and there is no piety in outraging all the laws which promote happy communication.

“What is wrong we should indeed oppose—but it should be in the kindest manner towards those who do wrong. What is true and right we should maintain and defend—and we shall always do it more effectively if we do it kindly.”

WALK CLOSER TO GOD
To summarize Mr. Barnes’s last paragraph: Hate the sin, love the sinner. It sounds so simple—until you try it with a child … or a Christian … or a church exhibiting immature attitudes and actions.

C. S. Lewis struggled with the same principle. He wrote, “For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction—how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But later it occurred to me that there was a man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself.”

Take that attitude, which you so naturally show toward yourself, and try it on someone else. Then discover how truth clothed in tenderness can mark the lives of those you are called to “parent.”