In his epistle, after a barbed warning against false teachers amid the congregation, Jude suddenly takes a gentler tone: “Have mercy on those who doubt” (v. 22). This is not so different from the Pauline admonitions about sinners: that for the fallen, we ought to “restore him in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1), and that “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone …, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim. 2:24–25).
Jude understood that there is a difference between those who are convinced and those who are not. There are convinced sinners, and there are convinced believers—and between them are those who are undecided, those who are doubting what’s right, those playing with fire, and those who have polluted themselves with sin. Where repentance is possible, then, the godly leader is to seek restoration with all possible gentleness, even as he remains wary of the twin dangers of temptation’s flame and sin’s corruption (Jude 23).
A Story of Danger and Restoration
Jeremiah 38 doesn’t speak directly to this question of restoring the sinner. Nevertheless, as it portrays the restoration of a battered human body, it suggests to us how we should think of that important spiritual task.
As a prophet of doom who confronted sin and pronounced judgment, Jeremiah was understandably unpopular with the authorities in Jerusalem. Eventually, things got so bad that some of the king’s officials set out to silence him: “They took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud” (Jer. 38:6).
In the court was an Ethiopian, Ebed-melech, who took up Jeremiah’s cause. Convincing the king to show mercy, he took thirty men with him to lift Jeremiah out:
Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to the house of the king, to a wardrobe in the storehouse, and took from there old rags and worn-out clothes, which he let down to Jeremiah in the cistern by ropes. Then Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said to Jeremiah, “Put the rags and clothes between your armpits and the ropes.” Jeremiah did so. Then they drew Jeremiah up with ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. (vv. 38:11–13)
Ebed-melech, seeing the bodily peril Jeremiah was in, had mercy on him and pulled him out of the well while showing concern for the toll the procedure might have on the prophet’s body.
A Picture of Gentleness
One can imagine the conversation as Ebed-melech led the party not to the well but to the wardrobe. “Wait a minute!” someone might have said. “Jeremiah’s in a pit. Why are we going to the wardrobe?” And Ebed-melech perhaps responded, “Trust me.”
We might equally imagine Ebed-melech’s words to the prophet: “Jeremiah, we’re throwing you down a rope. But make sure that the rags are there to protect your armpits from the ropes—because when we pull you out, we don’t want to hurt you. We want to bring you out firmly, but we want to bring you out safely.”
Many pastors and Christian leaders, in their zeal to see sinners restored, rush directly to the well, as it were, bypassing the wardrobe. “We have to get the ropes down there!” they say to themselves. “We have to get him out now, quickly!” But such a sense of urgency may end up doing more harm than good. We need to be careful that in pulling people out of the mud, we don’t end up pulling their arms off!
Of course, there is the opposite danger too. Some Christian leaders are tempted to simply throw some rags down the well: “Wipe yourself down, Jeremiah. Clean yourself up a bit, and make the most of it. We won’t throw you a rope. We wouldn’t want to hurt you!”
The proper answer takes both dangers into count: “Jeremiah cannot stay in the well, or he will die there. But if we are not careful, we will only hurt him further as we take him out. We must remove him—yet we must make every effort to remove him gently.”
Saving the Sinner
James tells us, “Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (5:20). Sin and repentance are a matter of life and death. We cannot leave people in their sin.
But neither does the Bible give us leeway to treat the sinner with contempt. Our heart is to be the same as our Savior’s: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench” (Matt. 12:20). We restore sinners knowing that eternity is at stake. It may be necessary, even, to “[snatch] them out of the fire” (Jude 23) or, as with a frantic drowning man, to keep our distance until it is safe to step in. Yet in mercy, we ought never to show contempt for the doubter and the sinner as we lead them to repentance. We restore them, and we do so gently, because they are precious before God.
This article was adapted from the sermon “Remembering and Keeping” by Alistair Begg.
