One of the most difficult things to navigate in this world is our own tongues. What I mean is that often in the Christian world, people are taught to correct others and that it is our duty to do this, especially if you’re a leader. People emphasize it so much in and out of the churches that if you don’t correct people, you will be looked at from your congregation as a coward. When leading in a church, a group, a community, or any religious body, there is an enormous amount of pressure to do the right thing. Even if your followers that you’re teaching are misguided about how to actually correct mistakes in your congregation, the pressure does not go away.

So what I have noticed happens to leaders in and out of the churches is that with group pressure they try to look like strong leaders, not seem as if they’re cowards, and not tolerate criticism anymore. Or act like someone who doesn’t cave in under pressure. What I mean is a lot of leaders view themselves as so important to the people that they’re leading, a majority of the time they actually conform and change into the people they would consider, in their own eyes, to be bad followers. The pressure to correct others can eventually corrupt a person into becoming self-righteous, harsh, and unwilling to receive correction themselves.

What happens when a person becomes so convinced that he is responsible for correcting everyone else that his tongue becomes an instrument of condemnation rather than restoration?

Perhaps one of the greatest dangers is that while that person is constantly looking for faults in others, the individual slowly becomes blind to the faults within oneself. The leader may become angry at the sins, failures, and mistakes of others while failing to see their own pride, harshness, hypocrisy, and misuse of authority. We see something similar happen with David.

”And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”(2 Samuel 12:1-14)

“The man that hath done this thing shall surely die.”

“Thou art the man.”

I encourage you to read the entire passage yourself as it gives more context to the story. David demonstrates how easily a person can have a fiery tongue toward someone else’s sin while being blind to his own. Even if leaders are genuinely wrong or blatantly wrong and behaving in terrible ways, as long as the followers agree with them, they will often see nothing wrong with what they are doing. Unless you have that one individual whom God uses to correct them, just as what happened with David.

But even today in this super dry spiritual world, very typically when a leader is corrected by someone God has used, they still don’t want to see it. With this in mind, leaders not wanting to be corrected, we will move on to another issue. That issue is the leader correcting his followers in a condemning way.

What I was taught was that we need to correct others who are not taking Jesus seriously, and this is absolutely true. But what I learned myself along the way of doing this is my spiritual correction became self-righteous condemnation. Most of the time it was a correction to my fellow brothers and sisters with whom I supported and lived with, more so rather than unbelievers. And this is what I wanted to address in this spiritual application. The difference between biblical correction and condemning people, correction addresses actual sin or serious error, condemnation turns every failure, mistake, weakness, or imperfection into a moral offense.

Jesus said that if our brother or sister sins against us, we should take them aside and talk with them in private to resolve the problem before involving anyone else. (Matthew 18:15)

He also points out that if the disagreement or sin is not resolved and there is no change with the individual who has actually sinned, bring in another Christian brother or sister to help resolve it even further. But if the person who sinned is still prideful and not wanting to admit he/she is wrong still, you kick them out of the Christian community, and you treat them as an unbeliever.
(Matthew 18:15-17)

This is the proper way to deal with many things, like real sin that is witnessed in a church/community or incorrect doctrine. But what had happened with my own spirit insidiously was that I had become so accustomed to trying to obey Jesus by correcting others that it had jumped from correcting real sin in someone’s life to micro-managing others lives entirely and it turning into condemnation. For example, Jesus said to correct your brother if he sins, right? Well, an easy example of that would be to tell a brother or sister that they should not be married to someone else’s wife/husband.

That’s a very clear example, but what about someone mismanaging the funds for the poor multiple times? Making repeated mistakes at a task does not automatically mean that a person is spiritually rebellious or guilty of sin. The reasons behind those failures can sometimes be difficult to know. A person may be careless, inexperienced, disorganized, or simply struggling with a particular responsibility. That does not automatically give a leader the right to treat that person as though he or she has deliberately rebelled against God or has some deeper spiritual problem.

Yet these were the kinds of things that I would become fierce about with other people who were trying to follow God. If they repeatedly made mistakes in what seemed to me like a simple task, I would condemn them because I knew they were making the same mistake over and over again. And because their mistakes could possibly be connected to laziness, carelessness, or a failure to listen, I allowed that possibility to become justification for my condemnation. What may have only been a mistake or personal weakness in a particular area was treated as evidence of a spiritual problem.

There very well may have been spiritual problems related to those criticisms, in my mind, the repeated mistakes made my harshness seem justified. I was no longer simply addressing what the person had done wrong; and from there, condemnation could disguise itself as righteous correction.

It would be something like this: “You have messed up the budget for managing the funds for the poor yet again, Anthony! How many times do we have to go through this, and how many times do I have to tell you to stop being mentally lazy?!” I have done that quite a lot to others, and I pushed them away entirely to where they never came back, and that they left God. I take responsibility for that, but I do believe they also have decided to leave God on their own accord at the same time. A teacher or leader is responsible for followers and how they teach, but every person is responsible for their own souls. This is why James immediately brings up the danger of the tongue when speaking as teachers.

”My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.” (James 3:1-2)

“Masters” is just another word for teacher. So James lets us know that being a leader or teacher, we are held to a greater account on judgment day. It is not a role to be taken so lightly; it should be taken as seriously as if every day you were to live were your last and that God was to judge you the very next day.

Scripture places a particularly serious responsibility upon those who teach because their words and example do not affect only themselves. A teacher can influence the spiritual direction of many other people as Jesus says below.

”Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” (Matthew 23:15)

I want to tell a small personal story that reflects this verse perfectly, in my opinion. I knew someone at the time when I attended church still; there was a pastor named Milan. I knew him as a very loving, friendly pastor who cared quite a lot from what I remember. This person I knew in that church named Cathy had a divorce and recently hooked up with another person; the person who was her boyfriend happened to have tattoos, and they were very noticeable.

Thinking that Milan, who Cathy also knew for a long time (years), would approve of the new boyfriend, she was instead met with Milan in private without her boyfriend present, and I quote, “Cathy, just look at him.” Now what Milan was actually saying was, “He has tattoos and piercings; this man is definitely not godly, and you shouldn’t be with him.”

The truth was this man was not a godly man that Cathy was with; Milan was right, but Milan never met this man in person. He just judged based on appearance, not even giving a new potential churchgoer a chance to meet him, sinner or not. Or even better, a chance to meet God. Instead he judged based on appearance, something Jesus said not to do. (John 7:24) Cathy decided to never show up at the church again after knowing Milan for years as her pastor.

What I see is a leader not holding his tongue; he made a bad call about judging someone based on appearance and with just one sentence…had one of his friends or followers who looked up to him leave forever. I knew Milan and he had a lot of good godly qualities, but my point still stands: our words we speak can bring someone to life, or they can destroy and push people away from God. Maybe you disagree with Cathy’s decision on leaving permanently, and maybe she should have forgiven him and moved on. Or maybe Milan could have not said a word and held his tongue and prayed and asked God how to deal with his own thoughts and the current solution. You might not have thought it was a big deal as the reader, but this is how sensitive we can be as humans. We are especially sensitive to people we look up to. Let me rephrase this another way: we are incredibly sensitive to people we look up to as spiritual leaders.

People leave the churches, groups, and communities because they see the many hypocritical traits of the leaders who will not change. Or that with the slip of the tongue, the leader has produced irreversible damage to a follower and has unfortunately undone years of a good relationship.

So what is the solution to all of these problems in relation to leaders and teachers holding their tongues and making sure condemnation does not slip off of it? Let´s look at a few verses and break them down a bit and then see some real examples of how to use the grievance system Jesus taught and how to correct properly.
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” (Galatians 6:1)

Notice the verse, “restore him” and “consider yourself.” When we do correct someone in righteousness we should also consider that we might be the one that has the log in our eyes and are swatting at gnats at someone else.

Also in the next verse we read, “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth,” (2 Timothy 2:24-25)

When correcting the number one thing we should really be excerpting is being patient with others and hoping with time that they will see their mistakes and change. Perhaps part of the problem is that leaders sometimes begin to believe that they are personally responsible for making everyone change. When a person refuses to change, the leader becomes increasingly frustrated and eventually begins trying to force transformation through pressure, anger, humiliation, threats, or constant criticism. But Scripture does not command us to control another person’s heart. We can teach, warn, correct, and pray, but ultimately we must leave room for God to work.

”But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” (Ephesians 4:15)

Love should be the primary motive for correcting someone, there is nothing else to be said with this verse. Before we speak, especially when we are convinced that someone else needs correction, we should first stop and ask God to correct us. Before demanding that another person change, we should ask whether our own heart has become proud, impatient, controlling, or condemning. We may believe that our words are a fire sent to purify another person, while failing to realize that our own tongue is the fire that needs to be brought under control.

Sometimes the greatest act of leadership is not saying the harsh thing that immediately comes into our minds. Sometimes it is holding our tongue, praying, seeking God, and asking Him what He would have us do. Or really from my own experience, asking God to change that person in prayer over that specific issue you find in them often resolves the problems faster then I myself could have done in my own strength. Jesus said what things you say defile you, or another way to say it is, the condemning things you say to others can distort your own spiritual body and it can blind you.

Jesus told us to examine ourselves first and then we will see clearly how to correct our brothers and sisters in Matthew 7:3-5.
So, lets keep that in mind, always examining ourselves and holding our tongues not condemning but restoring our godly family in genuine love.

”Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.” (James 3:5-6)

”What makes a person unclean is not what goes into his mouth; rather, what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him unclean!” (Matthew 15:11) CJB Version.

”But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man:” (Matthew 15:18-20)

So, hold your tongues, examine yourselves and pray always that what you say may be for the edification of the church and others. Amen, I say amen.