Removing the Bitter Root

Removing the Bitter Root

In our last post, we discussed the issue of bitterness. We talked about how you can tell if you are bitter and how you can tell that someone in your church is bitter. In this issue I would like to talk about how to “fix” the sin of bitterness in ourselves and in those around us.

If you find that you are bitter, go alone to God and ask him to reveal to you the extent of your bitterness. You need to understand that you are in sin and in need of Grace and forgiveness.

Next, confess the sin to God (confess means to say the same thing about it that God thinks about it). Ask God to forgive you for your bitterness and in humility ask that God would clean you up from the inside out.

Third, study your Bible, asking God to reveal to you the way he thinks about other people and asking him to change your heart to match his heart. You need to saturate your thinking with the thoughts of God so that when others wrong you, you will react the way God reacts to you when you sin against him (with forgiveness and compassion). This change from the way you’ve been thinking to the way God thinks, is called ‘repentance”. You need to repent and to make his thoughts your thoughts — in every area of life.

Fourth, go to all those you’ve sinned against and make your relationship with them right (as well as you can). Confess your bitterness, nastiness, bad attitude, gossip and slanderous behavior toward them and ask them to forgive you. If you have caused friends to break up, or others to sin, confess that sin and ask those folks to forgive you too.

Finally, after making all of these changes, rejoice in the Lord for forgiving you and for removing your guilt. God will forgive you, if you truly come to him in humility of heart. If you ask him, he will not cast you out. You can trust him. He will save you.

If you have discovered that there is an element of bitterness in your church, you need to figure out who the bitter person is. If you don’t, the bitter root will grow into a mighty oak, destroy your fellowship, and will eventually destroy the church itself. It is therefore very important that you deal with the problem and that you take it very seriously. Having said this let me hasten to point out that, as serious as the problem is, your main goal is to win the person back to fellowship, not to destroy her. This means that you must make sure that when you go to help her, you must make sure that you are in very good fellowship with God. You must be “confessed up” and you must be very careful that you don’t share in the sin of the person you are approaching.

The Bible tells us (Matthew 18.15–35; Galatians 6.1) how we are to approach a person who is in sin: First, go to her alone with the goal of winning her back to faith. Gently point out what you think her error is, and without allowing “wiggle room,” gently ask her to confess and repent from it. If she agrees with you about her sin, you have won your sister.

If she won’t listen to you, you are to take several others with you, and again with the same gentle attitude and hopeful motive, point out the sin. If she repents, you all rejoice together.

If she still won’t listen, you are to take her to the whole congregation. If she confesses her sin and repents after this, you are to bring her back into fellowship, forgive her, and go on rejoicing.

If there is still no repentance, the Bible says to treat her as a pagan and as a tax gatherer, meaning that you are to treat her as an outsider, as someone who does not belong in your group, that you are to proclaim her to be non-Christian and to ask her to leave the building and to not come back until she repents from her sins. There is to be no pretended fellowship; she is not a Christian.

I hope this helps.

Pastor Lawyer