Perhaps, the greatest hinderance to a Christian’s effectiveness as being true salt and light for God’s kingdom in this world stems from a carnally sympathetic and humanistic understanding of the emotions and troubles of the lost. When a believer fails to remain fearfully sided absolutely and wholeheartedly with God by maintaining a clear understanding of the righteous anger of God with the wicked every day, they lose sight of why God has commanded every man to repent and thus become useless to the Holy Spirit as a godly means of conviction to the wicked.
Apart from God, there is no good thing in any man, for God alone is good. Being separated from Christ, all men must recognize they are not merely sick and downtrodden, but are in truth dead, alienated from the life of God, and without any hope. Until the sinner comes to the absolute awareness and acknowledgement that they are wicked, and in a lost and desperate condition, they will never truly surrender or cry out for that grace and saving faith from He who alone can save them.
God intends Christians to be holy that they might be part of that convicting grace which works to cause the sinner to realize they alone are responsible for their woes, and that Jesus Christ and God alone their only hope.
Sympathetic understanding is a dangerous flaw in the heart and mind of a believer because it causes them to partially justify the wicked in their rebellion against God, and worse, it holds God partially accountable for the continuation of their life’s woes. When you sympathize with the sinner, you lose sight of the righteousness in the wrath of God and thus cease to be capable of righteous judgment and recognizing sin; as now you have in part become emotionally sided with the wicked and guilty of not completely accepting all the judgments of God as being righteous and true altogether.
We need to be ever perfecting holiness in the fear of God, which we will never do until we fearfully, absolutely and wholeheartedly, accept and stand unwavering with God’s word in its defining sin and His judgments of holding all accountable for their actions.
Awake unto righteousness and sin not, for some of you have not the knowledge of God; and I speak this to your shame.
Gates of the City 