Our Responsibilities to Other Christians
What is our responsibility to other believers? As Christ’s ministers each of us is called to be an instrument of healing for wounded individuals. For Jesus came that might we all have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). We all need healing — inner healing from emotional pain, rejection, and abuses of all kinds including being victims of manipulation and evil that have been imposed upon us. What is the believer’s response to be to these hurts and wounds? Here is what the Bible says in James 5:15: “Confess your sins (pain/woundedness) one to another and pray for one another so that you might be healed.”
And in Galatians 6:1: … when overtaken by a sin (a pain or being wounded or deceived in some way), find a spiritually mature person who can restore you to wholeness… each of us as believers has been created to function as part of the body of Christ as a healer and restorer. We are called to reconcile others to Christ. For “God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation… We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” ~~ 2 Corinthians 5:18,20.
Jesus gave us the pattern in Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”
We have the supernatural power of God working through us to help meet the needs of others. We as disciples of Jesus Christ even have been given the authority to receive the confession of sin and to forgive Sin in Jesus Name. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). What a wonderful privilege! Because of God’s grace we freely give to others what God has given to us — God’s gift of salvation and wholeness — we set others free!
We are intercessory prayer warriors who minister life, joy, peace, and the restoration of righteousness and virtue to sinners as they (like we have done) put their trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord! Can you say, AMEN?!?!