Correction Without Condemnation
I never liked getting yelled at as a child. Even as I grew older, I was always uncomfortable, even embarrassed, when someone would correct me. It took years for me to understand and accept what my Mother told me many times early in life: “It’s for your own good.”
Even my Fit Bit scolds me when I haven’t moved enough, sort of like my younger years when I would be lounging on the couch and my Dad would remind me that it’s time to get up and mow the lawn.
Most of us don’t like to be corrected or criticized, but eventually we realize that it is, in fact, for our own good. Where we draw the line, however, is at condemnation. The God that we serve admonishes us, but He does not condemn. The Gospel of John, one verse after the most famous of all verses (3:16), states that “God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
Romans 8 (1-4) affirms that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”