“…they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil…”. Romans 1:29-30
The doctrine of total depravity doesn’t mean that we’re as depraved as possible. No. The totality referred to is in our character, which is to say that sin will impact literally every aspect of our character. This voluminous list of sin detailed by Paul, coming with the heaviness of hammer blows, raining down upon our parade of self-righteousness, doesn’t mean that each of us will have these break out in the same manner. The diversity of life will have it that we all experience sin and its consequences personally and particularly. The thing to note, though, is that the seed of these sins is in all of us. Each and every one. To deny this about ourselves is to deny Scripture.
This alone should always keep us humble before the Lord. Moreover, Christians should be the greatest realists on the planet. The reality of human sin and depravity shouldn’t surprise us. What should surprise us? Grace. Grace should surprise, amaze, and astonish us always! The good news of mercy always comes on the heels of the truth of our depravity. To truly know the greatness of God’s love is to rightly understand what Scripture teaches about sin and its ugliness.
So now we come to part of the list that we’re reluctant to look at. Why? Because it has to do with our tongue. It has to do with what we say about others, which is, as Jesus pointed out, indicative of what’s in our hearts (Matthew 12:34). Proverbs, which is replete with admonitions against slander and gossip and the necessity of taming the tongue, says in 15:7 this same thing. We speak from what’s in our hearts.
In the book of James we learn that the tongue is a raging fire. It’s a restless evil and full of deadly poison (James 3:8). The argument the Bible makes is logically unassailable, so we should take careful notice. We can’t bless our Lord and Father and then, with the same mouth, curse and slander men who are made in His image (James 3:9).
In Leviticus we read, “You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countrymen in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, bu shall not incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:16-18).” Notice how these aren’t arbitrary commands. The Lord doesn’t say, “don’t hate your neighbor or slander him because that’s not a nice thing to do.” No. He backs up everything with the reality of His righteousness. God’s very character is on the line! Why shouldn’t you slander your neighbor? Because God is the Lord!
Let’s look at a few issues that come up these days to help us put this into context.
First, God’s law/word doesn’t leave the definition of love fuzzy. Scripture teaches that God is love; our culture hates God’s authority and righteousness so we twist the truth and tell ourselves that love is god. This makes us the standard of love, which means that love means whatever we think it means and that’s usually a feeling, an emotion. In reality, God is love and since He’s indivisible, true love is that which is consistent with his law/word. To do anything contrary to God’s law/word is antithetical to love because the wages of sin are death. For instance, to slander a neighbor is antithetical to love. In fact, it’s hate. Slander and gossip are literally assaults against the life of the other person. This is shown in Leviticus 19:16 when the Lord connects slander with “acting against the life of your neighbor.”
Second, slander and gossip are ubiquitous today. Despite how often we talk about loving our neighbor, we clearly have no idea what that means in practice. We like to quote, “judge not…” and then go right ahead and judge. To slander our neighbor is, simply put, to play God over them by judging the motives of their heart. It is to ascribe the worst motive to them and declare them evil at their root. Unless a person tells us what their motive is, we are not to take it upon ourselves to ascribe it to them. We may call out evil behavior but must resist, by the grace of God, the temptation to declare judgment over the heart of another by using slander. A quick glance at social media and politics and we see that slander is the default setting of our time.
Third, we sin when we don’t develop the necessary spiritual, intellectual and emotional discipline to conform our conduct toward others according to the biblical principles set forth. We’re told that we are surely “to reprove our neighbor” but not incur sin because of him. That’s quite interesting. The context is that if the neighbor is clearly wrong in something they’ve done and/or said we know that only by applying that issue to Scripture. God does not allow us to judge right and wrong outside of His law/word because to do so is to place another standard above or along side of Scripture. A co-god is no god. Therefore, the idea of reproving our neighbor only makes sense in the biblical context of sin and righteousness. This has massive implications for our relationships. If the words/actions of our neighbor don’t violate the principles of Scripture, if they aren’t immoral when seen through the Biblical lens only (our personal preferences are irrelevant here) then we’re to ignore those things.
God, being righteous and true, demands that we love those particular qualities of His. Love doesn’t mean that we are mediocre truth seekers but that we seek God and truth with all our heart! In that context we’re to rebuke, reprove, exhort, and stir one another up in the Lord. The context of our disputations, therefore, are in fidelity to Biblical truth, not personal issues of preference that are morally neutral (see Romans 14).
Thus, we’re commanded, yes commanded, to rebuke sin, falsehood and evil. The context is that we will and must fight sin. We must not, however, do so by slandering our neighbor. We only have authority to confront sin and only then when it’s clearly a violation of Biblical principles. Our authority is limited and we may only do so in the spirit of fellowship, love, and for the honor of Christ and His church. We may only act in accordance with Scripture and the principles of discipline put down by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17.
In all, the problem of slander and gossip is the problem of hating God and His righteous authority. The principle of sin is the principle of anarchy and that will lead invariably to our hatred of the same principle in our neighbor. We are literally at each other’s throats because we can’t get at God’s.
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