The Christian community has been muted with the misguided, but stifling injunction to not “judge” others. This has come to mean that we mind our own business, regardless of how our Christian brothers and sisters are behaving. What a sinister scheme of Satan to prevent God’s people from identifying sin for what it is!
Paul had already urged Timothy in this letter to appeal to older men as a father and younger men as brothers, but here he is clear that those deserving of rebuke should receive it! Today, churches tend to sweep sin under the rug. We don’t want to embarrass anyone and we certainly don’t want to make ourselves liable to a lawsuit! We convince ourselves that Christ’s name has already been scandalized enough by His followers so we don’t need to bring up any further issues with people.
The result is that we never address sin. A consequence of this is that people lose their dread of sin. We are so quick to put transgressions behind us and move on that sinful behavior loses its deterrence. In contrast, Paul urged Timothy to soundly and publicly denounce sinful behavior. People knew that if they strayed into sin, they would be publicly rebuked. No excuses. No glossing over. Only when God’s people become intolerant of sin will they truly become a consecrated people.