Month: September 2026

When Knowing Isn’t Enough

Forked paths lead toward churches beneath sunrise and moonlight, with book and anchor

There is a version of Christianity that can look remarkably faithful from a distance.

You know what Christians are supposed to believe. You know what Christians are supposed to reject. You avoid the bad things. You affirm the good things. You know which boxes to check.

And yet, you can do all of that without developing much wisdom for actually living as a Christian.

That becomes a problem because most of life does not arrive in neatly labeled boxes.

The difficult coworker isn’t a theological proposition. Neither is the neighbor whose life looks completely different from yours. Neither is deciding what to do with your money… responding when someone wounds you… navigating a difficult cultural question… raising children… handling disagreement… or knowing when to speak and when to remain silent… or so much more.

Those things require more than knowing which answers are Christian.

They require discernment.

That is something Paul specifically prayed believers would develop:

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent.” – Philippians 1.9-10

Notice the connection: love, knowledge, and discernment.
Paul wanted believers who knew the truth – and who were increasingly able to recognize what faithfulness to that truth looked like in the complexities of actual life.

Because biblical truth is meant to give us a way of seeing the whole world.

Scripture teaches us who God is, who we are, what has gone wrong with this world, what God values, what sin does to us, what people desperately need, and what ultimately matters.

And then we have to learn to live accordingly.

Without that kind of discernment, Christians can drift toward two very different extremes.

Some are seduced by the world.

They may know biblical truth, but they have never learned to think biblically about the world around them. So when complicated questions arise, the world supplies the categories. Its assumptions gradually become their assumptions. Its definitions of success, happiness, identity, sexuality, money, freedom, and the good life begin to feel perfectly reasonable.

Others become cocooned from the world.

They preserve their Christian answers by keeping everything complicated safely outside. They know what they oppose. They know what they don’t watch. They know where they don’t go. They know which people are wrong.

Their convictions may remain intact. But those convictions increasingly have little contact with anyone or anything outside the cocoon.

Neither is Christian discernment.

Discernment asks a harder question:
* What does faithfulness to God look like right here?
* Not merely, What am I supposed to believe about this?
* But how should what I believe change how I respond?
* How does the gospel shape the way I treat this person?
* What does obedience to God require of me in this decision?
* What desires are driving me?
* What assumptions have I accepted without examining them?
* How can I demonstrate both truth and love here?
That is very different from checking boxes.

We desperately need Christians whose minds are so saturated with Scripture that they can recognize the world’s lies without being terrified of the world.

Christians whose convictions are strong enough to resist cultural pressure, but whose love is strong enough to move toward people rather than away from them.

Christians who don’t merely know what the Bible says, but are learning how God’s truth bears upon conversations, relationships, decisions, disappointments, opportunities, temptations, and ordinary responsibilities.

So perhaps the question isn’t simply: Do I believe the right things?

We should.

But there is another question worth asking: Am I learning to live wisely because I believe them?

Grace assumes the best; pride suspects the worst.

Pride is remarkably confident about other people’s motives.

“He did that because…”

“She only said that because…”

“I know what they’re really trying to do…”

But most of the time, we don’t know.

Grace does not ignore sin or pretend that evil is good. But neither does it manufacture motives, presume guilt, or fill gaps in our knowledge with suspicion.

Grace asks before accusing.

Grace leaves room for explanation.

Grace is willing to believe the best that the facts will allow.

And when something truly is wrong, grace grieves rather than delights in having its suspicions confirmed.

Love does not require us to ignore sin.

It does require us to stop inventing it.

“Love… is not resentful… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Corinthians 13.5, 7

But I Had a Reason

We almost always have a reason.

A reason we became angry.
A reason we said what we said.
A reason we weren’t completely honest.
A reason we treated someone poorly.
A reason we refused to forgive.
A reason we did what we knew we probably shouldn’t do.

And sometimes our reasons are pretty good ones.
We were tired.
We were afraid.
We had been hurt.
Someone betrayed us.
We were under tremendous pressure.
We didn’t know what else to do.

The circumstances may be real. The hurt may be real. The pressure may be real.
But having a reason for doing something does not necessarily make what we did right.

There is an important difference between an explanation and a justification.

An explanation answers the question: Why did I do this?

A justification answers a very different question: Was I right to do it?

And those are not the same thing.

Scripture is filled with people who had reasons for what they did. Adam blamed the woman God had given him. Eve pointed to the serpent. Aaron had an explanation for the golden calf.

Saul had a reason for keeping what God had commanded him to destroy. He even made his disobedience sound spiritual. The animals, he explained, had been spared so they could be sacrificed to the Lord.
Samuel’s response was simple: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” – 1 Samuel 15.22

Saul had a reason. But his reason didn’t make his disobedience obedience.
And perhaps that is where we sometimes get ourselves into trouble.

We begin to believe that if our circumstances are difficult enough, our hurt deep enough, or our reasoning understandable enough, then what would normally be wrong becomes right. But our circumstances do not have the authority to rewrite what God has said.

That doesn’t mean circumstances don’t matter.

They can help us understand why someone did what they did. They can move us toward compassion. They can help us recognize the pressures, fears, wounds, or desires that contributed to a decision.

But circumstances do not define righteousness. God does. And before we apply that truth to someone else’s choices, we should probably apply it to our own.

I may have been tired.
I may have been frustrated.
I may have been treated unfairly.
I may have been deeply hurt.
I may even have a perfectly understandable reason for what I did. But if God says it was wrong, my reason cannot make it right.

Perhaps that is why one of the most difficult sentences for us to say is also one of the simplest: I was wrong.

No explanation.
No qualification.
No – “but you have to understand.”

Just confession.

And thankfully, Christians do not have to justify what God has already offered to forgive.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1.9

There may be reasons for what we have done. But God has not asked us to justify our sin. He has invited us to confess it.