According to the Bible, What Do I Gain from Rebuking My Friend? (Part 2/3)

According to the Bible, What Do I Gain from Rebuking My Friend? (Part 2/3)

Yesterday, we read the three parts of the verse (Leviticus 19:17): the first is a negative command, the second is a positive command, and the third describes the result.

The beauty of this verse is revealed through one small word that translations add—a word that does not exist in Hebrew: but. For example, in the ESVS translation:

"You shall not hate your brother in your heart,

but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor."*

Here, the relationship is one of contrast. Adding but is an interpretive choice, which I fully agree with.

How do we avoid hating our brother in our heart? By rebuking him.

In other words, if we harbor something against someone close to us, we must tell them.

We must remove the burden from our heart, because if we don’t, it will turn into hatred.

And in the end, hatred will bring sin—this is the third part, describing the final outcome.

Sin will come as a result of hatred.

To summarize, the undesirable path is:

Not rebuking a friend > Hatred > Bearing sin

The desirable path is:

Rebuking a friend > Love (no hatred) > Being free of sin

In the next post, we will see that the following verse addresses this exact point.