Should Christians Be Inclusive?

Should Christians be inclusive? Many organizations (including certain churches) stress the importance of being accepting of everyone. Differences of any kind, they say, are to be celebrated and encouraged. They believe that accommodating people of different mindsets or lifestyles is healthy, normal and should even be mandatory. To many people that sounds like a good idea.

Should Christians be inclusive? Should we set aside our views and welcome anyone and everyone into our fellowship? Is that the way God has called us to respond, especially toward those who insist on conducting themselves contrary to His Word? The answer to the last question is no.

God indeed addresses inclusion, but what He states and what some people think are not the same thing. The world’s definition of inclusion means that we cannot judge (discern) another person and so we need to accept them for who they are. By default, they mean that we must accept and agree with what they do because it works well for them. That, however, is the exact opposite of how God has called His people to behave.

Those who continue to place their trust in Christ are called saints, from the Greek word hagios, which means consecrated, physically and/or morally pure, and holy. It describes people who continue to seek to perfect and sanctify their lives for Christ. To sanctify means to separate, to make a distinction, to discern and employ the difference between the ordinary and that which is set aside for sacred use. Saints are just that; we are set aside for God’s work and use. So then, should Christians be inclusive?

This is not a recent question because the early church had to deal with it as well. Just like now, there was a push to assemble and associate with everyone regardless of their conduct, especially those who claimed the name of Jesus. There were those, just like now, who had taken the message of God’s mercy and grace to an unhealthy, even dangerous, level. It was dangerous because they had allowed the presence of unrepentant sin into the body of believers.

In fact, undiscerning inclusion was so harmful that the apostles felt the need to weigh in on it;

1 Cor 5:9-11

I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner — not even to eat with such a person.   (NKJV)

At some point in the past, Paul had previously written to the Corinthian believers and instructed them not to “keep company” with sexually immoral people. His intention was that the church excludes those who claimed to be Christians and yet practiced an immoral lifestyle. This part of his letter to them (1 Corinthians 5) was a clarification of what he meant, and the preceding verses explain why he told them to be discerning about who they had fellowship with.

They were not to hide from those in the world, otherwise, they would have to leave it! How then could they be salt and light to the lost? What he clarified was that the church was to be selective of who they maintained fellowship with. Those who were insistent on following their own desires instead of seeking holiness were to be avoided; indeed, they were to be excluded. Why were they to be rejected? Paul stated a simple, yet accurate, reason;

1 Cor 5:6

Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  (NKJV)

This one sentence made his point clear. Christians were in the world to be a witness for Christ, but there was to be a different standard for the church. That standard was the believer’s willingness to submit themselves to Christ and not the world. They were to be pure. They were to be holy. They were to be sanctified. They were to be saints.

Just like leaven eventually permeates a lump of dough, so unrepentant sin would permeate a church’s fellowship. Since Christ had purged them of sin by their faith in Him, they were to keep sin out of their lives – and fellowship. They were to purge out the old leaven of sin by excluding those who practiced it – regardless of what they claimed. If not, sin would ultimately destroy them.

Should Christians be inclusive? According to God’s definition, the answer is both yes and no. According to Him, inclusion means that we offer to the world the same life we have received from Jesus because it’s available to anyone who wants it. However, we are to constantly be on our guard against allowing sin in the relationships we have with other believers.