And the Lord’s servant must be gentle … patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God may grant them repentance. – 2 Timothy 2:24-25

When I was a young believer, I took a job where I was responsible for the spiritual welfare of a floor or young men in a Christian college dormitory. As time went on, I ended up responsible for several men’s dormitories, so I got to watch this work out quite often. Some of these young men I dealt with were seemingly in a perpetual state of repentance over one thing or another. And just like clockwork, another group would rise up as would-be, caring “stronger brothers”…to hold them accountable…to keep them walking the line.

The problem was, even when the repenter truly wanted to change, these situations rarely-if-ever turned out well. I began to see a pattern: The “stronger” brothers fed off the “weaker” brother’s success in repentance to bolster and maintain the “stronger” brother’s image as a stronger brother. The “weaker” brother’s continued failings ultimately frustrated the stronger brother, because they expected to see a victorious return on their time, emotions, and ministry investment.

Since then, I’ve seen the same thing in local church-life since those days. How could that be? Let’s say a friend objectively and legitimately does something wrong. It’s sin, plain and simple. Their behavior is an offense to us and Jesus. To compound the problem, it’s not the first time they fell into this sin and it doesn’t look like it will be the last. So we step in to try to help the repenter succeed.

Soon, our friend’s frequent defeats frustrate us, and we are at a loss as to how to fix them. We care for them, we hope the repenter will change. But our love-filled desire to help the person is mixed with our own image of ourselves as “strong” and our frustration over their continued failures to live up to their repentance contains elements of our love for them, but also our irritation over how their continued failure makes us feel.

This frustration can overflow beyond annoyance at the repenter to annoyance at God for not fixing them more quickly and completely. (After all, as today’s verse points out, repentance is a gift from God, not from a friend, a parent or even a Christian counselor.)

So here are a few questions to consider as we walk alongside repenters.
1.      Is our soul at rest as we patiently wait on Jesus to change them? (Rom 8:25)
2.      Are our eyes fixed on Jesus as we consider the possibility of someone never changing? (Heb 12:2)
3.      Do we find our value in Jesus rather than in ministry success? (Eph 1:13,14)
4.      Are we certain of God’s love, even when He doesn’t fix the problem quickly (or perhaps, not at all)? (Eph 3:18,19)
5.      Do we walk in a spirit of repentance, ourselves? (Lk 6:41,42)

Motivating someone in change is not an easy process. No matter how hard we pray, talk, scold, or argue, we can’t change people—even those who desperately want to change. That’s God’s job.
Maybe this was exactly what Timothy was facing into when Paul wrote today’s verse to him:
And the Lord’s servant must be gentle … patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God may grant them repentance. – 2 Timothy 2:24-2