Leviticus 19.17-18 commands, do not harbor hatred against your brother. Rebuke your neighbor directly, and you will not incur guilt because of him. Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community but love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.

We are to live holy lives because God is holy. We want God to live among us and bless us. Therefore, we must live holy lives for He is holy. This holiness is to be both individual and communal.

As we struggle to obey God we understand our own human weakness. This is to cause us to have compassion upon our neighbor who also struggles. This compassion does not mean to tolerate the doing of evil because doing what is right is hard. Rather, compassion means forgiving, loving and rebuking those who do evil while encouraging them to do what pleases God. This is how we are to live together.

Perhaps the most necessary communal topics for repentance, so that we all live lives pleasing to God, is abortion and heterosexuality. We are to stop the wanton and acceptable murder of the unborn and we are to stop the lunacy of gender neutrality and sexual immorality.

There is one context for sexual expression pleasing to God and that is marriage between one man and one woman. And when we fail to exercise self-control until marriage, resulting in pregnancy, we do not continue our disobedience by murdering the innocent unborn child. We all sin therefore we all need forgiveness, compassion and encouragement.

We are always to love the sinner, for we are one, but stop the sin, ours and our neighbors. We get stronger and better not by tolerating each other’s failures but by encouraging each other and holding each other accountable to greater effort and success.