Short Answer
Treat the situation seriously—with love and truth. Don’t ignore the sin, but address it with concern, calling them to repentance while maintaining relationship.
The Overview
When a sibling claims to follow Christ but continues in unrepentant sin, it creates a difficult and emotional situation. The Bible makes an important distinction between non-believers and those who profess to be believers. With non-believers, the focus is evangelism. But with professing believers, there is a responsibility to address sin within the relationship.
Passages like 1 Corinthians 5–6 emphasize that ongoing, unrepentant sin in someone claiming to follow Christ should not be treated lightly. It’s not about being harsh or judgmental—it’s about recognizing that something is spiritually wrong and needs correction.
However, when the person is a family member, the situation is more complex. You cannot simply cut off all interaction, especially if you live together or are closely connected. Instead, you maintain relationship while clearly communicating that their behavior is not consistent with their profession of faith.
Your attitude should reflect both truth and compassion. You should feel genuine concern—like seeing someone in danger—and want them to be restored. Ignoring the issue or pretending everything is fine does not help them; it actually allows harm to continue.
A helpful way to think about it is this: if someone had a serious physical injury, you wouldn’t ignore it—you would urge them to get help. In the same way, spiritual sin should be treated as something serious that needs attention, not denial.
Key Takeaways
- Distinguish Believers vs Non-Believers
Different responses are required. - Take Sin Seriously
Don’t ignore ongoing unrepentant behavior. - Maintain Relationship
Especially with family members. - Speak Truth with Love
Address the issue with care and clarity. - Show Genuine Concern
Desire their repentance and restoration. - Spiritual Issues Are Serious
Treat them like real danger, not minor problems.
Bible Verse Mentioned
- 1 Corinthians 5–6
- 1 John (especially chapter 3)
Read Full Raw Transcript
says, how should I feel about and treat a sibling that is living in sin and is secular, or professing to be a believer? Well. First Corinthians chapter six H3 says you shouldn’t even eat with such a one. Now, when it’s a sibling, right? That can be a little bit more complicated than what Paul is addressing in first Corinthians six.
First Corinthians six is talking about a fellow believer, or it says so-called believer, one who’s professing Christ trying to go to church with you. The church should say, nope, not not going to be a part of this. You’re not welcome here in this assembly. As long as you’re claiming Christ and living in sin and you won’t repent, you won’t admit it.
You won’t seek, you know, a repentance response to this sin, then no, I’m not going to be here. And Christians in the church say we’re not going to eat with you. Well, well, what if you’re married to this guy, right? Well, first Corinthians seven is going to go on to say, well, you can’t you shouldn’t seek a divorce because you could be the the relationship that leads them to repentance.
Well, somewhere between that could be this is your uncle, this is your cousin. Or in your case, this is your sibling. So you can’t, as it goes on to say in first Corinthians six, you can’t leave the world and not have some relationship with non-Christians. Well, especially if you’re related to them. Now, I don’t know how old you are H3, but if you’re a sibling living in, let’s just say you’re 17 and your sibling is 16, well, you’re going to have to then have connections and you’re going to probably have to eat with them.
So you can’t follow the direction of first Corinthians six as though this is just a fellow, you know, person at church that you can cut relationship with and exhort as as someone who needs to repent. That’s the point. Why do we treat them as someone who’s a non-Christian so that they’ll come to faith in Christ? And that’s that just means I can’t act like the sin is no big deal.
I need to, in other words, change your behavior or change your profession. If you’re going to profess that you’re not a Christian, well, then great, I can have a meal with you and share the gospel with you. But as long as you’re trying to hold to your label as Christian and you’re going to continue in this sin, then I’m not going to act like everything’s copacetic because it’s not.
So you ask, how should I feel about it? That’s probably not the real question you’re asking, because how you feel about you should feel terrible about it. You should feel really bad about it. But then you said, how should I treat them? You should treat them as though that this is a big deal, and they probably already know that.
And if not, then you should say it’s a big deal. And you’re really concerned because if you are continuing sin while you know what the truth is, and you claim to be a professing believer, you should read First Corinthians chapter six. That’s what the passage is about. And when they say, well, you’re judging me. Well, that’s what the passage says.
Who am I to judge outsiders, right? People that don’t claim because I can’t do that. I got non-Christians living all around me in my neighborhood. It’s not my job to go around telling them, right? Other than to say, hey non-Christians, you need to repent, become Christians. But it’s the so-called believers, right? Those are the ones I’m supposed to say, hey, you can’t do that.
Can’t call yourself a Christian and do that. So that’s the ones I’m responsible for, and that’s the ones you’re responsible for. And even more so if they’re a sibling, right? You need to be able to say, hey, Christians aren’t living that way. They’re not supposed to live that way. And you can’t say you’re a Christian and live that way.
The other book I would spend time in, H3 is First John, go to first John, just spend your time and first John. I’d start in chapter three and then go back and read the whole book, chapters one through five, and just read it a couple times through and then answer your own question, how should I feel? How should I treat someone, even a sister, a sibling, or a brother?
Whatever gender we’re talking about here and say, how should I treat them? Well, you should treat them as though there’s a real problem here. This is like asking, how do I treat someone’s got a knife sticking out of their shoulder? You got a knife sticking out of your shoulder. How should I feel? How should I should feel really bad about my siblings.
Got a knife sticking out of their shoulder. How should I treat them? While I should want to get it out? And if they keep saying no, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay. No, don’t don’t don’t worry about that. They need to worry about it because it’s really bad for you and you’re bleeding and it’s a problem. See? So that’s that’s what I think you’re going to get from first Corinthians six and first John chapter three.
So h3 spend some time in those two passages and the whole book of First John. And that’ll make this really clear. 18779135357I took one of our guys from Compass Bible Institute up there to Idaho with us, and we spent some time promoting our Compass Bible Institute, because it is a great way for you to understand maybe your giftedness and to increase that giftedness, whatever it is that you do for the church.
It says in first Corinthians 12, God is in some way given you some capacity to make the church stronger, make it more glorious, to make it more equipped. And however he’s given you some manifestation of the spirit for the common good, it could be that you’re a teacher. It could be that you’re technically inclined, it could be that you’re musically inclined.
Whatever it is, God wants you to be better at that. God wants you to be more informed as a Christian, grounded in a good biblical awareness of making sure we don’t step outside of what the Bible says. Compass Bible Institute is all about you. Understanding the Scripture, understanding what any topic should be understood in light of biblical data, and then knowing how to defend God’s Word, and then seeing all of the world through the lens of Scripture.
Those are kind of, you know, to give them titles. We need to learn biblical survey. We need to learn systematic theology, we need to learn apologetics, and we need to learn Christian worldview. I mean, those four quadrants of understanding biblical studies, that’s very important. And then we need to be able to use all that to go and serve the church and the world.
And that’s what we’re doing at Compass Bible Institute, and especially our program that we have for our 18 through 24 year olds. It’s a it’s a one year Bible program. We really try to target people that are just coming out of high school to say, hey, before you go on to trade school or college or the university, wherever you’re going, just give us one year.
And we did a great had a great time meeting a lot of young people up there in Idaho that we tried to give them all they needed to rethink whatever they’re doing, just pause for one year and just think about what you can do to try to lay a foundation to get biblical data, systematic theology, apologetics, and Christian worldview just nailed in your life, in your mind, before you go on to sit under professors, many of them, I’m sure depending on what you’re going to study that aren’t going to have any any deference to the Word of God, get this really squared away in your life before you go study something else.
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We we do this at a loss for everyone that takes a class. If you want to support this, you know that’s up to you. But there have been many people we’ve got what we call founders that have made this all possible, and God has met our needs through those people that have chosen to participate in that. And that’s totally up to you.
But if you’re interested in that, you know, check out that’s hidden down there somewhere. But people that have done all that have made it possible. So we’re thankful for what’s going on at Compass Bible Institute. You can check that out on Compass Bible. You can check all that out at Compass Bible Institute, something else that may be interested for you.
A lot of what we’re doing on this program and others is answering people’s questions in real time, and that is something we put into a book. It’s a first of many volumes we hope to put out. We put 50 of our questions in print in a book here at Compass Press, and it’s coming out real soon. And you can go to Compass Press and get your copy of that.
That’s a great way to get your copy of this book. You can actually preorder it and we’ll send it out to you, give you a little bit more of a thorough in print answer to some of the most common questions people ask us. So if you want to check that out, go to Compass Press. All right.
