"Living in Sin"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From a reader of the blog who comes to us for wisdom for a difficult situation in his church: What to do? What's your advice? Here at the rural church I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2013\/04\/18\/living-in-sin\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Living in Sin"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From a reader of the blog who comes to us for wisdom for a difficult situation in his church: What to do? What's your advice? 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{"id":39290,"date":"2013-04-18T00:13:34","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T05:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?p=39290"},"modified":"2013-04-17T15:35:35","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T20:35:35","slug":"living-in-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2013\/04\/18\/living-in-sin\/","title":{"rendered":"“Living in Sin”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From a reader of the blog who comes to us for wisdom for a difficult situation in his church:<\/p>\n

What to do? What\u2019s your advice?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here at the rural church I pastor I\u2019m dealing with one of those issues I thought might make for good discussion on the blog. Through the combined outreach of another couple in the church and myself, a 40-something man in our community has come to faith in Christ. The circumstances are not relevant but they are quite dramatic. For the past year he has been attending worship and \u00a0participating in a casual form of one-on-one mentoring from me and another man in the church. He desires baptism and I am convinced \u201cthat nothing prevents him from being baptized\u201d (Acts 8.36).<\/p>\n
The issue is \u201ccomplicated,\u201d however, by the fact that he is living with his fiance. Their relationship is far from perfect. They have one child and have been \u201ctogether\u201d for many years. He desires marriage, ASAP, but she is holding out because of a very abusive first marriage. Her position is, she \u201cjust doesn\u2019t want to have to sign the paper!\u201d She is not a believer.<\/p>\n
I am receiving some push-back from board and church members who say things like: How can we baptize someone who\u2019s living in sin? Shouldn\u2019t his life exhibit more repentance. etc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From a reader of the blog who comes to us for wisdom for a difficult situation in his church: What to do? What\u2019s your advice? Here at the rural church I pastor I\u2019m dealing with one of those issues I thought might make for good discussion on the blog. Through the combined outreach of another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Living in Sin"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From a reader of the blog who comes to us for wisdom for a difficult situation in his church: What to do? What's your advice? 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