Unpunishable: Ending Our Love Affair with Punishment

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ revealed the Father to humanity, not as an angry punisher of sinners, but as a merciful forgiver bent on reconciliation with His lost sons and daughters. Through Christ’s perfect sacrifice, the Father ensured that inside this reconciled relationship with Him, nothing we could ever do could separate us from His love. He made us unpunishable. Yet the body of Christ struggles to create a relational culture that accurately reflects the heart of the Father—a culture of mature love that drives away the fear of punishment (1 John 4:18) and leads people who sin on a journey of repentance, restoration, and reconciliation. In fact, the fear of punishment often seems to have the strongest hold at the leadership level in most churches. Many leaders live in isolation and performance, and often burn out or crash morally, because they believe that if they have any problems, they will be punished—a belief that is too often realized. At the same time, these leaders struggle to see how they can lead and protect people without using tools of punishment when people sin. Unpunishable is a call to all believers, but especially leaders, to end our dysfunctional love affair with the fear of punishment and build a relational culture that empowers people to walk in the light of freedom and love, own and clean up their messes, and mature into sons and daughters who look like the Father.