Hannah, a listener to the podcast writes in with a really good question for you.

Hello, Pastor John.

I have a Muslim friend and I aim for their salvation in this friendship.

But I never share my weaknesses.

Moral weaknesses, bad habits, even my own sin struggles.

I refrain out of fear that if I did share those things, this friend would see me and Christ

in a bad light.

My thought is, why should I talk about my weaknesses to an unbeliever since they can't

help anyways?

Or if I should, what is the goal and hope for telling this person my own weaknesses and

struggles?

Can you help me think through this?

Hannah says that she avoids sharing her weaknesses with her Muslim friend or other unbelievers

out of fear that they will see her in Christ in a bad light.

That is a real, appropriate biblical concern because the Bible repeatedly calls us to let

our light shine that people might see our good deeds and give glory to our Father.

So it's not wrong to want unbelievers to see us as doers of good rather than moral

failures, but alongside that concern, there needs to be put another concern, namely, communicating

a false perfectionism and a view of the gospel that fails to revel in the promise of ongoing

forgiveness of sins and the justification of the ungodly.

So Hannah needs to steer a course between being indifferent to the demonstration of God's

power like it doesn't matter on the one hand and the communication of a gospel minimizing

...