Rescue captives condemned to death,
and spare those staggering toward their slaughter.
When you say, “We didn’t know this,”
won’t the one who weighs hearts take note of it?
Won’t the one who guards your soul know it?
Won’t he pay back people for what they do?
Proverbs 24:11–12
Be fearless. When someone you know doesn’t know about salvation, you can’t just keep quiet. You need to be courageous enough to speak, even if it means you’re gonna lose your friend. Helping those who are staggering toward slaughter isn’t a chance to prove yourself right or to win them over to your way of thinking; it’s your chance to send out a rescue line. It’s your chance to prove to yourself and to God that other people matter to you as much as they matter to God. You can’t plead ignorance, claiming that you didn’t know that they didn’t know. If you really think about what they do and say, you’ll have no question about their heart, because out of the heart comes everything people say and do (see Matt. 15:16–20). If they don’t honor God’s Word, if they don’t talk about it in general conversation, if they pick and choose the parts they like, or if they reject any or all of it, then you know the state of their heart. Can’t you tell an apple tree by the fruit that grows on it? You wouldn’t look at a fig tree and say, “I think it’s an apple tree, but I’m just not sure.” You’d walk over, look at the fruit, even taste it, and see for sure what it is.
You can’t plead ignorance about the faith of the people in your life. You can know about their salvation when you pay attention to their words and their actions. So always make sure that your own words and actions match up with what you claim to believe. And be sure that when you talk to people who don’t have the wisdom to know the love of God, you share that love in a way that expresses it to them but doesn’t force it on them.