Enabling unrighteousness under one’s watch is a sign of a bad spiritual leader and of a bad authority figure in general.  The Scribes and Chief Priests understood that Jesus cleansing the Temple was, by implication, a rebuke to themselves.  They had allowed unrighteous business at the Temple under their watch.

We see in the Book of Judges how men from the city of Gibeah of the Tribe of Benjamin had abused a woman in an exceedingly vile and violent manner which caused her to die.  Her husband was able to inform the nation as a whole of what happened.  We then read in Judges 20:8-18 how it was God’s own decision that the rest of Israel fight against the Tribe of Benjamin for harboring a handful of sensual perverts and murderers of their own tribe from the death penalty which God had prescribed.  This was a civil war wherein thousands of people died.  

Was it worth a bloody civil war to not let the enablers prevail in their efforts that justice would not be carried out on those whom they were harboring?  Yes- according to the Lord’s own verdict.

Those Benjamite enablers in Judges are the very opposite of the Levites in Moses’ time who put partiality aside, put their own reputations aside, and also put misguided compassion aside to slay the idolaters of their own tribe, and even of their own families, when deputized by Moses, the highest judge in Israel (see Exodus 32:26-29).

We have another righteous example of not being an enabler in King Asa.  2 Chronicles 15:16: “And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove: and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.”

To simply be an enabler of evil makes one evil in God’s eyes.  A man who allows his wife to regularly defy his authority as the head of the home or allows anyone to openly practice evil in his home is surely an enabler of evil.  A woman who tolerates her spouse abusing children, breaking the law in other ways, or otherwise tolerates her husband’s sin that regularly makes their home an overall ungodly environment is also an enabler of evil.  

I recommend that you read the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 with this topic in mind.  Was the Prodigal Son’s father not greatly concerned about all the awful things which might happen to his son in the distant country?  Of course he was.  Yet the prodigal’s sin was not going to be tolerated in the father’s home.  The prodigal knew that his father’s love would not enable sin in his own home.  Never.  Jesus intended that the father in the story of the Prodigal Son represent the Father in heaven.  This father also represents what a godly person must be in any area which they have jurisdiction.  

Evil prevails in the world because of enablers of evil.

To enable evil is to follow the devil.  The enabler is logically a partaker of the condemnation of the wicked doer whom they are enabling.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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