Let me be blunt: I submit that the following passage in Jesus’ teaching is widely disobeyed in the churches―and probably by your church, too. Read the following passage carefully, and then ask yourself whether this is your regular habit whenever someone sins against you, or it is is rather something you do only occasionally.
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
Jesus. Matthew 18:15-17. ESV.
Let us notice these four successive steps here, prescribed by Jesus in the hope that the first step alone will suffice:
- Go by yourself, ostensibly in sincere hopes of winning him over (as opposed to just having an angry showdown over the matter, or as one scheming to defeat him eventually in a legal battle).
- If #1 doesn’t work, take one or two with you, still in hopes of winning him over.
- If #2 doesn’t work, take the matter before the assembly, still in hope of winning him over.
- If he won’t listen to the assembly, then the whole assembly shuns him―not just some of you, but the whole congregation. The immediate hope of winning him over is expired, and a proactive protection of the fellowship from the injuring party is assumed.
This is what Jesus prescribed for how a fellowship is supposed to maintain itself, and I believe it’s because he wanted such groups (and the individuals who comprise them) to be healthy, functional, enjoyable, and mutually beneficial. The design seems to be that any member who sins against another (that’s pretty much all of us) will get attention, and be helped to deal with that sin, rather than sweeping it under the rug and moving on to sin against others. The design seems to have been that of a vibrant, self-healing, self-correcting body, rather than one that eventually succumbs under its many ailments and scars and bruises and diseases.
But whether this sort of thing is mentioned or not in the pulpits, it is rarely practiced regularly and rigorously by the churches, so far as I have seen. Members who will quite naturally busy themselves daily with taking care of their own needs (eating, bathing, working, shopping, reading, praying, visiting with friends, etc.), don’t seem to be as apt to see to it that their fellows in the fellowship get the help they need to overcome sin, and to bind up the wounds that are caused when people mess up. For some reason, sin is not considered as important as taking care of the daily routines.
Even so, Jesus had listed the following is the second greatest of all the commandments ever given:
35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:35-40. ESV.
The way I read it, he’s basically saying something in the ballpark of: “These two commandments are pretty much the crux of the whole religion.” So if we’re not following those two pretty well, what’s the point in any of it?
And it was this same Jesus who gave these instructions about what to do when a brother or sister sins against you. That is to say that these instructions in Matthew 18 were part of how that loving of one’s neighbor was supposed to be done. This four-part command basically follows the pattern: When this happens, do that.
But such a command as this quickly runs into quite an obvious dysfunction if the Christian is not willing to go to his brother. The whole process gets stopped up when the injured party would rather do anything else but to obey what Jesus said to do. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s pouting, crying, cowering, or even plotting revenge; none of these things are obeying Jesus, who said we had to go to them privately to try to resolve it.
A great many things can go wrong at or before this point of confrontation, not the least of which is that many people are not disposed to be that deliberate about their relationships, and would rather see one suffer than to have to manage it face-to-face with the other person. Or, to put it more bluntly, they care more about maintaining whatever they can of their own emotional comfort than they do about please Jesus by straightening things about, and about helping their fellow Christian get things right again with Jesus.
Another thing that goes wrong is that we can often find ourselves in conflict with hardened fellows, who, had Jesus been habitually obeyed in that fellowship, would have been shunned long ago, and never let back in the fellowship for their continual hardness of heart. Or, to put it in quite another way, these same hardened people never had the benefit of that sort of loving confrontation that might have softened those hard hearts. They never got the treatment Jesus prescribed―one way or the other―because their fellows cared more about something else than they did about obeying Jesus in this matter.
And this forces us to check our hearts regarding the frequently-abused. We may think that they should be exempt from this command, and ought not have to obey it, because of the emotional discomfort involved in it. But Jesus makes no such provision. Does he?
One popular modern notion of church is that it’s for everybody, and ought to be pleasant almost all the time, as a rule. But surely Jesus understood that going to someone to show him his fault is by its very nature an unpleasant and grueling process for many of us―and close to unbearable for some! Even so, he made no provisions in this commandment for those who’d rather not. Did he?
And just like that, so many fellowships have presumed such a provision. Their sinning fellows are allowed to keep on sinning, and do not get the soul-saving help they so desperately need. And they learn to go on hurting others, leaving a trail of pain and bitterness behind them, as if this were “normal” for Jesus’ assemblies―as if this were how it’s supposed to go in God’s family.
Well, it’s not. It’s a travesty that this should ever be considered normal. And even so, many congregations live this way, as do even the families that comprise them, and the marriages that provide the foundation for those families. It is for most a way of life, to some degree or other. Ignoring one another’s sins, rather than resolving them, is the going habit for a great many people in our world. And while we can argue that it’s better, at least, than practicing violence against those who sin against us, this is hardly any consolation. It’s still disobedience to Jesus. And it’s still depriving not just the injuring party what he so desperately needs, but also the injured party.
You heard me right. The injured party needs to deal with it, and not just to escape from it and to try to forget it, or to move past it. It’s part of Jesus’ plan, I believe, for their recovery. And if the injuring party should choose not to make things right, look what’s supposed to happen in Jesus’ plan, as it regards the one who was sinned against: The injured party gets the affirmation of:
- Having stood up to the sin and the sinner alike.
- Having brought one or two others along, who also took the sin seriously.
- Having seen the entire congregation take the sin seriously. And,
- Having the entire congregation take a stand against the unrepentant sinner as being unfit (in his current state) for being a member there in God’s body.
That’s a lot of affirmation and support! And that’s a lot of hashing the thing out. It’s a lot of time and discussion for processing and reflecting. And it’s also a great opportunity for the “simple” to learn some prudence from what happened to the one who was put out. (Proverbs 19:25 here (opens in a new tab)" href="https://jackpelham.com/2023/12/17/the-three-camps-concerning-humility/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" class="ek-link">See the discussion on Proverbs 19:25 here, and what happens when the “mocker” gets flogged.)
I have friends who are regularly mistreated, and who regularly neglect to obey Jesus’ teaching, even while they cry out in their prayers to Jesus for relief from their tormentors. But I don’t think they should expect to get some extra help from Jesus beyond what he is famously on record as having taught his followers to do. Why not just obey, than to seek out some workaround?
Similarly, I know that at my friends’ churches, there are others who sit by and watch silently as those being sinned against refuse to engage the violators as Jesus instructed. Even if these friends develop some manner of camaraderie over it, this is not what Jesus said to do. He did not tell you to start a coffee klatch over it, where you can commiserate with your friends. No, he told you to deal with that sinning party. And yet, you use your friends as something of a refuge from obeying Jesus. And I wish I could get you to see how disobedient you are being, even as you feel entitled to do it because you have been wronged and hurt.
There is not a time when it’s proper to disobey Jesus. Not when you’re happy or sad or busy or sick, or even when you’ve been repeatedly injured by a fellow believer for a very long time. Jesus appears to have aimed that teaching at all his followers in general, and I can’t figure how this one can be calculated so as to no longer apply to us today.
Meanwhile, many church leaders let this continue in their churches, letting the injured ones go on in injury, and letting them languish in the cowardice and rebellion of disobeying their Master in such matters. What you are doing is not good. Have you not assumed responsibility over them as shepherds―whether Jesus has actually appointed you as such or not? If you are acting in that role, are you not obligated to obey the teachings of Jesus while you shepherd your flock? Or have you somehow graduated above such mundane requirements, and into some sort of uber-wisdom that has found a way around “the body of Christ” having to keep itself clean and fit and well-nourished?
I don’t have enough knowledge to know how this particular instance of common disobedience to Christ would compare to the other common disobediences, but I suspect it’s one of the top few, right up there with this one:
12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.
Hebrews 3:12-13. NIV.
The inspired author of Hebrews understood that Jesus’ people need daily encouragement, so he commands them―each of them, apparently―to be about that business. And let me state for the record that the modern notion of “encouragement” often amounts to little more than saying pleasant things to somebody. But ask yourself this, regarding your practice of encouraging others: “What have I said to this man that results in him having more courage than he had before?”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this passage has in mind some sort of encouragement that keeps people’s hearts from turning away from God, and from being hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. All one has to do to figure that out is to ponder the words of the passage!
And so I ask you, isn’t this what the Matthew 18 passage was all about, too? Wasn’t Jesus designing his fellowship such that the daily sins could not take hold and fester, so as to defile the relationships between the Christians, and so as to defile their individual hearts?
Yes, I believe it was. And passages of this sort just keep coming and coming. Here’s another. Ponder this and see what you notice:
14 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15 See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
Hebrews 12:14-15. NIV.
If you listen to the Spirit of this passage, the idea seems to have been to have a fellowship that is not plagued with sin and bitterness and failure and trouble. Yet, as far as I can see, there are congregations spread to and fro who are typified by this sort of dysfunctional Christianity. (See also my related article, Dysfunctional Christianity.) Where the passage commands the reader to make “every” effort, many in the churches will be quite content to make no effort at all. Somehow, they missed the Spirit of the thing completely, and lack the disposition Jesus had to do something about what ailed his neighbors. Theirs is the parable of The Lousy Samaritan.
Where Hebrews says “see to it that no one falls short of the grace….”, many will sit back and tisk-tisk at a fellow believer they think is failing to behave in keeping with God’s grace, yet won’t say a word to him about it (even if they’ll mention it to their friends). And they won’t even notice that it doesn’t say that the believer should “hope” for these people, or even “pray” for them, but that they should do something exceedingly more proactive: “see to it”.
Seeing to it is what the Good Samaritan did on the road and at the inn. Seeing to it is what God did at the Exodus. Seeing to it is what Jesus did when he taught those twelve men for those three years or so―when he trained them into something they had not been before.
It’s the same Jesus that told us how to handle it when people sin against us. And we have to choose whether he’s really our Master or not―and whether we dare disobey him any longer regarding his instructions on what to do when it happens.
I dare say that most churches would scoff at this article. They’ll find some fine-sounding way to discount it, to dismiss it, to hand-wave it away. Even if it’s just “we have more pressing matters to tend to at present”, you can bet they’ll find a way to keep from putting it into practice today. Indeed! Is that not the way they made it to today from yesterday, and to yesterday from the day before―putting these things off? Is this not how the dysfunction got this bad? It’s not like Matthew 18 just appeared in the Bible for the first time this morning!
But I’m not hoping to reach the hard-hearted veteran with this article, but the soft-hearted believer who still wants to listen to Jesus, even if doing what he says is extremely hard. And how you respond to these scriptures will show you whether that’s the kind of heart you have.
But brace yourself. If you start obeying these, and trying to talk people’s sins out with them, many will not take kindly to it. And they may try every trick in the book to get you to go away. You may be surprised just how ugly it can get (though some will have wonderful responses to this heavenly instruction!)
This will also test the spirit of your fellowship’s leadership, and whether they’re interested in obeying Jesus in this matter.
Ah, and I had better mention this! Obeying Jesus in this will also force you to deal with the definition of “sins against you”, because, as silly as it may seem, you’re going to have to decide whether your churchmate having neglected to return your salad bowl after having been regularly reminded for six months straight is a sin.
And if it’s not, then what is it? And if it’s not, how is it any different from the one who neglected to return the $1000 he promised to repay? And if $1000 makes it a sin, what about $500, or $250, or $125? You see where I’m going here, and you may not like it, but logically, how can you draw the line?
You’re going to have to decide whether all lying and fraud and swindling is a sin, and all manner of other things that you’re naturally quite apt to see as sins against you until Jesus demands that you go deal with the violator―at which point, you’d rather let them go in your selfishness and/or cowardice.
The fact of the matter is that Jesus wants every Christian to be pliable in his heart regarding each and every sin he may commit. There is no one that is exempt from this sort of processing and resolution. Not one. And when we say there is, or pretend there is, we’re staring up a really ugly story that’s just not going to end well.
And there’s some responsibility here, too, because your brother who sins against you may well need your help to see that it’s sin, or to see that it’s serious and needs to be dealt with. You are suppose to provide that care. And if you’re ineffective by yourself, you are supposed to go get the help he needs to get him over hump.
That’s the way Jesus designed it to work.
And I can tell you that I think I would be a much more mature Christian by now if I had been getting this kind of people from fellow believers in dealing with myself when I sin against others. And on the back side of that same coin, I can totally see how much more mature we’d all be if we were regularly dealing with such things diligently ourselves.
Is not our dysfunction and immature in this matter our own fault?
Do we not need to repent of it right away?
But What If I Just Forgive Them?
Someone, hating this whole system of dealing with sin, will surely look for refuge here: “But what if I just forgive them—-then I don’t have to go show them their fault, do it? What if I just suck it up?”
Indeed, they can do this. They’ve gotten used to it, and they know that it tends to ameliorate situations to some degree, and to make them easier to endure. So why not make this their policy, rather than to obey what Jesus actually said to do? After all, what they’re suggesting here is “forgiveness“, right? It’s biblical, right? So why not just stuff it and call it forgiveness, and be done with it?
The short answer is this: Because that’s not what Jesus said to do. What he said to do resulted in the person being worked with until their heart was right, or until they were put out of the fellowship. But what you’re doing will cover up the sin, and net get the sinner the treatment he or she desperately needs―and you’ll be doing it in a twisted way, calling it “forgiveness”―and you may well use words like “grace” and “patience” and such. But this can get really sinister really quickly, because at the end of the day, what you’re doing is disobeying Jesus, and trying to use spiritual language to obscure that disobedience.
“But I Hate To See People Get In Trouble”
Sure you do! And they hate to get in trouble, too. But even so, Jesus is the Master, and he knows what his people need. The violator her needs to get in trouble, and you need to see it happen. You both need to deal with it. And if it’s bigger than can be handle privately, you both need it to bring in other people, until it’s been solved.
What do you do when your frying pan catches on fire? You put the lid on it all by yourself, and if that fixes it, you’re done. but if that doesn’t fix it, then you get other people involved, up to and including the rest of the family and the neighbors and the Fire Department. The goal is not to be nice or to be comfortable, but to put the fire out!
And when the fire’s out, sometimes those firemen will fuss at the person whose carelessness started it. But who forgets such a lesson easily? Surely not the one who gets fussed at. But also, the sensitive souls take heed at the story, and remember that lesson themselves for years to come: “Do you remember that time that the neighbor left the burner on under his frying pan when he went out to feed his chickens???” It becomes a family’s lore, and they remember it for life as a cautionary tale.
And so was the design for Christian fellowship. Sins are plentiful, and one doesn’t have to be around for long in the diligent Jesus-designed fellowship before he or she has experience a good sampling of situations from which we all can learn. Ideally, most of it will stay fairly quiet, but there will certainly be situations that need to be brought before the whole congregation. And those become part of people’s lifetime lessons in Christ.
But most of our church cultures are deprived of this experience because they can’t stomach doing it the way Jesus prescribed. They cheat and find some workaround, which, in turn, robs the members of the instructive and maturing experience Jesus had in mind for them to endure. The workarounds don’t help them grow strong, so they remain weak. And weak people sin more, which means there’s even more in that congregation to be covered up (“forgiven”).
This is the cycle I see. And it seems to be powered both by ignorance and by rebellion. Yes, people ought to know better, but at the same time, if they would obey everything they do understand Jesus is telling them to do, they would learn more from the outcome of that obedience, and then they’d be less ignorance. These two things go together, and even though we might be more likely to plead guilty to ignorance than rebellion, I think we need to take a good, hard look at ourselves on this one.
Like I said earlier, Matthew 18’s been in that Bible a long time now, and we’ve had a long time to be thinking it over. So, I’m thinking that a people of a better heart would be much further along this road than we are at this point. And surely, there is some rebellion mixed into all this.
I know some really nice and sweet people on this Earth, but they are not the ones I turn to when I want to get a handle on my own behaviors. No, if I can find them, the ones I want help from are the ones who understand Matthew 18, and who will put it into practice regularly. Those are the people who really know something about being like Jesus.
So that’s what I’ve wanted to type since my walk yesterday. And surely, this will divide people considerably. And as with so many other of the bits and pieces of original Christianity, this will seem new to those who don’t study the old, but are caught up in the modern sensibilities.
It was quite radical when Jesus said it, and it’s still quite radical today. And what a radical religion that expects all its members to adopt the radical teachings of the radical leader―and who showers on even the weak and downtrodden the same riches it showers on its leaders! In original Christianity, both the abused and the abuser alike were to get the special treatment it takes to make things right. Every. Time.
