When Others Sin

 Matthew 18:15-35

 

Today we continue our study of Matthew in the middle of chapter 18. Our series title highlights Jesus as the King of Kings, and much of this book is devoted to describing and demonstrating the unusual nature of his kingdom. As John mentioned last Sunday, this chapter begins the fourth discourse, a sizable chunk of Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom, in contrast to the stories about what he did as he traveled around with his disciples and lived out kingdom realities by ministering to the needs of people.
 
This discourse is sometimes referred to as the Discourse on the Church, since Jesus addresses the ways in which his followers should relate to each other. The word “church” appears for the second time in Matthew, after 16:18 where Jesus tells Peter that “on this rock I will build my church.” The Greek word is ekklesia, and these are the only two places in any of the gospels that this word appears, though it appears over 100 times elsewhere in the New Testament.
 
Ekklesia originally referred to a political assembly in the Greek system of democracy. It literally means “the called-out ones,” a civil body of elected members. The disciples at this stage would probably have had a vague understanding that Jesus was referring to some sort of body that he would be the head of, extending beyond them to encompass all of his faithful followers. The ekklesia would be the universal church that Jesus would establish and lead. This word would also come to refer to a local congregation of believers.

The kingdom of Jesus is an upside-down kingdom, contrary to the typical human power structure. The greatest in this kingdom would be the servant of all. In chapter 20 we will see where Jesus as the supreme King of Kings states that he did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The greatest in the kingdom is also described as the one who takes the lowly position of a child. That’s what we read last week at the beginning of chapter 18. We have to become like little children, with a simple, unpretentious faith, to even enter the kingdom of heaven. The Father, like a good shepherd, saves and cares for each person who approaches him in this manner. He is not willing that any should perish. The disciples are warned against doing anything to cause one of these “little ones” to stumble. There will be consequences if we sin against someone else. But what is our responsibility if someone sins against us? That question is answered in today’s passage:
 
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. – Matthew 18:15-17
 
“If your brother or sister sins...” Some early versions of this text include the words “…against you.” With either interpretation we need to consider the basis for pointing out someone else’s sin. You will recall from chapter 7 that Jesus warned against judging others unless we ourselves are willing to be judged by the same standard:
 
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. – Matthew 7:2-5
 
Jesus did not say that we should ignore the speck in our brother’s eye, even if we do have a plank in our own. We just need to have the humility and honesty to confront the sin in our own lives before we point out the sin in someone else’s. We also need to be guided by Paul’s advice in Ephesians 4 to “speak the truth in love.” Love refers to a genuine concern for the benefit of the other person rather than any kind of self-promotion or pride. In this sense we have to earn the right to confront someone else by showing love to them at the same time. Love should be the hallmark of all of our interactions. It is the glue that holds us together as the body of Christ. This is the context in Ephesians 4, in contrast to “deceitful scheming,” which Paul says will blow us every which way.
 
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. – Ephesians 4:15-16
 
Our passage in Matthew 18 serves as a blueprint for church discipline. As far as possible, sin should be confronted privately, to avoid unnecessary embarrassment. If this does not result in repentance, the situation can be shared in a small group to establish its validity. The process must not be perceived as a personal attack. The principle here in verse 16 of depending on the testimony of more than one person comes from Deuteronomy 19 where in a legal case a person could not be convicted on the basis of the testimony of only one witness.
 
As a last resort the entire church body should be involved in condemning the unrepentant behavior. Jesus does not explicitly say to expel the person, but in the other important New Testament passage relating to church discipline, the Apostle Paul quotes from Deuteronomy again in commanding the church in Corinth to “expel the wicked person from among you.” This is in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul takes up a case of incest that the church has avoided dealing with.
 
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. – 1 Corinthians 5:9-11
 
Sin should not just be ignored in the context of the body. Association with sinful people should not appear to be condoning sin. Jesus was called the friend of sinners, as he ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, and this got him in trouble with the Pharisees. They said that his association with such people was condoning sin. However, he was showing how God never gives up on people, no matter how awful they are. He keeps reaching out to them in love.
 
So, treating someone as a pagan or tax collector would not sever all contact. But it would change the nature of the relationship. The Message puts this part of Matthew 18 in this way:
 
“If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love. – Matthew 18:15-17
 
The goal should always be to restore relationships if at all possible: first between the person and God, and secondly within the body. This can be a huge challenge in some cases where the people involved have been deeply hurt or offended, requiring the miraculous intervention of the Holy Spirit to open eyes and soften hearts. God is able to redeem anyone and any situation, if people are willing to commit to that and work alongside him to bring reconciliation. As it says in Hebrews 12,
 
God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. – Hebrews 12:10b-11
 
A harvest of righteousness and peace should be the goal any time we are confronting sin. But we need to be willing to be agents and recipients of the Lord’s discipline in the process. Let’s carry on with the next part of Matthew 18.
 
“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” – Matthew 18:18-20
 
Verse 18 is repeated from chapter 16 where Jesus promised to give Peter and the other disciples the keys of the kingdom of heaven, after Peter confessed him as the Messiah. The future-tense verbs in this statement, “will be bound” and “will be loosed,” are actually future perfect tense in the Greek: “whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.” This reads a little more awkwardly, but it does give the sense that we are not dictating to God what he will do, but rather as his servants we are actively fulfilling his purposes that he has already designed.
 
Similarly, it is clear that simply agreeing with someone else to ask God for something does not obligate the mighty Creator of the Universe to fulfill that. We cannot twist God’s arm to get what we want! He is not a cosmic vending machine where we can push a button and receive our blessing of choice. In sharp contrast, gathering in the name of Jesus invites him to direct our prayer into the will of God. If we love God, why would we want anything apart from what he wants to give us?
 
I realize that this opens up the matter of the mystery of prayer. Why do we even need to ask an omnipotent, loving God to do what he already wants to do? But prayer is about relationship – drawing near to God. Supplication is an act of obedience and submission. Ultimately it is a way of joining God in his redemptive work by allowing him to align our hearts with his. This happens as we recognize the presence and dominion of Jesus when we gather for prayer and worship together.
 
So we have seen that sin should not be ignored. We have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters to humbly and lovingly point out where they have gone astray and to involve others if they refuse to listen to us. Whether they respond or not we have to examine our own hearts to make sure we are right with God ourselves. If we have been sinned against, we need to be willing to forgive. This applies whether or not the offending party acknowledges that they have hurt us. Forgiveness is the topic of the next section of Matthew 18:
 
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. – Matthew 18:21-22
 
Peter was asking if there is a limit on how many times we need to forgive someone. The implication is that the same offense is being committed over and over, with the person not willing or not able to change their behavior. Seven was the biblical number signifying completeness. Perhaps that would be enough; at that point we should be able to write them off. However, Jesus does not let Peter set a limit. Forgiving seventy-seven times or seventy times seven basically means unlimited forgiveness. Each time we forgive, we need to let go of the offense completely, not holding anything against the other person. Love keeps no record of wrongs, it says in 1 Corinthians 13. It can be very difficult to totally forgive. The feelings may not be there, in which case forgiveness becomes an act of the will: I consciously give up my right to hurt you for hurting me or someone I love. I may need to take steps to protect myself or other people in the situation, but I will not seek revenge.
 
The alternative to forgiveness is bitterness, which can be extraordinarily destructive to the person nursing it. It will drain the joy from their heart, damage their other relationships, and blind them to the love of God. That is why unforgiveness has been compared to drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. We have to forgive to be truly free. The motivation to forgive others also springs from a recognition of just how much God has forgiven us. Jesus uses a parable to make this point as he continues:
 
“Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. – Matthew 18:23-27
 
Jesus uses hyperbole to help make his point, as he often does in parables. The servant was in an impossible position here. The amount he owed was enormous, equivalent to perhaps 200,000 years of labor. Selling his family into slavery would not make even a tiny dent in this sum. And yet he insists to the king, “I will pay back everything.” There is absolutely no way that he could. He is being completely unrealistic. He does not admit his own inadequacy – and yet the king takes pity on him and forgives the debt. Does the servant even say thank you?
 
“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. – Matthew 18:28-31
 
The first servant has no appreciation of what he has been forgiven. He seizes upon the debt owed to him and demands that it be paid, despite the fact that it is half a million times smaller than what he had owed. In this case, his fellow servant could realistically have paid it back, if he had been patient. But he shows none of the mercy that he has been shown.
 
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” – Matthew 18:32-35
 
The master confronts the servant with his sin of unforgiveness and punishes him in prison. Of course, he will not be able to pay back anything from there, so this amounts to eternal condemnation. Does this make lack of forgiveness an unforgiveable sin? I believe the torture mentioned here gives us a clue as to how this should be interpreted. Torturing the wicked servant in prison will not help him pay back what was owed. In our case, how are we to pay God back for all that he has forgiven us? Of course, we cannot, but we can show our gratitude to him by forgiving those who sin against us. If we do not forgive, we imprison ourselves in bitterness, and the torture of broken relationships is self-imposed. The burden of this situation should open our hearts to others and incline us to truly forgive. God does pass sentence on unrepentant sinners, but he also provides a way of escape up until the last possible moment. We can accept his gift of grace and be freed from the prison of unforgiveness.
 
And so, we come to the end of chapter 18. How should we respond when someone sins against us? Let’s review the three actions that we looked at today. First, we need to be willing to confront sin, not just ignore it. This is the loving response, if it is done in the right way, with humility and a recognition of our own status as a forgiven sinner. Secondly, we need to join with others in addressing sin. This provides a level of protection against a conflict becoming personal. Thirdly, we need to forgive – seventy times seven, if necessary. Forgiving as God has forgiven us means without limit.
 
As 2020 comes to a close, what do you need to forgive? Has the pandemic or the political polarization strained any of your relationships? Perhaps you need to forgive God for what you feel you have lost this year: freedom, opportunities, resources. Or maybe you are carrying some hurt from long ago that you think you have dealt with, but there is still some more healing that needs to happen.
 
Before we examine ourselves and pray, I would like to read a powerful story of forgiveness that may be familiar to some of you but which I feel is worth repeating. Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman whose family was arrested by the Nazis for helping Jews escape during World War II. Corrie’s family was sent to a concentration camp, where they suffered horribly and Corrie’s sister Betsy died. Corrie was eventually released, and she spent the postwar years traveling around speaking a message of hope and forgiveness in Jesus. In 1947 she was in Germany, having just spoken in a meeting, when she realized that a man approaching her to shake her hand was in fact one of the guards from the prison camp that she and her family had been in. She was completely taken aback, and memories of that awful time came flooding back. Continuing in her own words:
 

Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: “A fine message, fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course–how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk,” he was saying. “I was a guard in there.” No, he did not remember me.

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

For I had to do it–I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion–I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

“Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently. “I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.”

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.

 
Corrie was able to forgive as she had been forgiven. This was a miracle of God’s grace and love in her heart. Let’s each of us consider where God needs to touch us in a similar way and work his forgiveness in our relationships with others. Let’s commit to speaking the truth in love, joining together in the Lord, and forgiving each other as many times as necessary.