Matt 18- What do we do when someone sins against us?
One of the most powerful books about Christian community was written by the Theologian and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is called Life Together. I was reminded of his words as I was thinking about our Gospel passage today, which has to do with dealing with conflict in the church. Bonhoeffer warns that we can begin to love our idea of the church more than the actual people that God has put in front of us. Bonhoeffer says,
“He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”
That warning has to do with the way we treat the real community in front of us. … I once met someone with a PhD in theology who no longer attended church because he couldn’t find one that was “doing it right.” His ideal church had become more important than any actual church. It had turned him into a judge of churches, a kind of connoisseur of churches, and he found none worthy of his attendance.
Bonhoeffer’s point is not that the church should have no standards, no discipline, and no vision for faithfulness. His warning is that our dream of the church can become a demand we place on other people. We can use our ideal like a measuring stick, and then grow resentful when the actual community fails to match what we imagined. The dream can become more important than the people. Bonhoeffer warns us against loving the church we imagine, the church we dream of, more than the church God has actually placed before us. … I think this is the origin of a lot of conflict in the church.
When we look at our Gospel reading, Jesus is not describing an idealized church where no one ever sins, where no one ever wounds another person, and no one ever needs correction. Jesus is teaching us how to love the church that actually exists: a community of real sinners- learning, by grace, how to speak the truth in love, how to forgive one another, and how to be restored to one another.
Jesus is giving us wisdom about how to deal with conflict in the church. He is anticipating that this is going to be what life in the church is like. This is not something he's shocked by. This is something he knows will be a part of our life together and he's giving us wisdom about how to deal with this.
This teaching sits alongside his other teachings about how we treat one another. So, he has told us not to be consumed with judgment and that when we judge, that same standard will be used to judge us. So, judgment is something to be very careful about. … He has also taught us to be cautious about our anger and how anger is the seed of murder. … But being cautious about being judgmental and having a handle on our anger doesn't mean that we should avoid confrontation. We don’t want to yell and scream in judgment, however, we can go equally wrong on the other end of the spectrum, where we avoid bringing up a serious fault with someone out of a sense of being nice or feeling uncomfortable with conflict. We're also meant to be truth tellers, and to be concerned with one another's spiritual advancement, and for the health of the community generally. So here, Jesus is giving us wisdom regarding necessary confrontation.
Jesus is assuming that conflict will be a part of the life of the church, and he is teaching us the Christian way to deal with conflict. My assumption is that someone has sinned against us but they are not coming to us to ask for forgiveness or to make things right. We also don’t want to be coming after each other for every little hurt feeling. There is way too much of that in our world. After all, Jesus tells us to remove the log in our own eye before we try to pick out the sliver in another person’s eye. He warns us about the danger of judgement. So, this kind of confrontation should really be about quite serious matters. Sin matters, and shouldn’t be ignored. So Jesus gives us a process: If someone sins against you, first, bring it up with them just between the two of you. If they won’t listen to you, then bring along one or two others when you talk to them. If they still won’t listen, then bring it before the church. If they still won’t listen, then treat them as you would treat someone who is not a member of the church.
The first thing to do here is to first get our motivation right. Jesus says, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one”. The actual motivation isn’t justice for the offended person who was sinned against, which I think is our default in our society. We want to tell them how offended and hurt we are. … In Jesus' teaching the motivation is “regaining that one”. … Jesus cares about the person who was sinned against, but Jesus asks us to endure all kind of wrongs. … Here Jesus seems to be more concerned about the person who was able to sin against another and then to not seek forgiveness and reconciliation. That person has wounded their own soul and they need healing. Otherwise, they are beginning to separate themselves from God and His people.
So first, we begin with our motivation, which is concern for the soul of the other person who committed the sin. The early Church Father John Chrysostom points out that Jesus does not say,
“’accuse him’ or ‘take him to court’. He says, ‘correct him’. For he is possessed, as it were, by some stupor, and drunk in his anger and disgrace. The one who is healthy must go to the one who is sick… be earnest toward his cure, not toward satisfying your anger and hurt feelings”.[1]
Similarly, St. Augustine says,
“If you fail [to confront him], you are worse than he is. He has done someone harm, and by doing harm he has stricken himself with a grievous wound. Will you then completely disregard your brother’s wound? Will you simply watch him stumble and fall down? Will you disregard his predicament? If so, you are worse in your silence than he in his abuse. Therefore, when anyone sins against us, let us take great care, but not merely for ourselves. For it is a glorious thing to forget injuries. Just set aside your own injury, but do not neglect your brother’s wound. … for the harm he has done is not primarily to you but to himself.”[2]
This is a hard thing for us to hear in a society that is so obsessed with being offended and being a victim. I hear this challenge. Jesus says that when we have been hurt by someone's sin and that person will not come to us, we have a burden to approach the other person. We gently point out the sin of the other, not to satisfy our own hurt feelings, but out of concern for the wound in the soul of the person who has sinned.
We come to them alone. We don’t gossip to all our friends about it.
We also aren’t supposed to pretend the sin never happened, which is an equally powerful temptation for some of us who don’t like confrontation and would rather avoid it at all costs.
If the person is unwilling to listen to you when you are alone, then the next step is to bring along one or two more people. This isn’t about bringing along your best friends who are so loyal to you that they would agree with you if you were right or wrong. This is about witnesses. Bringing in others, maybe they witnessed what happened, or maybe they are just people trusted by both parties who can give a level of objectivity to the situation. Perhaps no sin has taken place, and it is really in the imagination of the offended person, or it’s a misunderstanding. Bringing along one or two others can help clarify the situation and help to determine if a wrong has actually taken place. If the others are respected by both people, then it is more likely that a person will admit their fault, repent, and seek forgiveness.
So first, we confront them alone, and if that doesn’t work, then we bring along one or two others from the church. If that person still refuses to listen, even before one or two others, then we bring it to the broader church. We open the circle a bit wider. Remember that the Church in the first century was largely made up of house churches. So they might be made up of 10 to 40 people. Our context is quite a bit different. It probably wouldn't be appropriate for us to get up and make an announcement during Sunday service to the entire congregation. I think an appropriate place to bring this would be to Parish Council, which represents the broader church body. … We involve more people in the hopes that the person will see the wrong they have done as they see the will of the body of the church in agreement on the matter. Again, this is not in order to shame the person, or to get the church to take sides. All of this is out of concern to regain the one who has sinned- to help the person to see the wound in their soul, so it can be healed. As long as the person does not believe they have done anything wrong, their wound cannot be tended to. No medicine can be given as long as they deny the illness.
If the matter is brought before the church and the person still refuses to see their sin, then they have cut themselves off from the community by being unwilling to live in the way of the Church. They essentially have made themselves equal to someone outside the church. … In this statement there is an element of respecting the person’s free will and the consequences that come from their decision. They are free to reject the direction of the church, but they also remove themselves from the church when they reject the teaching and direction of the church.
This sounds very harsh. Treat the person that sinned and refused to listen to you like a gentile or a tax collector, but then we have to think about how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors. So, to treat a person like a tax-collector or a Gentile is to continue to love them and to hope and pray for their restoration and healing.
Bonhoeffer warns us that we can love the church we imagine more than the church that God has given us. In our Gospel reading, Jesus shows us what it looks like to love the church God has actually given us. The church is made up of imperfect people and so it is a place full of misunderstandings and failings. Forgiveness is needed. Christ shows us the way forward when sin and hurt feelings damage our relationships. That path towards reconciliation is sorely needed in our world right now. Christ hasn't given us a perfect community. He teaches us how to not give up on one another too quickly. So, following Christ we seek to tell the truth, and we seek to extend grace and mercy, and we'll leave the door open for the possibility of restoration. And that is how Christ loves us. AMEN
[1] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Matthew II p 76
[2] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Matthew II p 77, 79
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