The Ministry of ReconciliationMatthew 18:15-20

Jesus cares about your relationship with other followers of Jesus. Husbands and wives, parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, friends, dating couples, brothers and sisters—Jesus cares about your relationships, especially when those relations are also followers of Jesus. Jesus cares about how your behavior affects other followers of Jesus and how it can affect the whole church. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus elevated the importance of reconciled relationships among his followers so much so that, if you suddenly realize that another church member might possibly be angry with you, you should press the pause button on your own formal acts of worship and go immediately to seek reconciliation with your brother or sister. That’s Matthew 5:23-24. Reconciled relationships between believers are of paramount importance.

When relationships are strained, usually sin is involved. Thus, later in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 7:5, Jesus instructs us about “the loving art of speck removal,” how to help a brother get a speck of sawdust out of his eye, which is a metaphor for helping a brother deal with sin in his life. This is not necessarily an occasion where there is sin damaging a relationship; this is simply a sin that has been observed. If you see me sin, you have a responsibility, a loving responsibility, to help me deal with it. In Matthew 7, Jesus focused on the preparation needed for you to be effective in helping me deal with my sin; you have to be recognizing and dealing with your own sin, which might mean you’re actively asking for help with your own struggles with sin. As you take responsibility for your own sin, you’re in a position to help your siblings.

When we put these two passages together, we can see that sin is always a relational matter, a community issue. Even in cases where my sin is private, it affects my relationship with my family. Matthew 7 is worded in such a way that it’s clear that each one of us has a responsibility to address sin when we see it, both in ourselves and in others in our church family.1 Certainly, Jesus isn’t advocating a “busybody” spirit, or an attitude of “sin hunting.” In fact, I’ll argue this morning that even as each one of us has a responsibility to help each other in this church deal with their sins, we must do this from a starting-point posture that always seeks to assume the best about each other.

In Matthew 18:15-20, Jesus revisits this topic and elaborates on it significantly. However, before we go there, I want to mention one other passage of Scripture that I think will help us frame this discussion appropriately. The apostle Paul speaks of “the ministry of reconciliation” in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21. Follow along as I read those verses and make a few observations along the way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Genuine followers of Jesus really are new people. We’re not simply in the process of becoming new—although there is some truth to that way of putting it—there

1 Cf. John F. MacArthur, Jr., The Freedom and Power of Forgiveness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998), pg. 143, who writes, “The personal, private confrontation prescribed in Matthew 18 also means that church discipline is the responsibility of every believer in the church. It is not something to be delegated to church officials. In fact, if you see a brother in sin, the wrong first response is to report his sin to church leaders, or to anyone else…. The responsibility to confront sin that defiles the church lies with the first person to become aware of the sin. Don’t defer to someone else. Don’t spread the circle of knowledge further than necessary. Above all, don’t just say, ‘Well, I’ll pray that my brother will see the light.’ That may not be enough. You have the light—go and shine it in his eyes!”

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really is something fundamentally new about who we are the moment we begin trusting Jesus. God has created a new person, a person “in Christ.” Verse 18: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. So, it’s not just Paul and apostles who have the ministry of reconciliation. The same “us” who have been reconciled to God through Christ are the “us” to whom God has given the ministry of reconciliation.

In verse 19, he’ll elaborate on this ministry of reconciliation: that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So, this grand reconciliation has to do with the forgiveness of sins, “not counting their trespasses against them.” The message that God has made a way through Jesus Christ that sinners can have their sins not counted against them is the ministry of reconciliation that God has given to us. In verse 20, Paul connects this to his own ministry in Corinth: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. So, when Paul preaches the gospel, when Paul declares that forgiveness of sins can be received as a gift from God through Jesus Christ, it’s actually God who is speaking that message, through the voice of Paul. Continuing on in verse 20: We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And continuing on into chapter 6, verse 1: Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

Now, think about this for a moment. Paul is writing this to a church, the church of Corinth. He’s writing to a group of people presumably made up of a number of individuals who have been truly, genuinely reconciled to God. And yet, the behavior of at least some of the Corinthians has caused Paul to call them to be reconciled to God and to remind them plainly of Jesus taking their place, being condemned as a sinner in their place. Some of them are not reflecting “the righteousness of God” in their lives. Some of them are not living as “the new creation.” From the larger context of 2 Corinthians, we know that one problem they were having had to do with their reception of Paul himself; they had been led astray by some false teachers. Nevertheless, they were accountable and Paul indicates that the false teachers and any who follow them away need to be reconciled to God. Their dissent with Paul—could we say their unreconciled relationship with Paul?—was so severe that their relationship with God was being called into question by their behavior. So, Paul appeals to them again. He doesn’t want them to receive God’s grace in vain. In other words, he doesn’t want them to merely hear Paul’s words without heeding them. He wants them to listen to his gospel and respond appropriately by repenting and trusting Jesus, and thus be reconciled with God and also with Paul.

Thus, I think it’s important to see that reconciliation with God is supposed to include reconciliation with other people. To refuse to be reconciled with another believer in your church, or to refuse to admit your sin when it is confronted by someone in your church, might be an indication that you are not reconciled to God. Jesus’s instruction in Matthew 18:15-20 bears this out. In these verses, Jesus lays out a straightforward four-step process for dealing with observed sin in the church. Actually, ideally, it’s only a one-step process. But Jesus presents us with a series of hypotheticals, in order to paint for us the worst-case scenario. It’s significant to reflect on this fact for a moment. Jesus wants us to expect that this process will have to be followed at least in some churches, at least from time to time. Thus, Jesus expects that churches are going to

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be assemblies of his followers among whom sin will continue to be normal.2 Let that sink in. At the same time, however, Jesus gives us this process for dealing with it to give us an additional expectation: yes, sin will be normal among followers of Jesus, but actually dealing with sin openly and freely should also be normal.

The whole chapter, Matthew 18, has sometimes been referred to as Jesus’s “Community Discourse.”3 He’s instructing his disciples on what their life as a church, as the assembly of God’s people should look like. And, thus far in the chapter, he’s had a lot to say about dealing with stumbling, sin, and temptation. He’s referred to his disciples in this chapter as both “little ones” and sheep. In the immediately preceding paragraph, verses 10-14, he told a parable about a shepherd who pursues wandering sheep and rejoices when he rescues the wandering one from danger. He concludes that parable in verse 14 this way: So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Verses 15-20, therefore, serve as an explanation for how it is that our heavenly Father preserves us from perishing, with the assumption that we continue to sin, continue to stumble, continue to wander throughout our lives as followers of Jesus. Perhaps surprisingly, it seems that Jesus is going to say that his Father preserves us from perishing through the loving confrontation of our brothers and sisters.4 Commentator Stanley Hauerwas writes, “A community capable of protecting the little ones, a community who cares for the lost sheep, is a community that cannot afford to overlook one another’s sins because doing so keeps the community from embodying the life of grace determined by God’s forgiveness through the sacrifice of his Son.” He goes on a bit later, “This is a people who are to love one another so intensely that they refuse to risk the loss of the one who has gone astray—or the loss of ourselves in harboring resentments.”5

So, let’s hear what Jesus has to say once again. Matthew 18:15-20, and I’ll be reading this passage from the New American Standard Bible6: If your brother sins, go and show him his

2 Cf. David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel (Reading the New Testament Series; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2001), pg. 190, who writes, “The sayings collected in the following discourse (18:1–35) have to do with living together as the family of God…. They candidly anticipate that the church will include those who arrogantly look down their noses at others, those who cause scandal, those who stray, those who defy admonition, and those who are unforgiving—a tangled assortment of sinners.”

3 See, for example, Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (The New American Commentary 22; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), pg. 258.

4 Cf. Grant R. Osborne, Matthew (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), pg. 683, who writes, “The emphasis on relationships in 18:1–14 concluded with the centrality of bringing wandering sheep back into the fold. Here the method of doing so is described, i.e., discipline in the community.”

5 Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (SCM Theological Commentary on the Bible; London: SCM, 2006), pg. 165.6 I have chosen to read from the NASB, instead of the ESV as I typically do, because of two key features in

this passage. First, in Matt. 18:15, the words “against you” appear in the ESV but not in the NASB. This is due to a disagreement among which Greek manuscripts to follow. The earliest and typically most reliable manuscripts of this verse do not contain the phrase “against you.” Thus, I think the NASB and other translations which do not have the phrase “against you” in the verse are correct here (such as GWT and NIV 2011). Second, the translation of verse 18 in the NASB I believe better reflects the Greek, as was noted when we looked the exact same phraseology in Matt. 16:19). Regarding the first, see Charles L. Quarles, “Matthew,” in CSB Study Bible (edited by Edwin A. Blum and Trevin Wax; Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), pg. 1532, who explains simply, “The words against you do not appear in the earliest and best manuscripts of v. 15. Thus the process is not intended merely for dealing with personal grievances but rather for any sinful conduct on the part of a Christian brother (or sister) that indicates such a person is straying from Christ.”

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fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 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. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.

This paragraph is all about family dynamics, how brothers and sisters in Christ, fellow disciples should treat each other in certain situations. And in the midst of this instruction Jesus will refer to the collective group of these siblings as “the church,” those God has gathered together in particular places as the assembly of people Jesus is building globally. Thus, we ought to view each other who gather together regularly here as brothers and sisters. We are those who claim to be adopted into the family of God as we trust Jesus, the true Son of God.

Jesus begins this discussion of family dynamics by focusing on occasions when one of our siblings sins. The process Jesus lays out here applies to the broad situation in which one church member sees another church member sinning in some way. The person being addressed, therefore, doesn’t have to have been the victim of the other person’s sin.7 Seeing it this way still applies to situations of interpersonal conflict and personal sin, but Jesus is speaking very broadly here, as he was in the speck removal image of Matthew 7.

Thus, step one of Jesus’s process is private reproof, private correction.8 When you see someone who is a part of your church sin in some way—you hear from his own lips that he snuck in extra donation reports on his tax returns, you hear her gossip about your mutual friend, you catch him looking at illicit material on his computer, you watch him succumbing to slavery to alcohol or other addictive substances, your friend goes around boasting about his Awana Citation Award and how many Bible verses he’s memorized, you find out that your friend has been abandoning responsibilities left and right, withdrawing from the world because of depression, or you notice that your fellow church member hasn’t participated in a church gathering in a long while—or, yes, when someone does indeed sin against you directly—your spouse or your parent explodes in anger toward you, you discover that your friend lied to you when he told you he was sick and couldn’t give you a ride home, your older brother made fun of you when you made a mistake—in any of these kinds of situations,9 Jesus says you, the witness or the victim, have the responsibility to approach this person in private and have a private conversation about this apparently sinful behavior. On some occasions, you may also be a witness to someone sinning against someone else; even though you are not the victim, you still have a responsibility to

7 Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 145, who writes, “So any sin you observe is grounds for instituting the discipline—not just those sins by which you are directly victimized. In all such cases, your duty is the same: you must privately confront the offender.”

8 The labels I’m using for the four steps are adapted from J. Carl Laney, “The Biblical Practice of Church Discipline,” Bibliotheca Sacra 143:572 (Oct-Dec 1986): pg. 358.

9 The examples are my own. Cf. the conclusion of MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 143: “What sins are grounds for discipline? Any offense that cannot be safely overlooked without harm to the offender or to the body of Christ.”

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approach the person privately. In that case, it becomes a matter of justice; not only are you acting on your community responsibility, your family responsibility, but also you’re expressing love for the victim.10

Privately, you could say something like, “Earlier, I heard you say that you included some extra donation reports in your tax return. I’m just wondering: how do you square that action with the kind of integrity we’re all called to in the Scriptures? I care about your soul and I want to help you live well, following Jesus faithfully in every area of your life.” Or, if you were sinned against in some way, you could say something like, “What you said or what you did”—and, of course, you’d want to be precise and specific here11—“What you said or what you did really hurt me. I’m struggling with the pain of what you did, and I want to work things out.” The goal, according to Jesus, is to get the other person to listen to you. Now, Jesus isn’t saying he merely wants the other person to acknowledge the sounds coming out of your mouth. Rather, Jesus wants the other person to heed your words, to admit the validity of the observation and repent, turn away from whatever sinful behavior has been observed. This is how wandering sheep are kept within the fold.

This is the ministry of reconciliation, on a horizontal level. Those who have been reconciled with God still sin, and when they sin their reconciliation with God is not damaged or affected. They remain reconciled to God. However, their relationship with other people is damaged, particularly with the individuals they have harmed by their behavior. But, even when the sin is something like cheating on a tax return, there is still a need for reconciliation. Every sin, even when there is no specific personal victim, affects a person’s relationship with the church of which they are a part. Even if the sin remains private and unknown to others, it affects the person in such a way that he or she relates to others in the church differently. Those of us who have struggled with secret sin, like looking at pornography, know this to be true. Even though no one knows what we’ve been looking at, we view the people around us differently. We live in fear of being caught; we view ourselves as hypocrites; we worry that we might be on a path to greater sin, where our lust could get so out of control that we actually acted against women physically, or we find ourselves looking at the women in our church with lust, and we’re ashamed. Thus, the whole church is affected by our withdrawal, by our continued hiding. We remain unknown to others; we keep others at a distance; we eventually withdraw from serving others. Thus, Jesus’s process here is intended to reconcile us to the whole church, to restore our relationship with our family. “You have won your brother” not just for yourself, but for the whole family.

Ideally, the other person would respond by saying something like, “Oh, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I’ll seek to make it right and accept the consequences of my actions.” And, if it was a personal sin, he or she would say something like, “I see that what I said or what I did was really hurtful to you and it was displeasing to God. Please forgive me.” Then, you hug or shake hands

10 Cf. MacArthur, Freeddom of Forgiveness, pgs. 128-129, who writes, “If you observe a serious offense that is a sin against someone other than you, confront the offender. Justice does not permit a Christian to cover a sin against someone else….But when I see that someone else has been sinned against, it is my duty to seek justice…. While we are entitled, and even encouraged, to overlook wrongs committed against us, Scripture everywhere forbids us to overlook wrongs committed against another” (italics original).

11 Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 146, who explains, “The Greek verb in the phrase ‘reprove him’ (or ‘show him his fault’) is a word that conveys the idea of light exposing something that is hidden. It calls for a clear, precise divulging of the brother’s offense.”

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or something, and you go on with normal life, able to interact as though the event had never taken place.

But, Jesus knows that the person might respond differently. Instead of admitting his sin and repenting, he might deny it or seek to justify it or explain it away. Or, in a situation of personal sin, she might say, “Ah, you’re just being sensitive. You know I didn’t mean that. I didn’t do anything wrong.” But you still feel hurt and you still believe that the other person has indeed sinned, and you can’t just overlook it. Either way, the person is not listening. So then, step two must commence: private conference. Jesus says that you should get a friend or two who can mediate. If you witnessed or heard the person sin, this should be the first time you have mentioned the matter to anyone else. Take them with you to talk with the person again. So, y’all go together to talk with the person, and you tell the person again, with love and gentleness, that you believe that they have sinned, and it’s important enough that you believe it’s an issue that’s affecting them negatively or others around them, even though they don’t see it.

In a situation of personal sin, you might say, “Look, I know we already talked about this, but I still feel hurt. This is what you said, this is what you did. It really hurt me, and I don’t think we can move forward until we sort this out.” The other parties you’ve invited say something like, “Friend, we’re here for both of you. We want to listen to what both of you have to say and see if this is perhaps a misunderstanding. We want to help provide some perspective for both of you.” Then, after the person who sinned talks about what happened, and the friends ask some clarifying questions and provide some insight into the situation, ideally the person would respond by saying something like, “Oh, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I now see that what I said or what I did was sinful, was really hurtful to you, and it was displeasing to God. Please forgive me. Thanks, friends, for helping us sort this out.” And then, you hug or shake hands or something, and you go on with normal life, able to interact as though the event had never taken place. You and your one or two witnesses never speak of the matter to anyone again.

Another possible outcome at this point is that your witnesses help you realize that you were mistaken. Or, they might help you realize that this is an issue that you can, out of love, overlook.12 In that case, it’s quite appropriate to apologize and to ask the other person to forgive you. It’s good, in these cases, to reaffirm your love and concern for the person and that you would welcome their own assistance when they see you sinning.

But, of course, Jesus acknowledges that it doesn’t always go so well. The person who sinned might say, “Wait a minute! Why are you ganging up on me like this? I haven’t done anything wrong. Why are you telling my business to other people?” If the person responds with defensiveness, Jesus has this to say in verse 17. Look at it with me, Matthew 18:17: If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Now, as you think about our situation here today, it’s highly disconcerting to think that we might need to stand up here and say, “Joe Grinch said something mean and nasty to me the other day. I confronted him; he denied it. I took a couple of friends to help us reconcile, and he got defensive. Here’s what exactly happened.” Jesus was

12 In many situations, this is, in fact, the best action. Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 123, who writes, “Whenever possible, especially if the offense is petty or unintentional, it is best to forgive unilaterally….If every fault required formal confrontation, the whole of our church life would be spent confronting and resolving conflicts over petty annoyances. So for the sake of peace, to preserve the unity of the Spirit, we are to show tolerance whenever possible” (italics original).

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envisioning the situation his immediate disciples were going to enter into in just a few months. The earliest churches were gatherings much smaller than what we have here today.13 So, is it easier to swallow that Jesus might have you bring the situation into the light with, say, around 25-30 people?

This step of the process, public announcement, requires great wisdom and great sensitivity. Jesus simply gives us these steps, but he doesn’t indicate how long each step of the process should or can last.14 How many times could you go to a person who has sinned privately and refuses to admit it before you get others involved? Once you get others involved, if the person continues to remain stubborn, when do you widen the circle to the whole church family? Each case is unique. Jesus wisely doesn’t lay down any rules here.

Assumed behind all of this is the high value of every individual member of Christ’s body, the church. We might wonder if it is worth it to go through this process; most of us might default into the spirit of the age, which says it’s none of my business and I should leave well-enough alone. Or, we can settle into the mentality that devalues ourselves, whereby we assume that we’re probably mistaken or wrong and therefore shouldn’t say anything. Or, we can be so afraid of the awkwardness of confrontation that we just remain silent, no matter how much it hurts us or others. Listen: Jesus places such a high value on each person in his flock, and Jesus sees sin as such a dangerous threat to the well-being of his sheep, that he insists that we must take sin very seriously and act when it is committed, inflicted, or witnessed. Jesus portrays the sinning “brother as a valuable treasure to be won back.”15 However, we are not judges seeking to condemn; we are not police seeking to catch criminals in the act; and we are not critics seeking to demean. Rather, we are brothers, we are sisters, who care very much about the well-being of our family and of every member of our family. We are our brothers’ keeper—each of us, for all of us.16

If it comes to it, we care enough about the health of our family to report to the whole family that one of our members is in danger. But in danger of what, exactly? What’s at stake in this whole process? We need to talk about the final step, the rest of verse 17, before we can answer that question clearly.

13 Cf. Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew (The NIV Application Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), pg. 619, who surmises, “The way in which this was carried out in the small home churches of the early church may be quite different than today. Such a sin would become immediately evident to the community.”

14 Cf. Laney, “Biblical Practice,” pg. 361, who writes, “In progressing through the stages of church discipline ample time for repentance and change must be allowed at every step. The duration between the various stages depends on the responsiveness of the offender to rebuke. Too much time suggests a lenient attitude. Too little time suggests a punitive approach rather than one striving for repentance. Direction by the Spirit of God is essential in making such decisions (cf. Matt. 18:18–20).”

15 The words of MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 141.16 R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (The New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), pgs. 691-692, who writes, “In a formally constituted church with an appointed leadership it is easy for the ‘ordinary’ disciple to hide behind that authority structure and to leave it all to the official leaders, appealing to Cain’s question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ with the comfortable assumption that the answer must be no. But this passage asserts that the answer is yes. In a community of ‘little ones,’ each must be concerned about and take responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the other.”

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If the person has been gently, lovingly led through the first three steps of this process, and at each stage this person continues to maintain his or her innocence, refusing to listen when the united testimony is that genuine sin has been committed, with specific biblical conviction, even when the whole church family agrees that sin has been committed and has lovingly admonished the person to repent, then Jesus says, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Beware of the refusal to listen!17 The person might respond in outrage, “How dare you smear my name and reputation before this church!” If the person holds onto his defensiveness and continues to refuse to admit that he’s in the wrong, when everybody who’s gotten involved agrees that he’s done wrong—(that’s a key point: the goal in getting others involved is to establish the facts of the matter)18—then, the person is to be treated radically different.

For a recalcitrant, hard-hearted, hard-headed, stubborn refusal to listen, the conclusion to this process of loving confrontation is an unhappy one indeed. You must consider this stubborn person to be like a Gentile and a tax collector. For Jesus’s Jewish disciples, he is using Jewish categories of thought. What’s he saying? Simply put, Jesus is saying you need to consider this person to be an unbeliever, outside the community of faith, outside the family of God.19 At the beginning of the process, you approached this person as a brother or as a sister; you approached them as family; you assumed that they were family because of their profession of faith in Jesus, because of their life of obedience up to this point. But now, their negative participation in this process results in a new assessment and you can no longer assume that; you can no longer affirm their profession of faith. You can no longer see this person as a brother or a sister.

Now, this says nothing certain about the truth about this person. Jesus only tells us how to approach this person, what assumption to make about his or her identity. His or her behavior has called into question their profession of faith, and this sinful behavior as it has been reviewed by the church family who knows this person results in an expulsion, an excommunication, as it is often called. Commentator Stanley Hauerwas writes, “Yet excommunication is an act of love. Excommunication is not to throw someone out of the church, but rather an attempt to help them see that they have become a stumbling block and are, therefore, already out of the church.”20

We have examples of this outcome in the New Testament. In the church of Corinth, where we began our message this morning, Paul had to oversee the church’s expulsion of one of their members. It seems that the church of Corinth has not followed Jesus’s instruction with regard to a man who developed a sexual relationship with his stepmother. The church knew about this, yet, instead of challenging this man and this woman to repent, they seem to have ignored it. 1 Corinthians 5:1 indicates that this was “reported” to Paul. So, apparently somebody—perhaps in

17 Cf. Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word series; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), pg. 516, who writes, “And this tells us that this is not just a text about how to confront but also how to respond to confrontation if true: do not ‘not listen’!” (italics original)

18 Cf. France, Matthew, pg. 691, who writes, “No mention is made of any officers or leadership within the group; the added force of this third level of appeal derives from the greater number of people who agree in disapproving of the offender’s action, not from any defined ‘disciplinary’ structure.”

19 Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pg. 152, who writes, “It means that the person is to be regarded as an unbeliever. The repeated hardening of his heart calls the reality of his faith into question. From henceforth he should be regarded as an evangelistic prospect rather than a brother in the Lord.”

20 Hauerwas, Matthew, pg. 165.

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this man’s own family?—was displeased with the situation but didn’t find the support of the church to help, so they appealed to the apostle Paul.

I wonder how often some individual follower of Jesus has attempted to follow Jesus’s instructions, but, when met with resistance from the person who sinned, took a couple of witnesses, found continued resistance, and then took it to the church leadership only to be ignored or dismissed? Recently, attention has been drawn to churches and other Christian institutions whose leadership failed to act in cases of reported or alleged sexual violence against women. Today, we don’t have recourse to write to an apostle to give authoritative pronouncement on what needs to be done. So, victims are forced to go to secular authorities. May it not be true among us! I hope we never have to face such situations, but, if we do, may we be brave enough to obey Jesus.

Paul was very direct. Since the facts were well-established, Paul simply commands, Let him who has done this be removed from among you. But then he adds an explanation of just what this kind of expulsion, this excommunication really means. 1 Corinthians 5:5: you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Whoa! Let’s take in the seriousness of this for just a moment. I raised the question earlier of just what kind of danger a person, a church member, who refuses to repent of sin is in. The danger is this, and let me personalize this: my long-term refusal to repent when my sin is exposed and confronted puts me in danger of being exposed as a fraud, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a non-believer, a false disciple. My claim to believe in Jesus would be proven false, or at least shown to be doubtful. Refusal to repent reveals one to still be a citizen of Satan’s kingdom. So, when Paul says expelling someone from membership in a local church means turning that person over to Satan “for the destruction of the flesh,” he means kicking a goat out of the sheep pen, where he’s been enjoying certain benefits that were not rightfully his.

You see, being a part of a church, even if you’re not a believer, provides a measure of spiritual protection not available anywhere else. But, being exposed as potentially a wolf in sheep’s clothing or a confused goat who thinks he is a sheep, and being sent outside the fellowship, outside the safety of the sheepfold, will result in an increased vulnerability to Satanic trouble. God will allow Satan to do more damage in your life.21 Think about it: when a nonbeliever lives among believers for a while, the nonbeliever enjoys certain privileges. He gets to hear God’s word preached; he receives loving care by believers; undoubtedly, believers will pray for him. That mere exposure to God’s word, that simple care from others, those positive spiritual influences do truly have an impact in the spiritual realm. We often worry about the damage Satan can do through his servants infiltrating our churches, but I believe Satan is more worried about and threatened by the power of God at work in our churches. Nevertheless, Jesus and Paul agree that someone who has claimed to be a sheep, claimed to be a follower of Jesus, but whose refusal to repent of sin calls into question the truth of that person’s claim poses a threat to the health of

21 Cf. the candid comments of Osborne, Matthew, pg. 689: “I used to say that the final stage, excommunication, needs to be replaced because it no longer works in a culture when the person can simply go down the street to another church. But then I realized that this is indeed Christ’s pattern, and the need is to turn our churches into families, so that it does matter when one is cut off from fellowship. Moreover, Paul’s ‘hand [them] over to Satan’ (1 Cor 5:5; 1 Tim 1:20) is critical alongside vv. 19–20, for they must understand that the church is reflecting God’s decision, and God is going to allow Satan to do his terrible work in their lives so their ‘spirit may be saved on the day fo the Lord’ (1 Cor 5:5).”

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the church such that this person should be excluded from the fellowship of the church. For the man in the Corinthian church who had committed incest, Paul commands the church to remove him, to exclude him, and to disassociate from him, turning him over to Satan.

But this action has a redemptive goal. Continuing in 1 Corinthians 5:5, Paul writes, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh—(presumably being out in Satan’s realm will result, ironically, in Satanic damage to this man’s life and lusts; perhaps his lusts will be allowed to grow and blossom into their terrible self-destruction, whereas in the context of the church family they could’ve been curbed and limited)—so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. So, this person is to be sent out of the church right now so that on Judgment Day he might be saved rather than condemned. God’s goal in this radical action is to wake you up, to move you to repentance, to put you in a position where you will admit your rebellion and run to Jesus as the only Savior for your life.

Likewise in Jesus’s instruction, think of how Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors in Matthew’s Gospel. Two Gentiles were commended for their great faith and received merciful treatment by Jesus. Matthew himself, the author of this Gospel, was summoned out of his tax booth to follow Jesus, and Jesus went to party at his house with other tax collectors. Nevertheless, from a Jewish standpoint, Jesus is saying that the person who has been within the sheepfold, who has sinned in some publicly verifiable way, and yet refuses the loving approaches of other followers of Jesus to help him repent of his specific sin, including the loving approach of the whole church family, then this person must be treated as an outsider, no longer a family member. But that makes this person immediately in the position of needing to hear the gospel, needing to be sought out in love, to be brought back into the fold.22 The love of the church, the love of individual believers, should begin to be expressed in a different way. True followers of Jesus are not perfect or sinless; rather, they admit their sin freely, knowing with total confidence that all of their sins have been totally forgiven! There is no fear for us to confess our sins openly! We know that Jesus took the condemnation that we deserve, so that there is not now nor will there ever be any condemnation from God for those who are in Christ Jesus!

Jesus adds three sentences that have been misunderstood, taken out of context, and misapplied quite often. The words of verses 18-20 are intended to explain why the church has the authority to do what they must do in cases that come to the end of verse 17.23 Simply put, the church’s decision in these matters, the church’s decision to expel one of its members is guided from heaven to earth by Jesus.24 In verse 18, he repeats what he had said to Peter back in Matthew

22 Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pgs. 139, 141, who writes, “The point of reporting a person’s offense to the church is not to get church members to ‘shun’ the sinning individual, but precisely the opposite: to encourage them to pursue that person in love, with the aim of restoration…. The purpose of discipline is to bring people back into a right relationship with God and with the rest of the body. Proper discipline is never administered as retaliation for someone’s sin. Restoration, not retribution, is always the goal.”

23 Cf. O’Donnell, Matthew, pgs. 517-518, who writes, “You see, when a brother or sister is excommunicated, before they leave (and/or sue) the disciplining church and go to another, they will nearly always reply to the disciplining church, ‘You’re not God. Who gives you the right?’ And to that objection our Lord leaves his church verses 18-20, his gentle way of saying to us, ‘Tell that unrepentant brother to shut it.’”

24 Cf. Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), pg. 469, who writes, “Jesus is not giving the church the right to make decisions that will then become binding on God. Such a thought is alien from anything in his teaching. He is saying that as the church is responsive to the guidance of God it will come to the decisions that have already been made in heaven.”

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16:19. In that context, Jesus had given Peter “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” which we argued Peter would use by preaching the gospel. He’d “bind” and “loose” those who heard him preach the gospel based on their response to that gospel message. Thus, we argued that “binding” essentially refers to refusing entry into the kingdom of heaven, based on a person’s rejection of the gospel message, and “loosing” refers to granting entry into the kingdom of heaven, based on their acceptance of the gospel message. Here, Jesus extends this authority to the whole church.25

Whereas in Matthew 16, Jesus focused on the initial entry of someone into the kingdom of heaven, which is connected to their entry into the church on earth, here in Matthew 18 Jesus focuses on the recognition of their status in the church on earth. This connection helps us acknowledge the obvious fact that our “binding and loosing” is not always accurate. Still, in Matthew 16, Jesus promised that Peter (and, by extension, the church) would receive God’s guidance from heaven in the process unfolding on earth. Churches have welcomed into membership individuals who turn out to be unbelievers. Wolves really do rise up in the church; they were always wolves, even though they were welcomed as sheep at some point. Thus, the exercise of the keys, the binding and loosing, is an ongoing responsibility of the church, and Jesus still promises God’s guidance in this process, even as he allows us, for his mysterious purposes, to make mistakes at times.

Look at Matthew 18:18 again, which reads in the NASB: Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Jesus said this exact same thing to Peter back in Matthew 16:19. There, we learned that we can expect and depend on God’s guidance when we welcome a person who professes faith in Christ into the fellowship and membership of our church, based on their acceptance of the gospel message. However, when that same person goes through the process of Matthew 18 and refuses to repent of sin, we can expect and depend on God’s guidance if we expel that person from our fellowship, with the hope, again, that this drastic, dramatic, and desperate act will result in the person’s later repentance and return into our fellowship.

Jesus actually elaborates on what this guidance looks like in verses 19-20. These verses are often isolated and misapplied generally to prayer. But Jesus emphatically connects these statements with what he has just been saying: Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst. These verses are often quoted in isolation in prayer meetings, or perhaps just verse 20. The reference to “two of you” in verse 19 and the reference to “two or three” in verse 20 both refer back to the “two or three witnesses” of verse 16. Thus, Jesus is commenting specifically on this process. The generality of “anything that they may ask” is limited by the context.26 Jesus has assumed throughout the process that those involved in confronting a person’s sin will be praying, asking

25 Cf. Wilkins, Matthew, pg. 620, who writes, “This saying is virtually identical to the pronouncement made of Peter’s role in the foundation of the church…, except with the striking difference that here the verbs are plural, indicating that Peter’s foundational authority is extended to the entire community of disciples.”

26 So argues Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), pg. 455: “The ‘two’ or ‘three’ gathered for prayer in 18:19-20 must be the ‘two or three’ witnesses of 18:16; the ‘matter’ (cf. the similar forensic use of the general term in 1 Cor 6:1) concerning which they agree is prayer for the offender. Whereas in Deuteronomy 17:6-7 the two or three witnesses were to be the first to cast stones, here they are to be the first to pray.”

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for guidance, illumination to see the truth of what has happened, asking for the Holy Spirit to soften the heart of the one who has sinned so that he’ll confess, repent, and be reconciled to his family.

So, we should avoid thinking of these words as some kind of “blank check” for prayer. Moreover, the promise of verse 20 doesn’t have to do with Jesus being somehow “more present” with a couple of believers when they pray. Jesus is present in and with every individual believer; he cannot be “more present” in one situation than he is in another. And there is no promise in Scripture that the more people pray the more likely God is to answer in a particular way. Some, I think, have taken this verse as though it said that very thing.27

It is a remarkable statement that Jesus makes, though. He’s essentially claiming to be God here, since he’s claiming to be wherever his followers are. But he is specifically promising his direct involvement in this particular situation.28 As the circle of confrontation widens, believers asked to be involved in confronting a person who has sinned shouldn’t be afraid or anxious or resistant to help out. Jesus is saying that wherever two or three are gathered together in his name to deal with an issue of sin in the community, sin in the church, Jesus will be there to help at every step of the way.29 He didn’t just give us commandments and then leave and wish us well in our obeying. He promised to be with us to help us obey, even this command in this difficult situation.

But there is a tinge of warning in this statement as well. For the one who sins, for the one who has refused to listen to the one who first confronted him about his sin, for the one who refused to listen to the pleading of friends, for the one who has refused to listen to the church at large, you may be found to be rejecting the loving approach of Jesus and his Father.30

I’d like to close by quoting a passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s little book, Life Together. Some of you read this over the summer, so perhaps it will be familiar:

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light.… [But] In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought to the light.… Since the confession of sin is made

27 David L. Turner, “The Gospel of Matthew,” in Matthew and Mark (edited by Philip H. Comfort; Cornerstone Biblical Commentary 11; Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2005), pg. 241, who writes, “The flippant way in which 18:19 is often cited to assure small meetings of Christians that God is with them is disturbing because it twists a solemn passage into a cliche. No doubt God is present with any legitimate meeting of his people, whatever its size, and there is no need to mishandle Scripture to prove it. Taking this solemn passage out of context cheapens it and profanes the sacred duty of the church to maintain the harmony of its interpersonal relationships.”

28 Cf. MacArthur, Freedom of Forgiveness, pgs. 156-157, who writes, “But in this context the ‘two or three’ refers back to the ‘two or three witnesses’ of verse 16. And the verse speaks not merely of Christ’s presence, but of His participation in the discipline process. He joins in the discipline carried out by the church, a fearsome reality for the individual who refuses to repent, but a rich comfort to those who must administer the discipline.”

29 Cf. Wilkins, Matthew, pg. 621, who writes, “Jesus himself assumes the place of the divine presence among his disciples, guaranteeing that when his followers reach a consensus as they ask in prayer for guidance in matters of discipline, his Father in heaven will guide them as they carry it out.”

30 Cf. Turner, “Matthew,” pg. 241, who writes, “Successively rejecting the overtures of a brother, two or three witnesses, and the church is tantamount to rejecting Jesus and the Father.”

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in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed for he has cast off his sin from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Christ.31

31 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: HarperCollins, 1954), pgs. 112-113.

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