Binding Together
“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
“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” — Matthew 9:10-11
In my Bible, Matthew 18:15-20 is titled “Dealing With Sin in the Church.” While I have heard church leaders teach and preach on these Scriptures, I cannot remember any time that the passage was ever taught in its entirety. Verses 15-17 were popular for messages that justified pushing the unrepentant sinner out of the church community. Verse 18 was rarely talked about. And verses 19-20 were apparently there for the purpose of encouraging us to pray together and to have more faith that our prayers would be answered.
I have unfortunately been on the receiving end of the treatment for sinners discussed in verses 15-17. I have been party to many just-between-the-two-of-us conversations with a church leader, who told me all about my pride and lack of love for God and other people, my inability to work well with others, and my desire to destroy the church, just to name a few. And when I finally stood up for myself, alerting the other person to the fact that these words were often unfair and deeply hurtful, I ended up in a meeting with a third party. The church leader brought someone along, just as Scripture instructed. This other person sat (on the leader’s side of the table) through an ugly, confrontational hour and a half—witness to all that was said and done. Adherence to Scripture sort of broke down at that point because I was told that what had passed in the meeting should be kept confidential, that to speak about any of it would be inappropriate and potentially cause harm to the church.
My heart breaks every time I remember that meeting, with all of the pain and confusion it caused me. There are still days when my body experiences a fight or flight response just from being in the room where the meeting occurred. I’m sure I would be told it’s yet another personal flaw that I have allowed a mere 90 minutes of my life to affect me so deeply. But it is this pivotal moment along which my life is divided—There is the before-the-terrible-meeting me and then everything since.
Maybe it is because of having personally experienced the traditional interpretation of “dealing with sin in the church,” that I cannot help but read Matthew 18:15-17 in a different way. Filtering these words of Jesus through His actions, I can’t help but come to a different conclusion about them. After rebuking Peter for being a stumbling block to Him, Jesus takes him along for the Transfiguration. Knowing Judas has sold Him out to His death, Jesus kneels down and washes his betrayer’s feet. And in the process of being crucified, Jesus forgives the Roman soldiers that are nailing Him to the cross.
Watching Jesus actively move toward people as they sin against Him, I simply cannot believe that Jesus intends for us to use His words to justify bullying and shunning people in our churches. It seems to make a lot more sense that verses 15-17 are about restoring relationships. The one-on-one conversation is for the purpose of moving toward the other person. Involving witnesses is a safe guard to keep both parties honest. And there is something inherently suspicious about an interaction we feel like we need to keep secret from the rest of the church.
And then there’s verse 17: “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.” Christians have used these words as permission for all sorts of ugly behavior, completely ignoring the example that Jesus set for us with Matthew—the author of this particular gospel account—who was once a tax collector himself. Jesus invited Matthew to become a disciple. Jesus sat down to eat with him and his ‘sinner’ friends. This seems like the definition of church, if ever there was one.
Which leads to a final thought, that I hardly know what to do with. It dawned on me that at the time that Jesus would have been saying these words, the ‘church’ didn’t yet exist. Jesus and His disciples were Jews. They attended synagogue and memorized the Torah. I checked the verse in its original Greek and found out that the word being used is ekklesia. This is the first time the word shows up in the Bible, and it won’t be used again until after Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension. It is hard to believe that Jesus would introduce the idea of His church in the context of instructions about when it is okay to ostracize people from it.
Perhaps if we read Matthew 18:15-20 in its entirety, we will come to a different conclusion about what it is really saying. Like Jesus, we will continue to move toward other people, knowing that He is in our midst when we do.
