Matthew 18:15-35--Forgive Your Brother

​Matthew 18:15-35 English Standard Version (ESV)
LISTEN:  https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Matt.18.15-Matt.18.35
If Your Brother Sins Against You
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. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. 25 And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26 So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32 Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

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This group of passages that we've been going through that could be called "Jesus' Final Teachings to His Disciples" almost seem like another Sermon on the Mount--A reminder that they are being called out to be holy and separate from the ways of the world and the religious system that they are familiar with.  For instance, we live in a world not that different today where if someone does something wrong to us, we want that person to figure it out on the their own and come begging for forgiveness before we'll even think about offering it.  When we do offer forgiveness, we really don't because we often like to keep that thing in our back pocket so that we can pull it out whenever we need to---"Remember back when you did such and such."  The issue is never really dealt with because we are unwilling to let it go.

Jesus says that as soon as you feel offended by your brother on the grounds of something that you know is sin (if it's not sin, get over yourself), then you should immediately approach your brother privately and in confidence to let him know the problem that you see and address it from a biblical perspective so that any disagreement that your brother has is not with you, but with God, His Word, and His authority to name and judge sin.  If the brother repents, then that's wonderful--the issue is concluded, and no one needs to be the wiser and you can rejoice over His return to a restored relationship with God and his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, as sin often breaks these relationships even if not done so intentionally.

If the brother does not repent, meaning he chooses to continue to live in sin, then Jesus says that we are to take a couple of witnesses with us.  While you may take any Christian brothers or sisters in Christ as witnesses, most local churches have  system set up where there is someone responsible to help at this next-level.  This makes it easier to move to the next step if needed.  The purpose of the witnesses is to make sure that everything said can be verified and to show the person in sin the severity of the issue and that it's not something that is being taken lightly.  It does not appear from what I see here or other places where church discipline is taught that the idea is to gang up on the person living in sin and brow-beat them into submission.  However, if the witnesses do need to help you with reinforcing Scripture it is probably best if they are knowledgeable enough to do so.  There may be a lot of diversionary tactics that the person living in sin tries to use in such conversations to change topics or deflect and the witnesses can help keep things on track and from devolving into personal attacks by either side.  At the end of the day, the goal is the same as when you first went, repentance, but this time if they do not repent, you have to let them know, "I can't be quiet about this.  The next step is that we're going to have to take this to the leaders of our local church so they can meet with you and if you continue to live in sin and display more love for your sin than you do for God and His Word, then the church may have to terminate it's fellowship with you and revoke your membership (or any other phrase your local church uses to talk about excommunication).

The last step is usually more of a formality than anything else from what I've seen.  Very few times should it get to the level of taking it to the church (either by way of taking it in front of the congregation or taking it it to your pastor or other elders, depending on your local church's system of governance).  At this point there is still some work to be done in that there will be a larger group of people that will need to meet with the person to plead with him either as individuals or as small groups with the same purposes as before, only this time the sin is no longer against you but against the entire Body of Christ because the brother in sin has chosen that sin over fellowship with the Body and is putting everyone else in danger (like a diseased part of the body that doesn't want to be made well and the infection or disease could spread).  For the good of the entire Body if this brother living in sin does not repent, he must be cut off from the Body through a process called excommunication.  This may look different in different churches.  Whatever it looks like and whatever the process is, make sure your church has a process and you know about it.

I'll pause to say here that there seems to be an underlying assumption by Jesus here that all the members of a local community will all go to the same church and will be under the authority of the same group of elders (like the model of the synagogues used by the Jews).  With the number of denominations and various churches from the same denomination that we have in some communities and people that can now easily choose to travel to churches outside of their communities, it makes this a little more difficult because the sinner might say, "I'll just go somewhere else where people will leave me alone."  Our church will always ask for a letter of transfer of membership when people come from another church to make sure that member was in good standing and not excommunicated from their previous congregation.  However, I don't think church membership was really what Jesus was getting at here as He tells a parable to drive the key point of His teaching home.

The point all along is that we should be quick to forgive and to forgive completely because we are all in need of this type of forgiveness from God.  Jesus tells a parable and it comes with probably one of the hardest verses in the entire Bible for us (something that He also taught in the Sermon on the Mount, but He's going to repeat it now to make sure that they remember it before He goes to the cross). Not only should we forgive as we want to be forgiven, but God actually will forgive us as we forgive others.  "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

If we have been truly transformed by the gospel we should have no choice but to forgive others--unforgiveness is an act of the flesh, not an act of the Spirit, and those who live lives of  keeping records of wrongs will in the end be judged by their actions when their name is not found in the Lambs Book of Life and the book containing the record of all of their deeds will be opened and they will be judged in the same way they have judged others.  However, those of us who are in Christ should forgive completely, even if it means being taken advantage of because that is the kind of forgiveness that Christ has offered us and the way that we want to be judged.  Our names will be found in the Lambs Book of Life and the book containing the list of our works will never be opened--in fact it is not even clear that our names will be looked for in the Lamb's Book of Life because Jesus Himself will be there to say "That one belongs to Me."

​Let's go back to the parable for those that are unfamiliar with it.  The king (who is representing God in this story) is about to settle accounts with all of His servants.  There is a servant who owes such an insurmountable debt that it would be fair to call it "infinite"--that is the idea Jesus is trying to get across here.  There is no amount of time or scheming that could ever make this servant's ledger come into balance.  His only chance is to beg for the debt to be forgiven, but notice this man doesn't even do that.  He begs for a little more time.  He knows that's not true, and the king (remember that's God) offers this man complete cancellation of his debt (that's the death of Jesus on the cross).  The man leaves that scene being offered complete and total forgiveness but instead chooses to go after one of his fellow servants for a minor debt of approximately 100 day's wages--still a notable debt but not insurmountable and definitely nothing in comparison to the man's own debt that was just forgiven.  Any one sin that someone commits against us (or even several sins) is nothing compared to the nearly infinite amount of sins that we each commit against a holy and righteous God.

The first man takes the second servant and chokes him and demands repayment (this is vengeance), and the second servant pleads for mercy with the exact same words used by the first servant to the king--just give me a little more time and I will repay.  Unfortunately, time is not the answer in either case, I hope we see this.  Both men missed the mark by not immediately asking for forgiveness, as that is the only way to deal with sin issues.  The other servants were so upset by the way that the first servant treated the second servant that they reported it to the king.  The king called the first servant back and called him wicked because he did not show forgiveness like he had been shown and the forgiveness that had been offered to him was withdrawn and the man was ordered to be turned over to the torturers until his infinite debt could be paid off (this is a picture of the torment that the unsaved will experience in hell and the lake of fire).  Do not let anyone lie to you and tell you that hell is not eternal.  Any sin against an infinitely good God produces and infinite amount of debt and the only punishment suitable for such a debt is an eternity of separation from God experiencing the pain and torture that are the wages of sin that were originally prepared only for the devil and his angels who rebelled against God, but that we freely choose to participate in when we rebel against God.

So we have a teaching about how serious sin is in the Church and how we need to deal with it before it becomes an issue that affects the whole body, and we have a parable that tells us that we must forgive each other in our personal relationships because God has forgiven us--and that if we won't forgive others we should not expect God to forgive us.  I don't think I can sugar-coat that one to make it any easier to swallow.  If you are failing to deal with sin seriously in your local church, you need to fix that and if you are holding grudges against people in your personal relationships, you need to fix that too.  Jesus knew this was one of the last things He was going to get to teach His disciples and it goes right along with the fact they've just been arguing about who was the most important and would be first--they had it all wrong and it was all bout who could be humble and forgiving like Jesus was.  He would show them this at the Last Supper when He washed their feet.  We'll be getting there soon, but look for the common thread throughout a lot of these final teachings and some of the frustration that Jesus feels knowing that He doesn't have much time with them and that they still don't get it.