Not long ago, I was the victim of condemnation. I did not know it at the time, but thought that the person was reproving me, or at least, I tried to accept what he gave me as reproof. I had some sense that what he was doing was more like the accusation of Satan than the conviction of the Holy Spirit, but it took me a while to understand why.
He used Matthew 18:15 as his club. He condemned me and them forbade me from talking about it with anyone else since we were in the "Matthew 18 process." It sounded more like what a child abuser says to a child ("Don't tell anyone or I'll. . . ") than what the scripture might mean there. But I felt bound by his interpretation to some degree.
Fortunately, I did not stay under his condemnation long. It followed me around for months afterward, though. I had accepted his condemnation because I myself condemned others in the same way. How could I deal with it? My gut-level response was that I decided that I did not like Matthew 18 much because of how people seemed to use it to isolate and abuse people more than bring them to repentance.
Just speaking about the word used in Matthew 18:15 for "show him his fault" reveals some important things. It is also used in John 3:20, "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." So part of me hates to be exposed because I do not like the light of God showing my deeds to be evil. I want to continue to think of myself as good and right without God. This is the fault I need exposed by fellow disciples. They need to show me how I am avoiding God's light and justifying myself instead.
Also it's used in John 16:8 with regard to the Holy Spirit, "When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt [or expose the guilt of the world.]" One of the very actions of the Holy Spirit is this exposure of my sin to the light of God. Anyone who has experienced the Spirit's work in this area can attest to the great gravity of conviction mixed with gentleness. Anyone who comes to expose sin in my life will be recognized as the Spirit convicting or the devil condemning.
But Matthew 18 provides practical advice about this whole process of becoming one of the greatest ones in the kingdom of heaven, one who exposes sin by his very presence, one who gently, but powerfully exposes sin for what it is, like the Holy Spirit. This ability is one of the signs of greatness in God's kingdom, according to Jesus.
Such greatness begins with becoming like little children (v.3). Humility is the sign of greatness in the kingdom. In fact, Jesus says that I cannot even enter the kingdom without this kind of humility. Children must look to others to care for them and therefore humility is a real part of their life, whether they accept it or not. Coming into the kingdom of the heavens requires this sort of lowliness: I need something I cannot do for myself. Traveling this path of lowliness can take me into the very heart of greatness, a complete dependence on God.
The sign of such humility is the welcome of other children as Jesus himself welcomes them (v.5). This is not surprising. I welcome those I like and prefer. I invite them into my home and my life. I desire to make them stay through kindness and friendliness. I long to be near them as they long to be near Jesus.
The contrast is surprising to me. Jesus doesn't contrast welcoming with just not welcoming, indifference, or even unfriendliness. He contrasts welcoming with causing one the the little ones to stumble. Apparently this accounts for the seriousness with which Paul took Peter's drawing away and separating himself from Gentile believers in Galatia (Gal. 2), as well as his concern for the Corinthian believers in their practice of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11). Not welcoming other children of God causes them to stumble.
This makes sense. Abuse and neglect are close cousins. Hatred and indifference usually come together. Exclusion is a powerful force that can bend a person's will to the point of breaking. I see how cautious I need to be in my use of such exclusion. By excluding other people I hurt them and do damage to myself, like death by drowning. Quite likely, his illustration means that this attitude is like drowning and not being able to pull myself out - sure death.
Such sin is the very opposite of the gospel, which welcomes everyone into the kingdom of heaven. So when my welcome fades, so does my connection with the life that is in Christ, and I slowly sink into the depths with my life-breath being pulled out of me by my own resistance to loving and welcoming others.
Jesus continues by describing the things that keep me from welcoming other people into the kingdom. I cause other people to sin and stop welcoming them when:
- I refuse to deal effectively and decisively with my own sins (vv. 7-9).
- I look down on people with contempt (v. 10).
- I lose compassion for those who are lost and have wandered away (vv.12-14).
Much can be said about each of these. I believe they may also be progressive. First, I must deal decisively with my own sins so that I do not look down on others with contempt so that I might have the same concern that God has for them. This certainly matches the same progression in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5). Not surprising.
Only after this welcoming attitude can be maintained am I ready to follow the instructions of how I should expose another's sin (vv. 15-17). Only with the humility described above that deals with its own sin, is free from insult and contempt, and has great compassion for those who have lost their way, can one hope to aspire to the greatness of exposing another's sins. Without this, I become like the Pharisees who "tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themslves are not willing to lift a finger to help them." (Mt. 23:4) Such "good" becomes evil.
Even then, Jesus expresses caution with the approach to such a work of compassion. Where the light of my life has not affected a person to see their need to repent, I am called to go a step farther by asking them to leave their sin and repent. The light of my life is shown in humility expressed through my decisive dealings with my own sin, my lack of contempt toward other sinners, and my apparent love for those who have lost their way to God. When this light does not expose the sin to another person, I think Jesus is calling me to ask them to change.
Such asking is confined to a one-on-one interaction with the person usually. (There are exceptions to this.) The point is illustrative, not prescriptive. Jesus is bringing an example of how such a humble person would interact with another person who has sinned. This is akin to "if someone has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled to him." This is to say, a humble person as described above will be the kind of person who will have the respect and kindness to deal with sinners privately first, and only gradually bringing others in so that repentance can be reached. They will also understand the gravity of sin and its consequences when it is allowed to continue unchecked, so will even be willing to exercise exclusion to bring about repentance, knowing the dangers involved in that step.
Without humility, repentance is not the goal, but a chance to prove myself to be in the right or better than someone else. Anger and contempt will always be present. I will be blind to my own sins. The only joy I will find is the joy of "lording it over" someone else rather than the joy of the Father, who is "happier about that one sheep than the ninety-nine that did not wander off." Such an exposure will rarely bring about the fights and factions I find with so many people and myself because I am only willing to deal with people when I am "fed up" with them rather than because I dearly love them.
Jesus concludes with a great promise and then a great warning. The great promise is the power of such a work in another person's life. By the power of the Spirit, such a humble approach to another person's sin can restrict sin from polluting other lives (bind them) or can free the person from their bondage to that sin (loosing them). The power of sin in a person's life and its consequent effects on the communities they are in is considerable. It is impossible to overcome apart from such humility and agreement with the welcoming life of Jesus. But when two people come to agree about the nature of sin in light of Jesus and his example and death and resurrection, then even sin can be forgiven and overcome.
The unblushing promise of Jesus is that God will do anything for people who are gathered "in Jesus name" that is, with the goal of becoming like Jesus. This promise comes on the heels of this work of exposure of sin because the power of the agreement about sin and its consequences. Where there is real agreement about sin and a real fight to deal with it, Jesus is present and anything is possible. People cannot really gather "in Jesus' name" if they have no intention of becoming like Jesus nor of dealing with their sins in a decisive way.
This promise is what brings humility and what drives me to begin the journey at all. Without the longing to have Jesus present and the desire for unity in the agreement to deal with sin, such a work is impossible and only serves as an effort to "keep the peace" rather than bring myself and others into true unity and the true power of God present to heal me and destroy my and others' sins. This teaching of Jesus brings the unity of Christ's presence and God's power, not the unity of ecumenical "oneness" or organizational efficiency. With this true unity, ecumenical and organizational problems would fade into the background and be relatively easy to deal with.
The great warning is the scope and nature of the work. Peter says, "Great! So if I have this humility and expose sin as you suggest, I will need to do it, what, seven times maybe? After that surely I can safely exclude all the people who don't see things my way." Jesus answers Peter according to the hardness his statement reveals. "No, Peter, with the hardness and lack of humility you showed in that statement, I would say you need to practice this 490 times before you start to get the hang of it."
The story that follows is one about the hardness of the forgiver, not the forgivee. The man who refuses to forgive the fellow servant is the same one who is supposed to be exposing sin humbly, but instead has decided to choke the other until he "pays up." So Jesus spends most of his time talking about how we are to forgive and expose sin rather than how we are to be forgiven. This final conclusion nails it on the head. The problem that Jesus addresses with Peter's statement is not how sinful the person is who keeps wronging Peter (possibly a fellow disciple or a family member?), but his own lack of humility and inability to forgive that other person. Peter inadvertently once again becomes Jesus "case in point."
For me the picture of choking someone yelling, "Pay back what you owe me!" is a perfect picture of the non-welcoming part of me that really perpetuates sin in others rather than exposing them to the light of Jesus' love and goodness so easily seen in his forgiveness of my own great sin. I can either welcome the fellow children of the kingdom into the party for the prodigals, or stand outside ready to choke anyone who slights me or my sense of "righteousness."
So, for the ones who accuse rather than convict, I need to deepen my humility by depending on God's opinion of me rather than other's approval. As I do this, I will find that other peoples' sins against me and around me will not always (or even usually) perpetuate stumbling sins in my life. I will find that whether or not people look down on me with contempt, I will find safety in the knowledge that I stand before God himself as my Judge and Redeemer, not them. I will find that God delights in bringing me back from my wandering when I stray more than when I "get it right" not because he wants me to wander, but because he came to save the lost, not pat the "righteous" on the back. Truly righteous people know that God delights in salvation and the ninety-nine will rejoice with him. Their joy will be not from being one of the "ninety-nine," but in sharing the joy of the loving shepherd who goes seeking those who are lost.
When I am accused and I am humble, I am safe in God's hands. When I am convicted and I am humble, I am safe in God's hands as well. But those who convict reach out to save me and pull me out of my sin like God does rather than reaching out to choke me and cut me off from my life-breath from God, even as they themselves are drowning from their own millstones. Perhaps exclusion is the only possibility with such people right now. I find that much of the time, as I seek the light, those who oppose me and my work exclude themselves once they find they cannot divert me from my desire to follow Jesus.
This humility born in being a child in the Kingdom then saves me from becoming an accuser or becoming the victim of such accusers. The dependence on God through following Jesus not only saves me from these dangerous errors, but promises a life of overcoming sin together with other followers of Jesus with his immediate presence nearby. Unity and oneness as Jesus prayed for, then, is not merely an ideal or future hope, but something that Jesus built into discipleship. As I deal seriously with my sin by following Jesus in a moment-by-moment fashion, I will find others who want the same thing and join with me even as I find people who will oppose such a journey together in the name of Jesus, that is, a journey with the goal of being like Jesus in every way.
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