Dealing with personal sin in a community

Sin, a lot of us really don’t take it seri­ously, and when we do, we have very lit­tle idea with what to do about it, espe­cially when it con­cerns the sin of another (you’ll quickly hear, “who am I to judge!”). What started out as a post on resolv­ing con­flicts has turned into a post on deal­ing with the pres­ence of sin in the church, in the life of a believer. Scrip­ture is clear, and as such, I think very offen­sive to quite a few. This is just some­thing of a brief look how to deal with sin, and we’ll do so by focus­ing on Matthew 18:15–19.

How to deal with sin: Matthew 18:15–19

15“If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in pri­vate; if he lis­tens to you, you have won your brother.“
16“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.“
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 have been bound in heaven; and what­ever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.“
19“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.”

I don’t think there’s any­thing here that requires a mas­sive amount of expla­na­tion, but a few points of interest.

15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in pri­vate; if he lis­tens to you, you have won your brother.”

An inter­est­ing thing to notice is the begin­ning of v.15, “If your brother sins…” You’ll notice that it doesn’t say “if your brother sins against you,” but sim­ply, “if your brother sins”.  As Philip Schaff says of this, “Our Lord warns us not to neglect one another’s sins, not by search­ing out what to find fault with, but by look­ing out for what to amend”. This is not some­thing to be pointed out in anger, but with gen­tle­ness, as we’re com­manded in 1 Tim­o­thy 5:1–2, “Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as broth­ers, older women as moth­ers, and younger women as sis­ters, with absolute purity.” In other words, we are to show the love of Christ even in cor­rec­tion and reproach, and it is unac­cept­able to do oth­er­wise (fur­ther guide­lines can be found in Leviti­cus 19:16–18).

Sin is not a pri­vate mat­ter — though in approach­ing another about sin, it is ini­tially a pri­vate meet­ing — it is a com­mu­nity mat­ter. The idea that one has “pri­vate sins” is a con­struct of our indi­vid­u­al­is­tic, West­ern soci­ety. This is plainly untrue. As we are all the body of Christ, if there is sin in some mem­ber of us, we are all affected (infected?). And, as the text con­tin­ues, if our brother lis­tens, we have “won [a]’ brother” in two ways: we have restored that broth­ers rela­tion­ship with us (and the church body), and with God.

16“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 for some rea­son, how­ever, our brother does not lis­ten to us, we are com­manded (you’ll notice that we aren’t asked) to bring “one or two more” to hear a recount­ing of the story. This is, more or less, sim­ply a step to estab­lish a report­ing of the facts, though res­o­lu­tion is to be desired. This is nec­es­sary because of v. 17:

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.”

So now not only has our brother refused to lis­ten to pri­vate coun­sel, he has refused to lis­ten to oth­ers — pre­sum­ably objec­tive observers — to look into the sit­u­a­tion. And, as a result, the offense (sin) must be dealt with in pub­lic (church here means “assem­bly”). It should be noted, how­ever, that this “pub­lic hear­ing” is done by those who are spir­i­tu­ally mature, not just “any­body” (as per Gala­tians 6:1, “Brethren, even if any­one is caught in any tres­pass, you who are spir­i­tual, restore such a one in a spirit of gen­tle­ness; each one look­ing to your­self, so that you too will not be tempted.”).If our brother still doesn’t lis­ten? Then we are to con­sider him as a “Gen­tile and a tax col­lec­tor,” in other words, we’re not to asso­ciate with them any longer. Fur­ther, we’re too con­tinue to love them and call them to rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with God.

This teach­ing is dif­fi­cult for many, for it ends with expul­sion from the church. But, as Scrip­ture says, if you sin, deal with it. If you don’t, deal with it. If you still refuse to, you must deal with it or be ejected from the com­mu­nity of believers.

Ouch.