Matthew 18:15-20 Just Between You And Me
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Amen I tell you again: If two of you on earth agree to ask for anything, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. In fact where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.”
Mistakes in life are unavoidable. It’s not that any one particular blunder was impossible to avoid, but eventually, inevitably, mistakes will be made. Every once in a while, someone will point out a typo in one of my sermons. Or I might find a mistake in something I said afterwards and wonder if anybody noticed. (And just to keep those of you who read my sermon paying attention, I left one mistake somewhere in this sermon). It can be embarrassing, but it happens. Even our Bibles, with all the care and proofreading that goes into them, have typos. The first edition of our new EHV Bibles instructed us to “forgive one other,” instead of “one another.” Just one other? Even Peter figured he ought to be willing to forgive at least seven others (or was it one other, seven times?).
One of the early King James Bible printings was famous for making a mistake in the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” It took a year for anybody to notice, and the printer ended up in prison. It could be just an innocent mistake, but the same Bible had another embarrassing typo that led people to think it was deliberate—maybe sabotage by a disgruntled typesetter. (A passage in Deuteronomy told us that “the Lord hath shewed us his glory and his greatasse,” instead of ‘greatnesse’).
When I make a mistake, I kind of hope it’s not going to be published for the whole world to see. If the President, or anybody running for the office, makes a mistake, that’s the one line in their speech that’s going to get published and replayed on the news over and over.
When it’s not just a mistake, when I sin, I really hope no one sees it. Embarrassment, shame, or maybe stubbornness and the way I’ve convinced myself I had a good excuse—all make it hard to take correction. If I sin, I really don’t want anyone to say anything. Which seems to make this the exception to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. SinceI wouldn’t want others pointing out my sins, the rule says I shouldn’t point out theirs? No. Sometimes I have to point out sin. When I point out my neighbor’s sin, I’m not just correcting a mistake, I’m letting him know how his actions are hurting other people, and I’m warning him against something that may be poisoning his own heart and soul.
The truth is, telling someone that what he has done or is doing is sinful is not really an exception to the Golden Rule. We just have to clarify that “Doing unto others as you would have others do unto you,” doesn’t mean only doing things you’d gladly have done to you, things that would make you happy, but also the things you hope someone would do for you because it’s for your good, even when you don’t like it. I don’t want people pointing out my sins. I’m not happy about people pointing out my sins. But it is still what I would have others do for me and unto me. It’s what I need to do unto others, just as I still need others to do unto me. It’s still the Golden Rule.
But let’s keep this just between you and me. When one of us sins, it’s just between you and me, for me to tell you, or you to tell me. It’s not fodder for gossip or a blooper to make everybody laugh. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin, just between the two of you.” Jesus gives us step by step instructions on how to handle sin, a kind of recipe for peace and harmony in the family of believers, a recipe for building this family up in its commitment to each other and to its Lord, step by step. It’s a pretty simple recipe really, just four ingredients, four steps, and most of the time, hopefully, it will only take one. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin, just between the two of you.” If he repents, the recipe is done. That’s as far as it goes. “You have regained your brother.”
Actually, I’m looking at this list and thinking that Jesus may have skipped a step. You might think the extra step is obvious and doesn’t need mentioning. Like a recipe that starts by saying beat two eggs. First you’re probably going to want to crack the eggs and throw away the eggshells. Skip that step, and the recipe will be a real mess. But that part should be obvious. So what did Jesus skip? Step one: Forgive your brother. If you skip right past the forgiving attitude and jump straight into pointing out his sin, while you’re still angry—not to turn him away from his sin, but to condemn him for his sin—you’re not going to win him over.
But some people are going to say at this point, “Wait a minute, isn’t that the last step?” Jesus didn’t skip it; he himself mentions it right at the end. After step four he said, “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” He’s talking about setting people free, free from guilt, free from condemnation. When you finally set him free from sin, heaven itself will be open to him. That’s forgiveness. The last step.
In this recipe, forgiveness is both the first and the last step. To understand, we need to consider God’s own forgiveness of sinners. You have sinned. I can say that with utter confidence without knowing what you’ve done. We’ve all sinned. Just as mistakes are inevitable, sin is inevitable and unavoidable for imperfect souls wrapped in sinful flesh like us. That doesn’t excuse the sin.
Your sin has separated you from God, and in order to have peace with our heavenly Father, there must be forgiveness. So what did God do? Step one: He sent his Son to die for our sins. Jesus Christ paid for all of our sins on the cross. And when Jesus died, God forgave you. He didn’t just forgive “one other;” he forgave everyone, the whole world.
He forgave you. He didn’t wait for you to say I’m sorry. He didn’t even wait for you to sin. He forgave you. To be finally and fully at peace with God we will still need repentance, we still need to turn in faith to our Savior for forgiveness. But it’s not because God is still angry at us and wants to punish us and is holding our sins against us, waiting impatiently until we take step one ourselves and repent first. While we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us. Step one is his redemption.
Pastors talk about these concepts as objective and subjective justification. A couple big words, but simple, important concepts. First, objective justification: Christ died for you. Your sins have been paid for. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them.” Paul said that in First Corinthians.
But then Paul goes on to say in the very next verse, “Be reconciled to God.” And that’s subjective justification. When one individual sinner turns to God for forgiveness, for peace, what God did for everyone is received by one. So we see there is God’s attitude of forgiveness toward the entire world, and there is you and me finding peace through faith, confessing, “I have sinned against God,” and hearing the comforting message, “You are forgiven.”
It’s the same way when your brother sins against you. We asked, “How can that be step one? How can I forgive someone who’s not sorry yet?” The first forgiveness must be within your own heart. Not for his sake, but for your own. Holding on to anger and bitterness, seeking revenge, will poison your own soul if you don’t forgive. Forgiveness means saying, “I don’t hate you. I don’t desire your death or your punishment. I won’t hold your sins against you. I am at peace with you. And I want you to be at peace with me.” We heard that in our Old Testament lesson today. Even as Israel remained obstinate and unrepentant, upset about the consequences of their sins but not ready to turn back to God, God declared, “I take no delight in the death of the wicked. You might not be sorry for sinning, yet, but I point out your sins with sorrow, to rescue, not to condemn.”
If you have to repent first and say you’re sorry before I can forgive you, then your sin has the power to hold my heart hostage. Your sin continues to poison me and keep me from knowing peace. I need to forgive, as God did, first in my own heart, and then seek mutual peace by seeking your repentance, so that I can also share that forgiveness with you.
This text comes right after Jesus just got finished telling the parable about the man with a hundred sheep, and one was lost. Seeking the one lost sheep in love, bringing him back to the fold, is what these verses are all about. And the text comes right before Peter asked Jesus, “How many times shall I forgive my brother? Seven? That’s a lot, right?” Not seven sins, but 70 times 7. Forgive far more than you would think necessary, deserved, appropriate, or even humanly possible. Forgive as God has forgiven you. “Be kind and compassionate to one another,” as Paul says, “forgiving one another.” Forgive one another. But we can start smaller: “Forgive one other.” Identify one other person, one other sin, that you’ve had trouble forgiving in the past. Start there. Forgive just one other. Then it will get easier; you’ll be getting pretty good at it by the time you’ve forgiven seventy times seven others, always in the knowledge that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you far more than that.
Now that I think of it, Jesus didn’t really skip that first step of forgiveness. He just boiled it down to one word: brother. “If your brother (or your sister) sins against you...” Consider him a brother, not an enemy, not a criminal, not a nuisance, but a brother or sister, someone you love, someone whose good you are seeking, someone you have already forgiven in your heart without needing to hear, “I’m sorry,” first. Once you’ve let go of his sin, and step one is complete, then the only thing keeping the two of you from being at peace and living in peace as brothers and sisters is that he hasn’t also let go yet; he is still holding on to his sin. And the recipe Jesus gives us for peace is to help your brother let go of the sin you’ve already let go of. It’s for peace with you and peace with God. It’s a matter, both for living together in harmony and the very serious matter of the sinner’s personal salvation.
The fact that this is so serious and important is why you will sometimes have to go on to steps two and three. Take one or two others with you, so it’s clear that it’s not just one person’s opinion. Tell it to the church, so that there is no division, no taking sides, but the whole church’s judgment based upon the Word of God. And if he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as an outsider, outside of your fellowship and outside of God’s grace. Even this last step is an act of love, in the hope that it will finally convince him just how serious his sin is. But it’s also for the good of the church, for those who might otherwise follow his example, or think that obeying the commandments is no longer important.
That’s not a self-righteous attitude. It’s not done out of anger toward sin, but out of concern for everyone who might be hurt, sinners, victims of their sins, and spectators who might be led astray. The goal is peace, righteousness, and love, so that forgiveness, the first step, can also be the last step. The goal is to have the wonderful opportunity to say not just, ?I forgive you,” but “The Lord forgives you.” Be at peach. Step one, we said, was, “Just between you and me.” But it was never really just between you and me. There’s another who was with you from the start to help you face this challenge. One who cares very much about the outcome. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” In the name of Jesus our Savior, who is with us always with his own love, forgiveness and salvation. Amen.
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Amen I tell you again: If two of you on earth agree to ask for anything, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. In fact where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.”
Mistakes in life are unavoidable. It’s not that any one particular blunder was impossible to avoid, but eventually, inevitably, mistakes will be made. Every once in a while, someone will point out a typo in one of my sermons. Or I might find a mistake in something I said afterwards and wonder if anybody noticed. (And just to keep those of you who read my sermon paying attention, I left one mistake somewhere in this sermon). It can be embarrassing, but it happens. Even our Bibles, with all the care and proofreading that goes into them, have typos. The first edition of our new EHV Bibles instructed us to “forgive one other,” instead of “one another.” Just one other? Even Peter figured he ought to be willing to forgive at least seven others (or was it one other, seven times?).
One of the early King James Bible printings was famous for making a mistake in the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” It took a year for anybody to notice, and the printer ended up in prison. It could be just an innocent mistake, but the same Bible had another embarrassing typo that led people to think it was deliberate—maybe sabotage by a disgruntled typesetter. (A passage in Deuteronomy told us that “the Lord hath shewed us his glory and his greatasse,” instead of ‘greatnesse’).
When I make a mistake, I kind of hope it’s not going to be published for the whole world to see. If the President, or anybody running for the office, makes a mistake, that’s the one line in their speech that’s going to get published and replayed on the news over and over.
When it’s not just a mistake, when I sin, I really hope no one sees it. Embarrassment, shame, or maybe stubbornness and the way I’ve convinced myself I had a good excuse—all make it hard to take correction. If I sin, I really don’t want anyone to say anything. Which seems to make this the exception to the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. SinceI wouldn’t want others pointing out my sins, the rule says I shouldn’t point out theirs? No. Sometimes I have to point out sin. When I point out my neighbor’s sin, I’m not just correcting a mistake, I’m letting him know how his actions are hurting other people, and I’m warning him against something that may be poisoning his own heart and soul.
The truth is, telling someone that what he has done or is doing is sinful is not really an exception to the Golden Rule. We just have to clarify that “Doing unto others as you would have others do unto you,” doesn’t mean only doing things you’d gladly have done to you, things that would make you happy, but also the things you hope someone would do for you because it’s for your good, even when you don’t like it. I don’t want people pointing out my sins. I’m not happy about people pointing out my sins. But it is still what I would have others do for me and unto me. It’s what I need to do unto others, just as I still need others to do unto me. It’s still the Golden Rule.
But let’s keep this just between you and me. When one of us sins, it’s just between you and me, for me to tell you, or you to tell me. It’s not fodder for gossip or a blooper to make everybody laugh. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin, just between the two of you.” Jesus gives us step by step instructions on how to handle sin, a kind of recipe for peace and harmony in the family of believers, a recipe for building this family up in its commitment to each other and to its Lord, step by step. It’s a pretty simple recipe really, just four ingredients, four steps, and most of the time, hopefully, it will only take one. “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin, just between the two of you.” If he repents, the recipe is done. That’s as far as it goes. “You have regained your brother.”
Actually, I’m looking at this list and thinking that Jesus may have skipped a step. You might think the extra step is obvious and doesn’t need mentioning. Like a recipe that starts by saying beat two eggs. First you’re probably going to want to crack the eggs and throw away the eggshells. Skip that step, and the recipe will be a real mess. But that part should be obvious. So what did Jesus skip? Step one: Forgive your brother. If you skip right past the forgiving attitude and jump straight into pointing out his sin, while you’re still angry—not to turn him away from his sin, but to condemn him for his sin—you’re not going to win him over.
But some people are going to say at this point, “Wait a minute, isn’t that the last step?” Jesus didn’t skip it; he himself mentions it right at the end. After step four he said, “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” He’s talking about setting people free, free from guilt, free from condemnation. When you finally set him free from sin, heaven itself will be open to him. That’s forgiveness. The last step.
In this recipe, forgiveness is both the first and the last step. To understand, we need to consider God’s own forgiveness of sinners. You have sinned. I can say that with utter confidence without knowing what you’ve done. We’ve all sinned. Just as mistakes are inevitable, sin is inevitable and unavoidable for imperfect souls wrapped in sinful flesh like us. That doesn’t excuse the sin.
Your sin has separated you from God, and in order to have peace with our heavenly Father, there must be forgiveness. So what did God do? Step one: He sent his Son to die for our sins. Jesus Christ paid for all of our sins on the cross. And when Jesus died, God forgave you. He didn’t just forgive “one other;” he forgave everyone, the whole world.
He forgave you. He didn’t wait for you to say I’m sorry. He didn’t even wait for you to sin. He forgave you. To be finally and fully at peace with God we will still need repentance, we still need to turn in faith to our Savior for forgiveness. But it’s not because God is still angry at us and wants to punish us and is holding our sins against us, waiting impatiently until we take step one ourselves and repent first. While we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us. Step one is his redemption.
Pastors talk about these concepts as objective and subjective justification. A couple big words, but simple, important concepts. First, objective justification: Christ died for you. Your sins have been paid for. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them.” Paul said that in First Corinthians.
But then Paul goes on to say in the very next verse, “Be reconciled to God.” And that’s subjective justification. When one individual sinner turns to God for forgiveness, for peace, what God did for everyone is received by one. So we see there is God’s attitude of forgiveness toward the entire world, and there is you and me finding peace through faith, confessing, “I have sinned against God,” and hearing the comforting message, “You are forgiven.”
It’s the same way when your brother sins against you. We asked, “How can that be step one? How can I forgive someone who’s not sorry yet?” The first forgiveness must be within your own heart. Not for his sake, but for your own. Holding on to anger and bitterness, seeking revenge, will poison your own soul if you don’t forgive. Forgiveness means saying, “I don’t hate you. I don’t desire your death or your punishment. I won’t hold your sins against you. I am at peace with you. And I want you to be at peace with me.” We heard that in our Old Testament lesson today. Even as Israel remained obstinate and unrepentant, upset about the consequences of their sins but not ready to turn back to God, God declared, “I take no delight in the death of the wicked. You might not be sorry for sinning, yet, but I point out your sins with sorrow, to rescue, not to condemn.”
If you have to repent first and say you’re sorry before I can forgive you, then your sin has the power to hold my heart hostage. Your sin continues to poison me and keep me from knowing peace. I need to forgive, as God did, first in my own heart, and then seek mutual peace by seeking your repentance, so that I can also share that forgiveness with you.
This text comes right after Jesus just got finished telling the parable about the man with a hundred sheep, and one was lost. Seeking the one lost sheep in love, bringing him back to the fold, is what these verses are all about. And the text comes right before Peter asked Jesus, “How many times shall I forgive my brother? Seven? That’s a lot, right?” Not seven sins, but 70 times 7. Forgive far more than you would think necessary, deserved, appropriate, or even humanly possible. Forgive as God has forgiven you. “Be kind and compassionate to one another,” as Paul says, “forgiving one another.” Forgive one another. But we can start smaller: “Forgive one other.” Identify one other person, one other sin, that you’ve had trouble forgiving in the past. Start there. Forgive just one other. Then it will get easier; you’ll be getting pretty good at it by the time you’ve forgiven seventy times seven others, always in the knowledge that God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you far more than that.
Now that I think of it, Jesus didn’t really skip that first step of forgiveness. He just boiled it down to one word: brother. “If your brother (or your sister) sins against you...” Consider him a brother, not an enemy, not a criminal, not a nuisance, but a brother or sister, someone you love, someone whose good you are seeking, someone you have already forgiven in your heart without needing to hear, “I’m sorry,” first. Once you’ve let go of his sin, and step one is complete, then the only thing keeping the two of you from being at peace and living in peace as brothers and sisters is that he hasn’t also let go yet; he is still holding on to his sin. And the recipe Jesus gives us for peace is to help your brother let go of the sin you’ve already let go of. It’s for peace with you and peace with God. It’s a matter, both for living together in harmony and the very serious matter of the sinner’s personal salvation.
The fact that this is so serious and important is why you will sometimes have to go on to steps two and three. Take one or two others with you, so it’s clear that it’s not just one person’s opinion. Tell it to the church, so that there is no division, no taking sides, but the whole church’s judgment based upon the Word of God. And if he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as an outsider, outside of your fellowship and outside of God’s grace. Even this last step is an act of love, in the hope that it will finally convince him just how serious his sin is. But it’s also for the good of the church, for those who might otherwise follow his example, or think that obeying the commandments is no longer important.
That’s not a self-righteous attitude. It’s not done out of anger toward sin, but out of concern for everyone who might be hurt, sinners, victims of their sins, and spectators who might be led astray. The goal is peace, righteousness, and love, so that forgiveness, the first step, can also be the last step. The goal is to have the wonderful opportunity to say not just, ?I forgive you,” but “The Lord forgives you.” Be at peach. Step one, we said, was, “Just between you and me.” But it was never really just between you and me. There’s another who was with you from the start to help you face this challenge. One who cares very much about the outcome. “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” In the name of Jesus our Savior, who is with us always with his own love, forgiveness and salvation. Amen.
