You see an ad put out by the Democratic Party. You shake your head, disagreeing with almost every second of the message, its values, and how they’re stated.
You’re about to have your first child, and you’ve found a setting that makes both of you feel more comfortable: a birthing center within a hospital. It will be the best of both worlds! But as the due date approaches, you learn of a hospital policy that doesn’t fit with your birth plan. Frankly, it’s a dumb policy and more about protecting the hospital than about health for mom and baby.
ADOT makes a traffic control change near your neighborhood that negatively affects your commute and seems both unnecessary and unsafe to you. You shake your head every time you pass through the area. Such a strange decision on their part!
I have questions…
Are you in a personal conflict with the Democratic Party?
Are you being sinned against by a hospital system?
Has ADOT committed a personal offense against you?
If you answered “no” then you are correct—these are all simply things you don’t like or agree with that are being said or done by an organization or authority toward a group of people, not just you individually.
An organization or authority does not function the same as an individual. Therefore you cannot be in personal conflict with it.
You’re sitting around a campfire with some friends from church, discussing anything and everything. One of your teens mentions a movie you recently watched as a family. The friends look at you askance, “But that movie has some bad scenes in it!” they protest. You quickly reassure them that you made sure to filter it and that it actually yielded a profitable conversation about ethics. “It got pretty educational and almost counted as a homeschooling moment!” you joke. They are unconvinced and state they prefer not to support what Hollywood makes in any way, even if it’s filtered.
You are sitting around the Thanksgiving table, and that one uncle is veering into political territory. “But you’re a Christian,” he says to you. “How are you able to support that candidate?” You explain that while you don’t agree with the candidate 100%, you feel a moral obligation to support him because of some essentials that are deeply important to you as a Christian. “I’m a Christian too,” he says, “and I’m supporting the other guy because—even though he’s not perfect either—he supports these other Christian values.”
Your sister married a man from another denomination, and now that they’re having their first child, she confides in you that they’ll be baptizing their little one as an infant. You’re surprised: when you came to Christ, you were taught believer’s baptism made the most sense. You bring up the Scriptural evidence for it being the right way to do things. Your sister counters with her own argument, also citing Scripture. Neither of you ends up convincing the other.
Again, some questions…
Are you in a personal conflict over your family’s media choices versus another’s?
Are you being sinned against by your uncle challenging your political beliefs?
Have your sister and brother-in-law committed a personal offense against you by following a different denomination’s baptism tradition? (Believer’s vs. infant baptism is considered a “disputable matter”—an application that Christians within the pale of orthodoxy differ on. Excellent explanation of that here.)
The answer to all these should be, “No, of course not!” There’s no inherent offense or sin in these differences of opinion. Could they become a conflict? Could one or both of you sin against the other? Yes, but not by simply having (and even respectfully discussing) a difference of opinion or practice.
You hire a man from your church to do some work for you, and you pay him half the money up front. On the day set for him to arrive and begin the work, he never shows. The same thing happens the next day and the day after that. You see him at church the next Sunday and he acts as if nothing is wrong.
You overhear a woman after church repeating words that are very familiar to you—words you just spoke during open prayer. You’d stuttered a little, said the wrong word, and had to back up and restart a whole sentence. You’d been so nervous—praying aloud with others was not something you were comfortable doing—but you trusted God to know your heart. The other woman laughs at her impression of you, and repeats it herself—but even more exaggerated—and pretends to stagger and choke.
A Christian friend calls you, white-hot with anger over something you did or said. You’re blind-sided, as there’s nothing actually wrong with what you did. After the call, your ears are still ringing with their harsh words and forceful accusations.
You guessed it! I have questions…
Do you have a personal conflict with the man who took your money and never did the work?
Are you being sinned against by the women mocking your sincere but stumbling prayer?
Did your friend commit a personal offense against you with their harsh words and undeserved accusations of malice?
Yes.
The above are examples of actually being sinned against. They are examples of personal conflict and offenses.
What should we do in these scenarios, as Christians?
Should we walk into church and point at the man who stole from us and announce his sin to everyone in earshot?
Should we treat the mocking women as the scum of the earth, never again greet them or meet their eyes, and question their salvation?
Should we stand before the church and demand that the harsh caller be kicked out of the church because of the way they jumped to conclusions about what you did and the anger they displayed?
Are you thinking the answer is: definitely not?
Actually, the answer is: hopefully not.
What?
Jesus took 3 verses in Matthew chapter 18 to outline steps we must take to deal with it rightly “If your brother sins against you…”
If it’s a sin.
Against you. Personally.
By a brother.
The point made in Matthew 18:15-17 is that as Christians our first response cannot be public humiliation and shunning! We have a responsibility to “…go tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won your brother.”1
End of process. Motive satisfied. Restoration accomplished.
For example, if you go privately to the man who never showed up to do the work, you might discover it was a mix-up of dates. Or he really did flake, but when confronted with the fact that he did sin against you, God works in his heart and he immediately apologizes and shows up as soon as possible to work out his repentance by making it right.
“But if he won’t listen, take one or two others with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses every fact may be established.”2
Again, if this is what it takes for repentance to truly happen, then the process ends and you’ve won your brother. But if there is still no change, our instructions do not stop here.
“If he doesn’t pay attention to them, tell the church.”3
Ouch.
The whole church? Couldn’t we tell just the pastor? Or maybe a handful of core men? Does it have to be the whole church?
We don’t like that one. That’s un-comfy. Wouldn’t it be wrong—too confrontational?
Jesus didn’t seem to think so. In fact, He’s not even done yet.
“If he doesn’t pay attention even to the church, let him be like a Gentile and a tax collector to you.”4
So, Jesus instructs that confrontation over a brother personally sinning against you should start private, but —if that brother remains that stubborn and refuses to truly listen and repent at each step of the process—it should get progressively more public and serious.
Ways we mess up Matt. 18
I have seen Matthew 18’s instructions messed up in multiple ways:
Only do step one—anything else is rocking the boat too much.
Only do steps one and two—but your 1-2 other witnesses better be church leadership or a designated mediator (who doesn’t even remotely fall into the category of a “witness”) and no one else.
Never, ever tell the church. That would be gossip/slander.
Some people are exempted from this process. Do not bring an accusation against an elder… and all that. (More on that toward the end of the post.)
Everything is a personal offense and falls under these guidelines.
Let’s talk about that last one for a moment. Didn’t we agree the Democratic party, the hospital system, and ADOT were not, as organizations, personally sinning against you? Didn’t we determine that someone with a different view of disputable things and applications isn’t personally sinning against you?
I have one more set of examples to run past you…
You noticed a line in your pastor’s sermon—almost a throwaway comment—that since he has achieved sanctification, he can now turn around and help others along. It strikes you strongly that this is, in fact, heresy. You look around the room, wondering who else clocked it and what, if anything, you should do.
You learn that the church leadership failed to protect a vulnerable woman from her violent and entitled husband, or an innocent young girl from her predatory father. You feel that their subsequent mistreatment and harm is not only on the heads of the perpetrators, but also on the organization that failed to take steps to care for them. Righteous indignation wells up inside you, but what’s the biblical thing to do with it?
You learn that an elder broke the trust of those who had given specifically to the church’s building fund and redistributed the money into other funds to cover debts the church never should have incurred. You realize that, not only was this unethical, but it was possibly also illegal. Does Scripture give guidance on how to proceed?
The counsel you receive all points to Matthew 18, indicating you should go directly to the lead pastor and “tell him his fault.” If you’re given really “good” advice, you’re told you can bring the rest of the leadership team into it if he doesn’t listen. Beyond that, though… nothing.
No further steps are available to you.
But I have some questions.
Are these things sin? YES!
Were they done against you—personally? NO. They were against the whole assembly.
Were they done by an individual? NO.
Huh? What do I mean they weren’t done by an individual? These examples are wrongs done by an organization or authority figure.
As in the case of the Democratic Party, the hospital’s decision-makers, and ADOT, these things were said or done by an organization or authority. Again, an organization or authority does not function the same as an individual. Therefore these cannot be personal conflicts.
All of these factors should place these examples in another category—outside the bounds of Matthew 18’s context, if we’re being honest with the text’s purpose and not generalizing so we can stretch it to be all-encompassing!
There is a whole category of important things that are not conflict, but rather correction. And, thankfully, the Bible has a whole separate set of instructions for those.
So wait… you’re saying the Matthew 18 steps don’t apply to these?
Yes, that’s right.
You may have heard the principle that: private sins should be dealt with privately, personal sins should be dealt with personally, and public sins should be dealt with publicly.
Why does that “public” part tend to be limited to only examples like gossip and public rudeness? Why is it forgotten when very public, systemic, organizational, leadership-related corrections need to be made?
It shouldn’t be.
Yes, I am saying that organization-level, leadership-level problems should default to being dealt with publicly. This is because organizations and their culture, and leaders with their teachings and lived-examples are, by default, affecting people on a mass scale.
Not the individual.
The collective of the assembly.
It’s already public. So it should default to being dealt with publicly.
Sound scary? Wish I were making it up? Unfortunately for comfort levels everywhere (both mine and yours)—I’m not.
Check out the Biblical way of confronting church leaders…
Don’t accept an accusation against an elder unless it is supported by two or three witnesses. Publicly rebuke those who sin, so that the rest will be afraid. I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels to observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing out of favoritism.
1 Timothy 5:19-21
It’s kind of clear.
If you have an accusation against an elder that’s supported by 2-3 witnesses, the Bible calls for a public rebuke.
That’s literally the next step after counting up witnesses.
Are you unsure if that’s really what it’s saying? Thankfully, God provides us with a really clear example of this exact thing playing out:
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For he regularly ate with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party. Then the rest of the Jews joined his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, “If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Galatians 2:11-14
Let’s, first of all, remember that Cephas is the Apostle Peter. This shows us that there is no one above being called out on sinful leadership.
Let’s also notice there is no multi-step process going on. Paul 1) sees a theological wrong and a sinful attitude coming from Peter, the “certain men” who came from James, and the “rest of the Jews” who were part of the church in Antioch. Then 2) confronts publicly.
What about witnesses, though?
This is something else to notice: the scene doesn’t describe Paul and Barnabas and a couple other guys all standing together, facing Peter to confront him. No! Barnabas is actually part of the group who was led astray—he’s over there sitting by Peter!
How did Paul meet the witness requirement then?
Well, nobody said these witnesses had to even necessarily be standing in agreement with you.
They had to have witnessed the sin.
And everyone in that room saw Peter’s hypocritical practice born of his wrong theology of the unity of Jew and Gentile in the Body of Christ.
Paul had a whole roomful of witnesses.
What will happen?
In the incident with Paul confronting Peter, the passage doesn’t give us any indication of how Peter took it or what the outcome was, but by looking at later writings like 1 & 2 Peter, we see an apostle who seems to have listened and repented.5
That is the outcome we’d all hope for, especially after working up the courage to confront a leader publicly.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of disappointing outcomes from any kind of correction, whether done publicly as patterned in Scripture or through (erroneously, but good-heartedly) following the personal conflict steps in Matthew 18.
I’ve seen church leadership brand needed correction, supplied in love, as gossip and slander. I’ve seen them slander the person or people who brought the concern by calling their motives, their method, and sometimes their salvation into question.
I’ve seen fellow members of the body rise up and attack someone for speaking up publicly, insisting that they should have gone to the pastor privately. Because clearly, their organizational / leadership / theological / ethical concern is nothing more than unresolved personal conflict! And where did the congregation learn that everything is unresolved personal conflict that should only be handled privately? From the very leaders that need the correction.
I’ve seen people, out of an abundance of caution and wanting to do things in the absolute most upstanding way, follow the Matthew 18 steps (out of context) for a situation like the above. They go privately to the pastor. Multiple times. They move on to doing it again with others. Then, depending on how strong of a stomach they have, they may move to the “tell it to the church” step. Then they are reviled in the strongest of terms. Gossiped about. Slandered (truly, by a proper definition). Harassed. Told, “You are doing this so wrongly! You should have just spoken to him/them! Surely they would have listened!”
That last bit leads me to an important note: not everyone will hear and repent as Peter did. I know that’s hard to believe for people who deeply respect an organization or leader, but unfortunately, it’s true.
Sometimes just speaking truth privately to someone isn’t enough.
Sometimes they harden their hearts.
Sometimes they are too stubborn.
The result of this in a personal conflict—if Matthew 18 is properly followed—is that their stubbornness and hard-heartedness against their brother (and in truth, against the prodding of the Holy Spirit) is told to the church. (And potentially leads to them being considered an unbeliever.)
The instructions for dealing with an accusation against an elder start public.
I have a hunch that is because God fully knows the influence (and therefore greater ability to cause harm) that’s wielded by an authority. He places it in a category of its own.
And it’s a much more serious category. Do we take it as seriously?
Not many should become teachers, my brothers, because you know that we will receive a stricter judgment.
James 3:1
Matthew 18:15
Matthew 18:16
Matthew 18:17a
Matthew 18:17b
This article does a nice job pointing out that God had dealt with Peter about unclean vs. clean early in his ministry when he visited Cornelius. Peter then reverted as described in Galatians, but we see echoes of the point Paul made to him in Galatians 2:15-21 in Peter’s later writings, indicating he got it. https://www.aletheiacollege.net/bl/13-4-2Peter_And_The_Judaizers.htm (Please note that I don’t know or endorse anything about this website, organization, or author. It is simply a decent summary of these things in Peter’s recorded history.)
That. Is. Amazing. Thank you.