Materials
Conflict and Community in the 1st and 21st Century
Unless You Forgive Your Brother
Matthew 18
by Dale Pauls and R. Todd Bouldin
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Neighbor nudge: What principles have we learned so far that make for peace?
B. If we are to become peacemakers, it will require that:
1. We grow in trust of God so that we can let go of the need to control and give up our sense of being threatened.
2. We have to drop the ultimatums – that if someone disagrees with me or doesn’t treat me well they are rotten.
3. We have to put people in their context – see our brothers and sisters for the weak, flawed and needy people they are, in as much need of grace as I am. Walk a mile in their shoes. Do not judge.
4. We have to give up name calling and labeling.
5. We should be truthful and allow truth of the gospel to prevail, even if it causes division, while doing the things that make for peace.
6. Truth, Grace, Free Will are the essentials of peacemaking.
C. Conflicts are going to happen – in our families, our workplaces and our churches. In the context of the church community, anywhere where disciples gather, there are fundamentally different ways of dealing with conflict than might operate in other spheres where there is not understood community, accountability, and shared faith. If we are to move beyond our conflicts in the church of God, we have to learn to forgive.
II. WHO IS THE GREATEST? The Context Matthew 18:1-5, 10-14
A. Read the verses –what event initiates the teaching of Jesus here?
1. A debate over who is the greatest precipitates this teaching block of Jesus. The need to be right, or to be the best, or to be the greatest seems to always lurk behind the conflicts between the disciples of Jesus, and this same need is always present in most of our conflicts too. The assumption behind our conflicts often is that for me to win, someone else has to lose. One person has to be greatest.
2. How does Jesus respond to this question? V. 3—“Whoever becomes humble like this little child”. Why a little child as an illustration of humility?
a. Children drop spats fast – next day back to being friends.
b.They don’t put themselves as much on the line with their conflicts – it is not personal.
3. Like we have studied in the Sermon on the Mount, in Christ’s kingdom, there is a reversal of values. Disciples accept insignificance. We see the value of “little people”, of children, of “average Christians. We seek out the “lost sheep” (v.12). There are no insignificant people – Stanley Shipp. Every lost sheep and every found sheep bears the image of God.
III. WHEN CONFLICTS ARISE – PROCEDURES FOR RESOLUTION vv. 15-20
A. Context: How to deal with sin, maybe not all conflicts. However, principles applicable.
B. Discuss the procedure Jesus teaches in your groups. What are the steps? How are these different from how we normally handle conflicts?
1. Personal private confrontation
a. “Point out the fault” – explain it.
b. “When the two of you are alone” – not in the church lobby, in public.
c. By one who is spiritually mature – Galatians 6:1; I Corinthians 2:15
d. In a spirit of gentleness – Galatians 6:1
2. If no change occurs, take one or two others with you.
3. If still no change, the matter should be brought before the church.
4. If still no change, you treat him as a pagan or tax collector (think of how Matthew heard those words). Notice the language here – let him “be to you” as a pagan. There is no call for official discipline here or excommunication. It is a matter of your attitude toward the person---in other words, avoid the person. (Titus 3:10).
C. This procedure is similar to Jewish practice as prescribed in the Talmud, and it is identical to the rules of Qumran as set forth in Manual of Discipline 5:26-6:1.
D. But Catch 22 :
1. Text Just Before (vv. 10-14): How does Jesus treat sinners and tax collectors?
vv. 12-14. Seek out the lost sheep.
2. Text Just After (vv. 21-22): How many times do you forgive? Why is this story communicated in this context? To balance the severity of v. 17 with enormous, uncalculated forgiveness.
a. Rabbinics taught that one had to forgive three times but a 4th offense need not be forgiven.
b. Jesus: seventy times seven. Forgiveness does not calculate (I Corinthians 13).
c. Theologian John Patterson writes in his book "Is Human Forgiveness Possible?":
Peter’s question seems to say, ‘Please give me a rule so I don’t have to keep dealing with this. How can I know when enough is enough? I want to know what to do instead of having to come ot terms with the whole history of our relationship.’ Jesus responds to the question, ‘I am unwilling to give you a way out of a continuing relationship to your brother.”
3. Parable to Illustrate (vv. 23 – 35). Ratio in the parable 1/600,000
IV. PRACTICING FORGIVENESS
A. How can we forgive without encouraging irresponsibility?
1. That is God’s problem too! Solution: The Cross. Forgiveness is costly.
2. Make your forgiveness:
a. Tangible
b. Visible
c. Memorable
B. What do we deny ourselves when we fail to forgive?
1. Healed relationships – only forgiveness can heal a cycle of blame and pain in a relationship. You will never get there by waiting for one person to admit that the other wins, or that you lose. Forgiveness recognizes the sin or pain and moves past it. It allows a relationship to start over again.
a. “The best, maybe only way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there, it loses its power and goes no further.” Gale D. Webbe, Philip Yancey, “An Unnatural Art.” CT 8 Apr. 1991.
b. John McCain story
2. The sense that we are forgiven – both of you find release.
a. Video: Jean Valjean in Les Miserables
b. The danger of anger lies not in the anger itself but in resentment – in the clinging to and prolonged attachment to anger. Anger refuses relationship, but our pain can only be healed by closeness. Resentment leads to imprisonment – in a painful past. One Sufi teacher writes, “If a man removes his bitterness, he becomes human; otherwise he becomes an animal.”
V. A WARNING ABOUT REFUSING TO FORGIVE (v. 35)
A. Forgive “from your heart.” This means at the level of your desires. Therefore, there is no more equivocation or legalism or calculation. B. Why is it that God cannot forgive those who refuse to forgive?
Because not to forgive is to refuse to trust God. Forgiving and trusting go hand in hand. Refusal to forgive means that you see yourself as the standard of absolute justice. Forgiveness is trusting God so that we come to see God as the standard of justice and let go of your own, leaving the issue of fairness to God.
VI. SUMMARY
Forgive in Greek means “free, to let go.” According to Jesus, when you are hurt, you have two options: to either be a priest or be a victim. What Jesus offers us is a life that does not try to forget about the pain, deny the wrong, or store up the grievance for later. To be a priest is to free others of shame and yourself of your hurt. To be a victim is to hold on to hurt, which is like holding on to a disease. It will eat up your soul. It does not matter what you do, you are never going to have a better past. Isn’t it time to stop dwelling on past hurts – by a family member, or by a brother or sister at church? It’s time to stop being a victim – we need you to be a priest.
It is your calling to be a priest – to announce the forgiveness of God to others by giving your own forgiveness to others.
You are not called to produce forgiveness – Jesus did that when he died on the cross. You are called to announce and give it – you can open the locks, and throw open the door, and walk back into the world as a priest who is unafraid of your own shame, or the shame of others. The only alternative is to live life in a prison called hurt.
In the words of Lewis Smede, “When you forgive, you set a prisoner free. And then you discover that the prisoner was you.”
Prayer—“Lord God, we will never be able to forgive until we first believe that we are forgiven. So break through our locked defenses, and free us to serve as your grateful priests pronouncing forgiveness of those dying of shame so that we ourselves might find freedom from our own guilt in the presence of the one who loved us and forgave us. In His Name, Amen.
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