Verses 1-35
Chapter 18
Matthew 18:1-35
is a most important chapter for Christian Ethics, because it deals with
those qualities which should characterize the personal relationships of
the Christian. We shall be dealing in detail with these relationships
as we study the chapter section by section; but before we do so, it will
be well to look at the chapter as a whole. It singles out seven
qualities which should mark the personal relationships of the Christian.
(i) First and foremost, there is the quality of humility (Matthew 18:1-4).
Only the person who has the humility of the child is a citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven. Personal ambition, personal prestige, personal
publicity, personal profit are motives which can find no place in the
life of the Christian. The Christian is the man who forgets self in his
devotion to Jesus Christ and in his service of his fellow-men.
(ii) Second, there is the quality of responsibility (Matthew 18:5-7).
The greatest of all sins is to teach another to sin, especially if that
other should be a weaker, a younger, and a less-experienced brother.
God's sternest judgment is reserved for those who put a stumbing-block
in the way of others. The Christian is constantly aware that he is
responsible for the effect of his life, his deeds, his words, his
example on other people.
(iii) There follows the quality of self-renunciation (Matthew 18:8-10).
The Christian is like an athlete for whom no training is too hard, if
by it he may win the prize; he is like the student who will sacrifice
pleasure and leisure to reach the crown. The Christian is ready
surgically to excise from life everything which would keep him from
rendering a perfect obedience to God.
(iv) There is individual care (Matthew 18:11-14).
The Christian realizes that God cares for him individually, and that he
must reflect that individual care in his care for others. He never
thinks in terms of crowds; he thinks in terms of persons. For God no man
is unimportant and no one is lost in the crowd; for the Christian every
man is important and is a child of God, who, if lost, must be found.
The individual care of the Christian is in fact the motive and the
dynamic of evangelism.
(v) There is the quality of discipline (Matthew 18:15-20).
Christian kindness and Christian forgiveness do not mean that a man who
is in error is to be allowed to do as he likes. Such a man must be
guided and corrected and, if need be, disciplined back into the right
way. But that discipline is always to be given in humble love and not in
self-righteous condemnation. It is always to be given with the desire
for reconciliation and never with the desire for vengeance.
(vi) There is the quality of fellowship (Matthew 18:19-20).
It might even be put that Christians are people who pray together. They
are people who in fellowship seek the will of God, who in fellowship
listen and worship together. Individualism is the reverse of
Christianity.
(vii) There is the spirit of forgiveness (Matthew 18:23-35);
and the Christian's forgiveness of his fellow-men is founded on the
fact that he himself is a forgiven man. He forgives others even as God,
for Christ's sake, has forgiven him.
The Mind Of A Child (Matthew 18:1-4)
18:1-4 On that
day the disciples came to Jesus. "Who, then," they said, "is the
greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?" Jesus called a little child and made
him stand in the middle of them, and said, "This is the truth I tell
you--unless you turn and become as children, you will not enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself as this little child, he is
the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven."
Here is a very revealing question, followed by a very revealing
answer. The disciples asked who was the greatest in the Kingdom of
Heaven. Jesus took a child and said that unless they turned and became
as this little child, they would not get into the Kingdom at all.
The question of the disciples was: "Who will be the greatest in
the Kingdom of Heaven?" and the very fact that they asked that question
showed that they had no idea at all what the Kingdom of Heaven was.
Jesus said, "Unless you turn." He was warning them that they were going
in completely the wrong direction, away from the Kingdom of Heaven and
not towards it. In life it is all a question of what a man is aiming at;
if he is aiming at the fulfilment of personal ambition, the acquisition
of personal power, the enjoyment of personal prestige, the exaltation
of self, he is aiming at precisely the opposite of the Kingdom of
Heaven; for to be a citizen of the Kingdom means the complete forgetting
of self, the obliteration of self, the spending of self in a life which
aims at service and not at power. So long as a man considers his own
self as the most important thing in the world, his back is turned to the
Kingdom; if he wants ever to reach the Kingdom, he must turn round and
face in the opposite direction.
Jesus took a child. There is a tradition that the child grew to
be Ignatius of Antioch, who in later days became a great servant of the
Church, a great writer, and finally a martyr for Christ. Ignatius was
surnamed Theophoros, which means God--carried, and the tradition grew up
that he had received that name because Jesus carried him on his knee.
It may be so. Maybe it is more likely that it was Peter who asked the
question, and that it was Peter's little boy whom Jesus took and set in
the midst, because we know that Peter was married (Matthew 8:14; 1 Corinthians 9:5).
So Jesus said that in a child we see the characteristics which
should mark the man of the Kingdom. There are many lovely
characteristics in a child--the power to wonder, before he has become
deadeningly used to the wonder of the world; the power to forgive and to
forget, even when adults and parents treat him unjustly as they so
often do; the innocence, which, as Richard Glover beautifully says,
brings it about that the child has only to learn, not to unlearn; only
to do, not to undo. No doubt Jesus was thinking of these things; but
wonderful as they are they are not the main things in his mind. The
child has three great qualities which make him the symbol of those who
are citizens of the Kingdom.
(i) First and foremost, there is the quality which is the
keynote of the whole passage, the child's humility. A child does not
wish to push himself forward; rather, he wishes to fade into the
background. He does not wish for prominence; he would rather be left in
obscurity. It is only as he grows up, and begins to be initiated into a
competitive world, with its fierce struggle and scramble for prizes and
for first places, that his instinctive humility is left behind.
(ii) There is the child's dependence. To the child a state of
dependence is perfectly natural. He never thinks that he can face life
by himself. He is perfectly content to be utterly dependent on those who
love him and care for him. If men would accept the fact of their
dependence on God, a new strength and a new peace would enter their
lives.
(iii) There is the child's trust. The child is instinctively
dependent, and just as instinctively he trusts his parents that his
needs will be met. When we are children, we cannot buy our own food or
our own clothes, or maintain our own home; yet we never doubt that we
will be clothed and fed, and that there will be shelter and warmth and
comfort waiting for us when we come home. When we are children we set
out on a journey with no means of paying the fare, and with no idea of
how to get to our journey's end, and yet it never enters our heads to
doubt that our parents will bring us safely there.
The child's humility is the pattern of the Christian's behaviour
to his fellow-men, and the child's dependence and trust are the pattern
of the Christian's attitude towards God, the Father of all.
Christ And The Child (Matthew 18:5-7; Matthew 18:10)
18:5-7,10
"Whoever receives one such little child in my name, receives me. But
whoever puts a stumbling-block in the way of one of these little ones,
who believe in me, it is better for him that a great millstone should be
hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned far out in the
open sea. Alas for the world because of stumbling-blocks!
Stumbling-blocks are bound to come; but alas for the man by whom the
stumbling-block comes!
"See that you do not
despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, their angels in
heaven always look upon the face of my Father who is in heaven."
There is a certain difficulty of interpretation in this passage
which must be borne in mind. As we have often seen, it is Matthew's
consistent custom to gather together the teaching of Jesus under certain
great heads; he arranges it systematically. In the early part of this
chapter he is collecting Jesus' teaching about children; and we must
remember that the Jews used the word child in a double sense. They used
it literally of the young child; but regularly a teacher's disciples
were called his sons or his children. Therefore a child also means a
beginner in the faith, one who has just begun to believe, one who is not
yet mature and established in the faith, one who has just begun on the
right way and who may very easily be deflected from it. In this passage
very often the child means both the young child and the beginner on the
Christian way.
Jesus says that whoever receives one such little child in his
name receives himself. The phrase in my name can mean one of two things.
(i) It can mean for my sake. The care of children is something which is
carried out for the sake of none other than Jesus Christ. To teach a
child, to bring up a child in the way he ought to go, is something which
is done not only for the sake of the child, but for the sake of Jesus
himself. (ii) It can mean with a blessing. It can mean receiving the
child, and, as it were, naming the name of Jesus over him. He who brings
Jesus and the blessing of Jesus to a child is doing a Christlike work.
To receive the child is also a phrase which is capable of
bearing more than one meaning. (i) It can mean, not so much to receive a
child, as to receive a person who has this childlike quality of
humility. In this highly competitive world it is very easy to pay most
attention to the person who is pugnacious and aggressive and
self-assertive and full of self-confidence. It is easy to pay most
attention to the person who, in the worldly sense of the term, has made a
success of life. Jesus may well be saying that the most important
people are not the thrusters and those who have climbed to the top of
the tree by pushing everyone else out of the way, but the quiet, humble,
simple people, who have the heart of a child.
(ii) It can mean simply to welcome the child, to give him the
care and the love and the teaching which he requires to make him into a
good man. To help a child to live well and to know God better is to help
Jesus Christ.
(iii) But this phrase can have another and very wonderful
meaning. It can mean to see Christ in the child. To teach unruly,
disobedient, restless little children can be a wearing job. To satisfy
the physical needs of a child, to wash his clothes and bind his cuts and
soothe his bruises and cook his meals may often seem a very unromantic
task; the cooker and the sink and the work-basket have not much glamour;
but there is no one in all this world who helps Jesus Christ more than
the teacher of the little child and the harassed, hard-pressed mother in
the home. All such will find a glory in the grey, if in the child they
sometimes glimpse none other than Jesus himself.
The Terrible Responsibility (Matthew 18:5-7; Matthew 18:10 Continued)
But the great keynote of this passage is the terrible weight of responsibility it leaves upon every one of us.
(i) It stresses the terror of teaching another to sin. It is
true to say that no man sins uninvited; and the bearer of the invitation
is so often a fellow-man. A man must always be confronted with his
first temptation to sin; he must always receive his first encouragement
to do the wrong thing; he must always experience his first push along
the way to the forbidden things. The Jews took the view that the most
unforgivable of all sins is to teach another to sin; and for this
reason--a man's own sins can be forgiven, for in a sense they are
limited in their consequences; but if we teach another to sin, he in his
turn may teach still another, and a train of sin is set in motion with
no foreseeable end.
There is nothing in this world more terrible than to destroy
someone's innocence. And, if a man has any conscience left, there is
nothing which will haunt him more. Someone tells of an old man who was
dying; he was obviously sorely troubled. At last they got him to tell
why. "When we were boys at play," he said, "one day at a cross-roads we
reversed a signpost so that its arms were pointing the opposite way, and
I've never ceased to wonder how many people were sent in the wrong
direction by what we did." The sin of all sins is to teach another to
sin.
(ii) It stresses the terror of the punishment of those who teach
another to sin. If a man teaches another to sin, it would be better for
him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in
the depths of the sea.
The millstone in this case is a mulos (Greek #3458), onikos (Greek #3684).
The Jews ground corn by crushing it between two circular stones. This
was done at home; and in any cottage such a mill could be seen. The
upper stone, which turned round upon the lower was equipped with a
handle, and it was commonly of such a size that the housewife could
easily turn it, for it was she who did the grinding of the corn for the
household needs. But a mulos onikos (Greek #3684) was a grinding-stone of such a size that it needed an ass pulling it (onos (Greek #3688) is the Greek for an ass and mulos (Greek #3458)
is the Greek for a millstone) to turn it round at all. The very size of
the millstone shows the awfulness of the condemnation.
Further, in the Greek it is said, not so much that the man would
be better to be drowned in the depths of the sea, but that it would be
better if he were drowned far out in the open sea. The Jew feared the
sea; for him Heaven was a place where there would be no more sea (Revelation 21:1).
The man who taught another to sin would be better to be drowned far out
in the most lonely of all waste places. Moreover, the very picture of
drowning had its terror for the Jew. Drowning was sometimes a Roman
punishment, but never Jewish. To the Jew it was the symbol of utter
destruction. When the Rabbis taught that heathen and Gentile objects
were to be utterly destroyed they said that they must be "cast into the
salt sea." Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 14. 15. 10) has a terrible
account of a Galilaean revolt in which the Galilaeans took the
supporters of Herod and drowned them in the depths of the Sea of
Galilee. The very phrase would paint to the Jew a picture of utter
destruction. Jesus' words are carefully chosen to show the fate that
awaits a man who teaches another to sin.
(iii) It has a warning to silence all evasion. This is a
sin-stained world and a tempting world; no one can go out into it
without meeting seductions to sin. That is specially so if he goes out
from a protected home where no evil influence was ever allowed to play
upon him. Jesus says, "That is perfectly true; this world is full of
temptations; that is inevitable in a world into which sin has entered;
but that does not lessen the responsibility of the man who is the cause
of a stumbling-block being placed in the way of a younger person or of a
beginner in the faith."
We know that this is a tempting world; it is therefore the
Christian's duty to remove stumbling-blocks, never to be the cause of
putting them in another's way. This means that it is not only a sin to
put a stumbling-block in another's way; it is also a sin even to bring
that person into any situation, or circumstance, or environment where he
may meet with such a stumbling-block. No Christian can be satisfied to
live complacently and lethargically in a civilization where there are
conditions of living and housing and life in general where a young
person has no chance of escaping the seductions of sin.
(iv) Finally it stresses the supreme importance of the child.
"Their angels," said Jesus, "always behold the face of my Father who is
in Heaven." In the time of Jesus the Jews had a very highly-developed
angelology. Every nation had its angel; every natural force, such as the
wind and the thunder and the lightning and the rain, had its angel.
They even went the length of saying, very beautifully, that every blade
of grass had its angel. So, then, they believed that every child had his
guardian angel.
To say that these angels behold the face of God in heaven means
that they always have the right of direct access to God. The picture is
of a great royal court where only the most favoured courtiers and
ministers and officials have direct access to the king. In the sight of
God the children are so important that their guardian angels always have
the right of direct access to the inner presence of God.
For us the great value of a child must always lie in the
possibilities which are locked up within him. Everything depends on how
he is taught and trained. The possibilities may never be realized; they
may be stifled and stunted; that which might be used for good may be
deflected to the purposes of evil; or they may be unleashed in such a
way that a new tide of power floods the earth.
Away back in the eleventh century Duke Robert of Burgundy was
one of the great warrior and knightly figures. He was about to go off on
a campaign. He had a baby son who was his heir; and, before he
departed, he made his barons and nobles come and swear fealty to the
little infant, in the event of anything happening to himself They came
with their waving plumes and their clanking armour and knelt before the
child. One great baron smiled and Duke Robert asked him why. He said,
"The child is so little." "Yes," said Duke Robert, "he's little--but
he'll grow." Indeed he grew, for that baby became William the Conqueror
of England.
In every child there are infinite possibilities for good or ill.
It is the supreme responsibility of the parent, of the teacher, of the
Christian Church, to see that his dynamic possibilities for good are
realized. To stifle them, to leave them untapped, to twist them into
evil powers, is sin.
The Surgical Excision (Matthew 18:8-9)
18:8-9 "If your
hand or your foot proves a stumbling-block to you, cut it off and throw
it away from you. It is the fine thing for you to enter into life
maimed or lame, rather than to be cast into everlasting fire with two
hands or two feet. And if your eye proves a stumbling-block to you,
pluck it out and throw it away from you. It is the fine thing for you to
enter into life with one eye, rather than to be cast into the Gehenna
of fire with two eyes."
There are two senses in which this passage may be taken. It may
be taken purely personally. It may be saying that it is worth any
sacrifice and any self-renunciation to escape the punishment of God.
We have to be clear what that punishment involves. It is here
called everlasting and this word everlasting occurs frequently in Jewish
ideas of punishment. The word is aionios (Greek #166).
The Book of Enoch speaks about eternal judgment, about judgment for
ever, about punishment and torture for ever, about the fire which burns
for ever. Josephus calls hell an everlasting prison. The Book of
Jubilees speaks about an eternal curse. The Book of Baruch says that
"there will be no opportunity of returning, nor a limit to the times."
There is a Rabbinic tale of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zaccai who wept bitterly
at the prospect of death. On being asked why, he answered. "All the more
I weep now that they are about to lead me before the King of kings, the
Holy One, blessed is He, who lives and abides for ever and for ever and
for ever; whose wrath, if he be wrathful, is an eternal wrath; and, if
he bind me, his binding is an eternal binding; and if he kills me, his
killing is an eternal killing; whom I cannot placate with words, nor
bribe with wealth."
All these passages use the word aionios (Greek #166);
but we must be careful to remember what it means. It literally means
belonging to the ages; there is only one person to whom the word aionios
(Greek #166) can properly be applied, and that is God. There is far more in aionios (Greek #166) than simply a description of that which has no end. Punishment which is aionios (Greek #166)
is punishment which it befits God to give and punishment which only God
can give. When we think of punishment, we can only say, "Shall not the
judge of all the earth do right?" Our human pictures, and our human
time-scheme, fail; this is in the hands of God.
But there is one clue which we do have. This passage speaks of the Gehenna (Greek #1067) of fire. Gehenna (Greek #1067)
was the valley of Hinnom, a valley below the mountain of Jerusalem. It
was for ever accursed, because it was the place where, in the days of
the kingdom, the renegade Jews had sacrificed their children in the fire
to the pagan god Moloch. Josiah had made it a place accursed. In later
days it became the refuse dump of Jerusalem; a kind of vast incinerator.
Always the refuse was burning there, and a pall of smoke and a glint of
smouldering fire surrounded it.
Now, what was this Gehenna (Greek #1067),
this Valley of Hinnom? It was the place into which everything that was
useless was cast and there destroyed. That is to say, God's punishment
is for those who are useless, for those who make no contribution to
life, for those who hold life back instead of urging life on, for those
who drag life down instead of lifting life up, for those who are the
handicaps of others and not their inspirations. It is again and again
New Testament teaching that uselessness invites disaster. The man who is
useless, the man who is an evil influence on others, the man who cannot
justify the simple fact of his existence, is in danger of the
punishment of God, unless he excises from his life those things which
make him the handicap he is.
But it is just possible that this passage is not to be taken so
much personally as in connection with the Church. Matthew has already
used this saying of Jesus in a different context in Matthew 5:30.
Here there may be a difference. The whole passage is about children,
and perhaps especially about children in the faith. This passage may be
saying, "If in your Church there is someone who is an evil influence, if
there is someone who is a bad example to those who are young in the
faith, if there is someone whose life and conduct is damaging the body
of the Church, he must be rooted out and cast away." That may well be
the meaning. The Church is the Body of Christ; if that body is to be
healthy and health-giving, that which has the seeds of cancerous and
poisonous infection in it must be even surgically removed.
One thing is certain, in any person and in any Church, whatever
is a seduction to sin must be removed, however painful the removal may
be, for if we allow it to flourish a worse punishment will follow. In
this passage there may well be stressed both the necessity of
self-renunciation for the Christian individual and discipline for the
Christian Church.
The Shepherd And The Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:12-14)
18:12-14 "What
do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders
away, will he not leave the ninety-nine, and go out to the hills, and
will he not seek the wandering one? And if he finds it--this is the
truth I tell you--he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine who
never wandered away. So it is not the will of your Father that one of
these little ones should perish."
This is surely the simplest of all the parables of Jesus, for
it is the simple story of a lost sheep and a seeking shepherd. In Judaea
it was tragically easy for sheep to go astray. The pasture land is on
the hill country which runs like a backbone down the middle of the land.
This ridge-like plateau is narrow, only a few miles across. There are
no restraining walls. At its best, the pasture is sparse. And,
therefore, the sheep are ever liable to wander; and, if they stray from
the grass of the plateau into the gullies and the ravines at each side,
they have every chance of finishing up on some ledge from which they
cannot get up or down, and of being marooned there until they die.
The Palestinian shepherds were experts at tracking down their
lost sheep. They could follow their track for miles; and they would
brave the cliffs and the precipice to bring them back.
In the time of Jesus the flocks were often communal flocks; they
belonged, not to an individual, but to a village. There were,
therefore, usually two or three shepherds with them. That is why the
shepherd could leave the ninety-nine. If he had left them with no
guardian he would have come back to find still more of them gone; but he
could leave them in the care of his fellow-shepherds, while he sought
the wanderer. The shepherds always made the most strenuous and the most
sacrificial efforts to find a lost sheep. It was the rule that, if a
sheep could not be brought back alive, then at least, if it was at all
possible, its fleece or its bones must be brought back to prove that it
was dead.
We can imagine how the other shepherds would return with their
flocks to the village fold at evening time, and how they would tell that
one shepherd was still out on the mountain-side seeking a wanderer. We
can imagine how the eyes of the people would turn ever and again to the
hillside watching for the shepherd who had not come home; and we can
imagine the shout of joy when they saw him striding along the pathway
with the weary wanderer slung across his shoulder, safe at last; and we
can imagine how the whole village would welcome him, and gather round
with gladness to hear the story of the sheep who was lost and found.
Here we have what was Jesus' favourite picture of God and of God's love.
This parable teaches us many things about that love.
(i) The love of God is an individual love. The ninety-and-nine
were not enough; one sheep was out on the hillside and the shepherd
could not rest until he had brought it home. However large a family a
parent has, he cannot spare even one; there is not one who does not
matter. God is like that; God cannot be happy until the last wanderer is
gathered in.
(ii) The love of God is a patient love. Sheep are proverbially
foolish creatures. The sheep has no one but itself to blame for the
danger it had got itself into. Men are apt to have so little patience
with the foolish ones. When they get into trouble, we are apt to say,
"It's their own fault; they brought it on themselves; don't waste any
sympathy on fools." God is not like that. The sheep might be foolish but
the shepherd would still risk his life to save it. Men may be fools but
God loves even the foolish man who has no one to blame but himself for
his sin and his sorrow.
(iii) The love of God is a seeking love. The shepherd was not
content to wait for the sheep to come back; he went out to search for
it. That is what the Jew could not understand about the Christian idea
Of God. The Jew would gladly agree that, if the sinner came crawling
wretchedly home, God would forgive. But we know that God is far more
wonderful than that, for in Jesus Christ, he came to seek for those who
wander away. God is not content to wait until men come home; he goes out
to search for them no matter what it costs him.
(iv) The love of God is a rejoicing love. Here there is nothing
but joy. There are no recriminations; there is no receiving back with a
grudge and a sense of superior contempt; it is all joy. So often we
accept a man who is penitent with a moral lecture and a clear indication
that he must regard himself as contemptible, and the practical
statement that we have no further use for him and do not propose to
trust him ever again. It is human never to forget a man's past and
always to remember his sins against him. God puts our sins behind his
back; and when we return to him, it is all joy.
(v) The love of God is a protecting love. It is the love which
seeks and saves. There can be a love which ruins; there can be a love
which softens; but the love of God is a protecting love which saves a
man for the service of his fellow-men, a love which makes the wanderer
wise, the weak strong, the sinner pure, the captive of sin the free man
of holiness, and the vanquished by temptation its conqueror.
Seeking The Stubborn (Matthew 18:15-18)
18:15-18 "If
your brother sins against you, go, and try to convince him of his error
between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your
brother. If he will not listen to you, take with you one or two more,
that the whole matter may be established in the mouth of two or three
witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church. And
if he refuses to listen to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile
and a tax-collector. This is the truth I tell you--all that you bind
upon earth will remain bound in heaven; and all that you loose upon
earth will remain loosed in heaven."
In many ways this is one of the most difficult passages to
interpret in the whole of Matthew's gospel. Its difficulty lies in the
undoubted fact that it does not ring true; it does not sound like Jesus;
it sounds much more like the regulations of an ecclesiastical
committee.
We may go further. It is not possible that Jesus said this in
its present form. Jesus could not have told his disciples to take things
to the Church, for it did not exist; and the passage implies a fully
developed and organized Church with a system of ecclesiastical
discipline. What is more, it speaks of tax-collectors and Gentiles as
irreclaimable outsiders. Yet Jesus was accused of being the friend of
tax-gatherers and sinners; and he never spoke of them as hopeless
outsiders, but always with sympathy and love, and even with praise
(compare Matthew 9:10 ff; Matthew 11:19; Luke 18:10 ff; and especially Matthew 21:31
ff, where it is actually said that the tax-gatherers and harlots will
go into the Kingdom before the orthodox religious people of the time).
Further, the whole tone of the passage is that there is a limit to
forgiveness, that there comes a time when a man may be abandoned as
beyond hope, counsel which it is impossible to think of Jesus giving.
And the last verse actually seems to give the Church the power to retain
and to forgive sins. There are many reasons to make us think that this,
as it stands, cannot be a correct report of the words of Jesus, but an
adaptation made by the Church in later days, when Church discipline was
rather a thing of rules and regulations than of love and forgiveness.
Although this passage is certainly not a correct report of what
Jesus said, it is equally certain that it goes back to something he did
say. Can we press behind it and come to the actual commandment of Jesus?
At its widest what Jesus was saying was, "If anyone sins against you,
spare no effort to make that man admit his fault, and to get things
right again between you and him." Basically it means that we must never
tolerate any situation in which there is a breach of personal
relationships between us and another member of the Christian community.
Suppose something does go wrong, what are we to do to put it
right? This passage presents us with a whole scheme of action for the
mending of broken relationships within the Christian fellowship.
(i) If we feel that someone has wronged us, we should
immediately put our complaint into words. The worst thing that we can do
about a wrong is to brood about it. That is fatal. It can poison the
whole mind and life, until we can think of nothing else but our sense of
personal injury. Any such feeling should be brought out into the open,
faced, and stated, and often the very stating of it will show how
unimportant and trivial the whole thing is.
(ii) If we feel that someone has wronged us, we should go to see
him personally. More trouble has been caused by the writing of letters
than by almost anything else. A letter may be misread and misunderstood;
it may quite unconsciously convey a tone it was never meant to convey.
If we have a difference with someone, there is only one way to settle
it--and that is face to face. The spoken word can often settle a
difference which the written word would only have exacerbated.
(iii) If a private and personal meeting fails of its purpose, we should take some wise person or persons with us. Deuteronomy 19:15
has it: "A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime
or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed;
only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, shall a
charge be sustained." That is the saying which Matthew has in mind. But
in this case the taking of the witnesses is not meant to be a way of
proving to a man that he has committed an offence. It is meant to help
the process of reconciliation. A man often hates those whom he has
injured most of all; and it may well be that nothing we can say can win
him back. But to talk matters over with some wise and kindly and
gracious people present is to create a new atmosphere in which there is
at least a chance that we should see ourselves "as others see us." The
Rabbis had a wise saying, "Judge not alone, for none may judge alone
save One (that is God)."
(iv) If that still fails, we must take our personal troubles to
the Christian fellowship. Why? Because troubles are never settled by
going to law, or by Christless argument. Legalism merely produces
further trouble. It is in an atmosphere of Christian prayer, Christian
love and Christian fellowship that personal relationships may be
righted. The clear assumption is that the Church fellowship is
Christian, and seeks to judge everything, not in the light of a book of
practice and procedure, but in the light of love.
(v) It is now we come to the difficult part. Matthew says that,
if even that does not succeed, then the man who has wronged us is to be
regarded as a Gentile and a tax-collector. The first impression is that
the man must be abandoned as hopeless and irreclaimable, but that is
precisely what Jesus cannot have meant. He never set limits to human
forgiveness. What then did he mean?
We have seen that when he speaks of tax-gatherers and sinners he
always does so with sympathy and gentleness and an appreciation of
their good qualities. It may be that what Jesus said was something like
this: "When you have done all this, when you have given the sinner every
chance, and when he remains stubborn and obdurate, you may think that
he is no better than a renegade tax-collector, or even a godless
Gentile. Well, you may be right. But I have not found the tax-gatherers
and the Gentiles hopeless. My experience of them is that they, too, have
a heart to be touched; and there are many of them, like Matthew and
Zacchaeus, who have become my best friends. Even if the stubborn sinner
is like a tax-collector or a Gentile, you may still win him, as I have
done."
This, in fact, is not an injunction to abandon a man; it is a
challenge to win him with the love which can touch even the hardest
heart. It is not a statement that some men are hopeless; it is a
statement that Jesus Christ has found no man hopeless--and neither must
we.
(vi) Finally, there is the saying about loosing and binding. It
is a difficult saying. It cannot mean that the Church can remit or
forgive sins, and so settle a man's destiny in time or in eternity. What
it may well mean is that the relationships which we establish with our
fellow-men last not only through time but into eternity--therefore we
must get them right.
The Power Of The Presence (Matthew 18:19-20)
18:19-20
"Again, I tell you, that if two of you agree upon earth upon any matter
for which you are praying, you will receive it from my Father who is in
Heaven. Where two or three are assembled together in my name, there am I
in the midst of them."
Here is one of these sayings of Jesus, whose meaning we need to
probe or we will be left with heartbreak and great disappointment.
Jesus says that, if two upon earth agree upon any matter for which they
are praying, they will receive it from God. If that is to be taken
literally, and without any qualification, it is manifestly untrue. Times
without number two people have agreed to pray for the physical or the
spiritual welfare of a loved one and their prayer has not, in the
literal sense, been answered. Times without number God's people have
agreed to pray for the conversion of their own land or the conversion of
the heathen and the coming of the Kingdom, and even yet that prayer is
far from being fully answered. People agree to pray--and pray
desperately--and do not receive that for which they pray. There is no
point in refusing to face the facts of the situation, and nothing but
harm can result from teaching people to expect what does not happen. But
when we come to see what this saying means, there is a precious depth
in it.
(i) First and foremost, it means that prayer must never be
selfish and that selfish prayer cannot find an answer. We are not meant
to pray only for our own needs, thinking of nothing and no one but
ourselves; we are meant to pray as members of a fellowship, in
agreement, remembering that life and the world are not arranged for us
as individuals but for the fellowship as a whole. It would often happen
that, if our prayers were answered, the prayers of someone else would be
disappointed. Often our prayers for our success would necessarily
involve someone else's failure. Effective prayer must be the prayer of
agreement, from which the element of selfish concentration on our own
needs and desires has been quite cleansed away.
(ii) When prayer is unselfish, it is always answered. But here
as everywhere we must remember the basic law of prayer; that law is that
in prayer we receive, not the answer which we desire, but the answer
which God in his wisdom and his love knows to be best. Simply because we
are human beings, with human hearts and fears and hopes and desires,
most of our prayers are prayers for escape. We pray to be saved from
some trial, some sorrow, some disappointment, some hurting and difficult
situation. And always God's answer is the offer not of escape, but of
victory. God does not give us escape from a human situation; he enables
us to accept what we cannot understand; he enables us to endure what
without him would be unendurable; he enables us to face what without him
would be beyond all facing. The perfect example of all this is Jesus in
Gethsemane. He prayed to be released from the dread situation which
confronted him, he was not released from it; but he was given power to
meet it, to endure it, and to conquer it. When we pray unselfishly, God
sends his answer--but the answer is always his answer and not
necessarily ours.
(iii) Jesus goes on to say that where two or three are gathered
in his name, he is there in the midst of them. The Jews themselves had a
saying, "Where two sit and are occupied with the study of the Law, the
glory of God is among them." We may take this great promise of Jesus
into two spheres.
(a) We may take it into the sphere of the Church. Jesus is just
as much present in the little congregation as in the great mass meeting.
He is just as much present at the Prayer Meeting or the Bible Study
Circle with their handful of people as in the crowded arena. He is not
the slave of numbers. He is there wherever faithful hearts meet, however
few they may be, for he gives all of himself to each individual person.
(b) We may take it into the sphere of the home. One of the
earliest interpretations of this saying of Jesus was that the two or
three are father, mother, and child, and that it means that Jesus is
there, the unseen guest in every home.
There are those who never give of their best except on the
so-called great occasion; but for Jesus Christ every occasion where even
two or three are gathered in his name is a great occasion.
How To Forgive (Matthew 18:21-35)
18:21-35 Then
Peter came and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against
me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I tell
you not up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. That is why
the Kingdom of Heaven can be likened to what happened when a king wished
to make a reckoning with his servants. When he began to make a
reckoning one debtor was brought to him who owed him 2,400,000 British
pounds. Since he was quite unable to pay, his master ordered him to be
sold, together with his wife and children, and all his possessions, and
payment to be made. The servant fell on his face and besought him: 'Sir,
have patience with me, and I will pay you in full.' The master of the
servant was moved with compassion, and let him go, and forgave him the
debt. When that servant went out, he found one of his fellow-servants,
who owed him L5. He caught hold of him and seized him by the throat:
'Pay what you owe,' he said. The fellow-servant fell down and besought
him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you in full.' But he
refused. Rather, he went away and flung him into prison, until he should
pay what was due. So, when his fellow-servants saw what had happened,
they were very distressed; and they went and informed their master of
all that had happened. Then the master summoned him, and said to him,
'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt when you besought me to
do so. Ought you not to have had pity on your fellow-servant, as I had
pity on you?' And his master was angry with him and handed him over to
the torturers, until he should pay all that was due.
"Even so shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you do not each one forgive his brother from your hearts."
We owe a very great deal to the fact that Peter had a quick
tongue. Again and again he rushed into speech in such a way that his
impetuosity drew from Jesus teaching which is immortal. On this occasion
Peter thought that he was being very generous. He asked Jesus how often
he ought to forgive his brother, and then answered his own question by
suggesting that he should forgive seven times.
Peter was not without warrant for this suggestion. It was
Rabbinic teaching that a man must forgive his brother three times. Rabbi
Jose ben Hanina said, "He who begs forgiveness from his neighbour must
not do so more than three times." Rabbi Jose ben Jehuda said, "If a man
commits an offence once, they forgive him; if he commits an offence a
second time, they forgive him; if he commits an offence a third time,
they forgive him; the fourth time they do not forgive." The Biblical
proof that this was correct was taken from Amos. In the opening chapters
of Amos there is a series of condemnations on the various nations for
three transgressions and for four (Amos 1:3; Amos 1:6; Amos 1:9; Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13; Amos 2:1; Amos 2:4; Amos 2:6).
From this it was deduced that God's forgiveness extends to three
offences and that he visits the sinner with punishment at the fourth. It
was not to be thought that a man could be more gracious than God, so
forgiveness was limited to three times.
Peter thought that he was going very far, for he takes the
Rabbinic three times, multiplies it by two for good measure adds one,
and suggests, with eager self-satisfaction, that it will be enough if he
forgives seven times. Peter expected to be warmly commended; but
Jesus's answer was that the Christian must forgive seventy times seven.
In other words there is no reckonable limit to forgiveness.
Jesus then told the story of the servant forgiven a great debt
who went out and dealt mercilessly with a fellow-servant who owed him a
debt that was an infinitesimal fraction of what he himself had owed; and
who for his mercilessness was utterly condemned. This parable teaches
certain lessons which Jesus never tired of teaching.
(i) It teaches that lesson which runs through all the New
Testament--a man must forgive in order to be forgiven. He who will not
forgive his fellow-men cannot hope that God will forgive him. "Blessed
are the merciful," said Jesus, "for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7).
No sooner had Jesus taught his men his own prayer, than he went on to
expand and explain one petition in it: "For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do
not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15). As James had it, "For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy" (James 2:13). Divine and human forgiveness go hand in hand.
(ii) Why should that be so? One of the great points in this parable is the contrast between the two debts.
The first servant owed his master 10,000 talents; a talent was
the equivalent of 240 British pounds; therefore 10,000 talents is
2,400,000 British pounds. That is an incredible debt. It was more than
the total budget of the ordinary province. The total revenue of the
province which contained Idumaea, Judaea and Samaria was only 600
talents; the total revenue of even a wealthy province like Galilee was
only 300 talents. Here was a debt which was greater than a king's
ransom. It was this that the servant was forgiven.
The debt which a fellow-servant owed him was a trifling thing; it was 100 denarii (Greek #1220); a denarius (Greek #1220)
was worth about 4 pence in value; and therefore the total debt was less
than 5 British pounds. It was approximately one five-hundred-thousandth
of his own debt.
A. R. S. Kennedy drew this vivid picture to contrast the debts.
Suppose they were paid in sixpences. The 100 denarii debt could be
carried in one pocket. The ten thousand talent debt would take to carry
it an army of about 8,600 carriers, each carrying a sack of sixpences 60
lbs. in weight; and they would form, at a distance of a yard apart, a
line five miles long! The contrast between the debts is staggering. The
point is that nothing men can do to us can in any way compare with what
we have done to God; and if God has forgiven us the debt we owe to him,
we must forgive our fellow-men the debts they owe to us. Nothing that we
have to forgive can even faintly or remotely compare with what we have
been forgiven.
"Not the labours of my hands
Can fulfil thy law's demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone."
We have been forgiven a debt which is beyond all paying--for
the sin of man brought about the death of God's own Son--and, if that is
so, we must forgive others as God has forgiven us, or we can hope to
find no mercy.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)