Nov 04 2008
Matthew 18:15-35
Chrysostom (LX:1) notes that in the situation of 18:15, there are actually two potential winners: the one who sinned, through reconciliation, regains himself, and the one offended regains his brother. In the Sermon on the Mount (5:23-24), the one who had wronged was instructed to go and reconcile, now the one who has been wronged is instructed to go and seek reconciliation also. (Green stresses the ‘go’, rather than attempt this by less personal means of communication, p194.) The wronged brother goes not to accuse, but to clarify things for his brother if passion has him blinded to his sin (and Green also points out that if this is actually a misunderstanding, this is a chance to put it right, p195). If the brother is unmoved, then try harder! Green points out if he is unmoved witnesses will be important.
If such an event happens outside the Church, then we are to turn the other cheek, as we do not have the benefit of a shared commitment to the life of the Kingdom (cf. 1 Cor. 5:12-13). But one who has that commitment to the life of the Kingdom needs encouragement to maintain it – even to cutting out the source of the sin (18:8-9). Both Chrysostom (LX:2) and Green (p195) both note that the injured party’s making the first approach alone and quietly is less offensive or embarrassing to the sinner. The purpose after all is not seeking punishment but repentance and reconciliation. When it does come to taking witnesses and then telling it to the church (18:17), Green takes this literally as meaning the whole community, Chrysostom assumes it mean the church in the person of those responsible pastorally, as in confession.
Implicit in Chrysostom’s description of binding and loosing is that what happens in the Church is connected to what happens in eternity (18:18) – that the binding this one brought on himself by unwillingness to repent is not an earthly binding alone. Green also refers anecdotally to a case where a person repented at the second of these stages, and notes that the result of his confession, although involving the consequence of losing his job, did not involve the kind of reparation by law that would likely have happened in a secular environment. He might have added that this is a reference to the passage immediately following on forgiveness, clearly the proper response to the man’s confession of guilt. The binding and loosing is not primarily a gift or power, but a terrible responsibility.
What does it mean to be treated like a heathen and a tax collector (18:17)? Chrysostom points out that Matthew brings up the tax collectors often as an example of the worst kind of criminal. But these examples occur in two contexts: the comparison with one whom you would not wish to be like (e.g. 5:46), and the one who repents and turns to Jesus – such as Matthew himself (10:3). So this is no mere rejection and insult, as Green points out (p196), but still leaves hope of eventual reconciliation.
Chrysostom links the subsequent verse about prayer through the strength of the community: drawing together for prayer to forgive (18:22), to help overcome burdens to repentance (18:16-17) and to be bound together in Christ (18:19) implying that even the ones who were at enmity (18:15), if one is ready to approach in forgiveness and the other ready to repent, will be those who are gathering together with Christ in their midst. It is not the gathering alone that makes it ‘in Christ’, but the gathering in his name (18:20), which, as Chrysostom points out (LXI:3), indicates acceptance of his teaching on life in the Kingdom.
Green adds the interesting historical note (p197) that the rabbis had a saying: when “ten people sit together and occupy themselves with the Torah, the shekinah [the glory of God] abides among them”. In Mt 18:20, Jesus is both the Torah and the glory of God.
