Matthew 18:12-20 | Your Brother's Keeper
In my study this week for today’s message, I lucked out and discovered that I actually preached on this passage back in March of 2020 in a series called “Dealing with Drama” that was all about conflict and how to fight fair as Christians.
As I looked back over that series, I found some really helpful stuff in prep for this message and while I’m not going to try to cram all 3 of those sermons into this one, I would encourage you, if you find at the end of this message desiring to learn more about how to deal with drama and conflict, from a Biblical perspective, I’ll point you to our website. Check out our Dealing with Drama series!
Now, before we get into Matthew this morning, I want to kick things off by taking things back a bit further than the book of Matthew, several thousand years back to be exact to the first man and woman of the earth. Adam and Eve.
In the book of Genesis we learn that after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden Eve gives birth to two sons: Cain and Abel and through a series of many unfortunate sins, Cain eventually ends up murdering his brother Abel.
If you’re want to do a deeper dive in understanding the story of Cain and Abel I’ll point you to Genesis 4 as well as an article on gotquestions.org entitled Why did God accept Abel’s offering but reject Cain’s offering?
Suffice it to say, after Abel’s murder, God seeks out Cain and ask him, where is your brother Abel? And Cain’s reply is one that you and I have felt and will feel on lots of occasions throughout our lives as we strive to live in the family of God with other believers. He asks the Lord, Am I my brother’s keeper?
Am I my brother’s keeper! This question is dripping with resentment! You can almost hear the sneer that comes out with it as you read the story in Genesis 4. Am I my brother’s keeper! He’s not my responsibility. He’s yours God! He’s your favorite. You go find Him. You go deal with him! Am I my brothers keeper!!?
If you do go read that story later, I have a sneaking suspicion that you’ll read it like I do. You naturally will want to see yourself more as Able than Cain and that’s because most of us haven’t and won’t commit murder in our lives. The reality is though, that we are a lot more like Cain than we care to admit. For one thing, when we hate and get angry in our hearts towards another, God says it’s as if we’ve committed murder before Him, but more than that, the resentment we feel when others around us fail and make our lives difficult or require us to do hard things for them in the name of love, we are often times left with the same question that Cain sneers out to the Lord, Am I my brothers keeper!?
Whether it’s from cowardice or a lack of commitment to love our fellow believers, each and everyone of us will be confronted with the resentment behind the question Am I my brothers keeper when given the unfair opportunity, calling and responsibility to expose faults in our fellow believers lives. It ain’t fun, it’s not always fair, but exposing one anothers’ faults in love is what faithfulness to God and the Church looks like and if you remember from last week we would all do well to choose faithfulness over fairness.
The reality is when you get found by Jesus, He saves you alone as an individual, but you don’t stay alone. No, you are saved into a family and the family of God is known as the Church. And the role of the Church family is similar to that of the nuclear family, it’s to raise children up into maturity and adulthood.
If you remember a few weeks back in the Summer in the Psalms series I shared with you all that the purpose of this Church is to help Christians become mature: that is to help Christians grow up into their God given potential at their age and stage of life. That looks likes helping the lost get found by Jesus and learn to live increasingly in the Freedom He purchased for us! That’s our goal to help one another grow up just like parents strive to do for their children.
And within this task of child rearing, exposing faults is sometimes unfair but it’s also an entirely necessary responsibility for parents.
And so I would like to spend the rest of the morning looking with you at a texts that outlines for us how we are supposed to go about exposing faults within the family of God. The reality is, if we are going to be a community that makes mature Christians, we all need to take up the sometimes unfair process of exposing faults. Let’s read it together.
Matthew 18:15–20 (NIV)
15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18 “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”
The Goal of the Process: v.15b
It’s important that as we begin to assume the responsibility given to us by God to take up the process of exposing one another’s faults that we start first by firmly establishing the goal. The goal is not gossip. The goal is not to tear down someone who hurt you or get back at them. The goal in exposing faults in our brothers and sisters is to do as v. 15 describes, to win them back!
Matthew 18:15 “15 “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.”
Verse 15 says that you move towards someone who has sinned against you with an aim to win them over or win them back! And this is where the issues of fairness creep up in our thinking, don’t they. If I share my hurt, if I confront this person and show them the fault, what if they don’t apologize, what if they get angry, what if they just say more hurtful things to me! Or worse what if they do apologize and now I have to be friends with them again. Whose to say they won’t hurt me again!?
This goal, to win our brothers and sisters back, is not always one we truly desire is it? It’s risky business the process of holding one another accountable, it’s not necessarily fair, especially when the person who’s being confronted should know better! It’s not always fun or fair to expose faults, but it is loving Church and it is what faithfulness to Christ looks like lived out in Christian community.
The goal in exposing faults is not to condemn! It’s to save, to protect and reconcile the relationship!
Think about this for a second, who wakes up in the morning and just out of no where decides to cheat on their spouse or murder their brother, or embezzle money from their boss? No one makes split second decisions to sin in life altering ways! No, sin builds upon other lesser sins. As God tells Cain in Genesis, sin is like a lion crouching at our doors waiting to consume all of us. But it’s a slow fade, the slide of sin. Death & destruction from sin don’t typically happen like the flip of a switch. No, Sin builds. It always takes you farther than you ever intended to go, further and further down the rabbit whole of destruction.
And so, while it might not always be fair, you and I have the responsibility of love to be on the look out for this lion at work in the lives of our fellow Christians to help protect one another! You and I have the responsibility to be our brothers’ keeper.
You see, to allow sin to run rampant in someone’s life and say nothing isn’t minding your own business. Nor is saying nothing a neutral action. Saying nothing is not only unloving, it’s far worse then that; it’s hateful!
I’ve used this analogy before, but you all would fire a doctor who sees cancer on one of your scans but doesn’t want to rock the boat and so he decides to keep it to himself because he cares more about his own comfort than he does your life. That’s not love. It’s malpractice. It’s hate and it’s unacceptable for Christ followers. As Christians we must love one another enough to take the risk of exposing faults to our brother or sisters’ for the sake of their salvation and their growth and maturity in Jesus.
Much like a good Doctor tells us the truth about what we have when we’re sick so we can get treatment, exposing faults and sin in others has at it’s aim to win people back from death and destruction as well. It’s a protective act and it’s also a restorative act. We do this to protect our brothers and sisters because yes, you are your brothers keeper and so am I. We do this to protect and also to restore relationships! And for many this too will seem unwanted and unfair.
I’m sure most of us could think of a relationship in our lives that has been destroyed by sin. I’m sure many of us have lost relationships because of sin and for a lot of us we’re glad to be rid of them! Right, how many have thought, I hate them, I’ll forgive them in my heart but I hope I never see them again!
Listen I realize the level of hurt that can be done to us and I’m not saying what was done to you was right, but in love, what if Jesus took this attitude toward you? I’m glad to be rid of him! I’m glad I never have to come in contact with her again! What if Jesus would have taken that attitude with you? You would be lost forever, eternally separated from God. But Jesus didn’t do that! He moved towards you in love! He moved towards you to save you from the destruction of sin and forgive you, but he went further than just forgiveness. He didn’t just make peace with us and agree to tolerate us or to put up with us from a distance! He restored the friendship. He united Himself with us in deep and meaningful relationship!
This is the goal of Matthew 18, to protect our fellow Christians against sin and to restore what sin breaks! You can’t just say “I forgive you but I don’t want anything to do with you!” That’s not the heart of Matthew 18. The heart of Matthew 18 is the radical love of Jesus, that says I know what you did and I need you to know how it hurt me, but I forgive you because Christ forgave me and I would like for you to still be in life!
I realize this doesn’t always happen. I realize the goal isn’t always possible, and that sometimes relationships can’t be fully restored this side of heaven due to the need for healthy boundaries to protect abuse victims and prevent further abuse, I get all that, but our goal and our desire as we seek to love our brothers and sisters by exposing faults, should be reconciliation, reconciliation of them to Jesus and to us in relationship!
That’s the goal of Matthew 18 and I also want to point out before we look at the process who Matthew 18 is for.
The People of the Process: (vv. 15a)
This process is for brothers and sisters, that means professing believers in Christ! I’m not saying there’s never a time to talk with unbelievers about sin and salvation, there absolutely is, but I think you’ll find that confronting unbelievers about disobedience to a God they don’t believe in to be relatively unproductive. There’s work to be done there, but it’s a different kind of work than what’s outlined here in Matthew 18. This process, here, is for people who profess to be Christian and with whom you go to Church or have close relationships.
While this isn’t explicitly stated in v. 15, I think it’s implied or expected. This verse assumes that you’re close enough to the potential offender in a relationship and in community with them to see the issues first hand. You haven’t heard about it at the coffee shop! You did catch wind of the issue through the grapevine or at the “prayer” meeting. It’s not gossip or hearsay. You witnessed it!
And this Church is why it’s so important that you all don’t just attend a service here once a week but that you begin to do life with several people who are a part of this Church! If we’re going to love one another as Christ calls us to, then we have to know each other beyond our Sunday best!
Right, you all look good on Sunday morning. You’re all pretty and done up. You come in with smiles on. We can all fake it for one hour on Sunday, but when you’re in your connection groups, when you’re investing in meaningful relationships outside of Sunday morning, those people, your fridge friends, they know what’s up! You’re not fine. Everything is not ok. You’re not feeling blessed. You’ve got serious anger issues at work. You’ve got a drinking problem. You hate your Father or your Mother or both. You are on the verge of divorce! You are in a back and forth with one of your neighbors! You’re reckless with money and about to declare bankruptcy! All of us, we’re not fine. We don’t have it all together and many of us have serious sin in our lives, some that we’re aware of but much of it we’re ignorant too.
Which is why it’s important that you and I strive to be keepers of our brothers and sisters in Christ and take the responsibility of exposing fault seriously.
The one exposing the fault here in Matthew 18, knows the person well. They are living life in close proximity to one another, close enough to get messy. Close enough to get hurt. They don't bring speculations or gossip, they are bringing first hand knowledge of a fault and offense. And they aren’t bringing it to condemn or crush, they are expressing concern, gently and privately, in hopes to win the person over, to win them back! To protect the person and reconcile the relationship.
Make sense?
Alright so we’ve established the goal of the process and the people for whom the process is for, now what is this process exactly?
The Process:
Well, Matthew 18:15 says you have seen some concerning behavior from a Christian friend and decided because you love them and know sin will always lead them farther than they intend to go you need to bring the issue to their attention.
So you set up a meeting in private, and you sit down with them. In love you say I’ve noticed this behavior or this speech from you and I’m concerned. I’m concerned where this might lead you.
Essentially in love, you expose the fault you perceive. You make your concern known and in love speak truth. Give the person ability to push back. Give them the benefit of the doubt. I could be misunderstanding things here, but hear me out. Is what I’m seeing reality? I’m concerned for you. I love you. I’m afraid of where what I’m seeing may lead you, do I have any right to be concerned?
And Church, this might be all that’s ever required! Through this gentle wake up call, you may have exposed the lion crouching at the door and made your fellow brother wise to it’s deceit and attack! They may thank you for pointing out their errors and repent, seek your forgiveness and Christ’s and head down a new and different route. If so, Praise Jesus! You’ve won them back!
Or, they may respond poorly! Who the heck are you! You don’t know what you’re talking about! Why don’t you worry about the log in your own eye instead of butting into my business! Or they down play it and dismiss you, you’re just misunderstanding the situation. Then they may justify and explain away, while owning none of it.
16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'
At that point, it’s time to double back. You as the confronting party need to prayerfully reconsider. Maybe you're seeing things wrongly. Perhaps there is no fault to expose, but if there is. It’s time to bring in some more people. This doesn’t mean go find a coalition of other people who hate so-and-so more than you and are just going to pile it on! No go find some objective godly friends who also have a relational connection and can evaluate and establish the evidence and then go back to the offending party.
JimBob, we’re concerned for you! We’ve all seen this type of behavior. You’ve said this or done this. Honestly you’ve hurt us with your actions and we believe them to be contrary to God’s word! This is not how we as the people of God act! We think you might need some help and we think you might need to repent and turn away from this thing!
At that point, the person may realize they are indeed in the wrong and we can start the process of forgiveness and reconciliation. Or they may dig in their heels even deeper.
17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
And if so, that’s when you go to the elders of the Church. Re-evaluate and pray with them and then if deemed necessary they confront the issue with you and the other party.
If again the person is deemed to be in sin and refuses to confess and turn away from it, at that point Matthew 18 says that the Church is to treat such a person as a tax collector or a gentile.
Essentially, this last part looks like calling into question the genuineness of the persons faith, going so far as to withhold communion from them until their is reconciliation and/or repentance.
Matt Chandler summarize the process quite well with this quote. He says, “They will know we are Christians by our love, because when we’re frustrated with someone, we don’t herd up with everyone else and complain about them and talk bad about them and talk about their weaknesses in a group, but we love them enough to sit down and go, “Hey, can I ask you a question? Is this going on? I just picked up on this. I’m a little nervous for you. I love you. I’m concerned this is going to end here.” Then, if they’re like, “I can handle it…show me my fault, show me my sin or error,” if they say that, the gates just opened and you’ve gained a brother back! If not, then you can head down the long process of seeking to win them over by involving friends and eventually Church leadership. And if at the end of that they still won’t see the light, it might be time to call into question their faith.
Here’s the deal Church, as I said at the beginning we exist to help make mature believers: to help people act up to their God-given potential for their age and stage of life and that potential has an example and a standard. It’s Jesus. We’re meant to look more and more like Him in how we think, how we behave, how we speak. He’s our standard. And we’re meant to be our brothers keeper in regards to helping each other grow up more and more into the image of Christ.
While we aren’t called to be judgmental of those outside of the Church, Jesus does expect that we will operate as fruit inspectors for our brothers and sisters inside the Church. And in accordance with that, He tells us this business about binding and loosing. While we can’t give or withhold salvation because we are not God and while we cannot forgive sins again because we are not God, we can inspect fruit and expose fault.
If someone professes to believe in Jesus and their lives are shown to bear out that belief (albeit imperfectly) then we can with a large degree of certainty assure that person of their salvation, we can loose them in the freedom and grace of Jesus. But if someone else makes the same professions and then ceases to bear any of the fruit Jesus tells us to expect from a born again believer like a heart broken over sin and a desire to obey Him, then we can bind them to the truth and expose them to the dangerous place they are in, despite what they say, they may be in danger of not actually knowing Christ in a life saving way!
Jesus Himself said, if you love me you’ll obey my commandments. And the order of His words are a big deal. Love for Jesus comes first by faith alone but that faith never remains alone, never, no it bears fruit in keeping with repentance! Our faith produces the fruit of obedience and if it doesn’t (again we’re not talking of perfection here, but something more akin to progression) if our faith isn’t making progress to some degree in our lives we have reason to question our salvation and honestly the salvation of our brothers and sisters, again with the aim of winning them back to us and to Christ!
I realize that this process isn’t a fun one. I realize it’s often times not a fair one either, but cultivating a community that fosters Christian maturity requires that we all take up the sometimes unfair process of exposing faults in our fellow brothers and sisters.
Faithfulness to Jesus looks like loving like Jesus and loving like Jesus means we’ll love those who the world says is unfair for us to love like our enemies (which we talked about last week) and that we’ll also love our brothers sisters enough to risk the relationship we have with them for the sake of their salvation and their maturity in Christ!
And Lord knows we need prayer for this don’t we. Loving our enemies. Praying for those that persecute us. Lovingly speaking hard truths to those who are close to us. We can’t do any of this without the power of the Spirit or the strength of God working through us, so what do you say, why don’t we pray?
Pray.