[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 18:15–20. Delivered 28 September 1980, Montreal.]
Today I particularly want to draw our thoughts to the Lord's teaching concerning friendship. There is something indescribably beautiful about friendship. If you have a friend that every time you think of him your heart feels warm, a friend who brings sweetness and a kind of unspeakable comfort to your mind — if you have one such friend you are exceedingly fortunate, and if you have two you are beyond description blessed. The mark of a true friend is that you don't have to think of what to say next. With a true friend the silence is perfectly lovely; you don't have to entertain each other or manufacture conversation. There is an inner understanding, an inner harmony. And yet such friends are rarer than jewels. You may be willing to pay a few dollars for a jewel, but where do you find such a friend? You cannot buy him with money.
The problem is not only that such friends are hard to find but that they are also hard to keep. We are afraid to build close friendships because we are afraid to be hurt. When you are intimate with someone you are vulnerable — easy to hurt — and so we build walls of defense. We close ourselves up for safety. But of course, if you are closed, you never have friends. This tension — between the depth of friendship and the fear of being hurt — is precisely what the Lord is addressing in Matthew 18:15–20. The whole of chapter 18 deals with one fundamental issue: the problem of sin in the church, and how to deal with it, specifically among Christians.
One of the most beautiful accounts in the Old Testament is the friendship of Ruth and Naomi. Let me read: "Intreat me not to leave you, or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also, if even death parts me from you." That oath — "may the Lord do so to me and more, if I allow even death to part me from you" — is the mark of a love stronger than death. Where do you find such friendship today? Such loyalty, such openness, such total self-giving? The most beautiful thing in human life, and I challenge anyone to name something more beautiful, is this kind of friendship. When David said of Jonathan, "Your love is better than the love of women," he was saying that there was a spiritual bond here that went beyond all external attraction. Love that holds because the bond of union is spiritual and not physical — that survives poverty, loss of beauty, brain damage, every outward change — that is the friendship the church is meant to have.
Now let me read the passage we are expounding today. Matthew 18:15–20: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
The result of sin between people is always the closing down of communication. Have you noticed this? If you are in a bad relationship with someone, communication either slows or stops completely. The sure mark of any sin between two people is the breakdown of communication. The church today is full of very defensive people — people who have been hurt and have built thick walls. When someone offends you, the natural response is: I'm not talking to you anymore. Finish. But if you shut down communication the moment there is offense, the friendship cannot survive, and the church becomes simply a formal gathering of closed, polite strangers.
The Lord's teaching here is based on Leviticus 19:17–18: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Notice: if you do not speak to the person who has offended you, what happens? You will hate him in your heart — maybe not outwardly, perhaps you still smile when you see him — but in your heart the bitterness builds. And if hatred grows in your heart, though it was he who offended you, you become the one who sins. So his offense has stumbled you into sin. And furthermore, if you don't tell him his fault, he cannot correct himself — he may not even know what he did wrong. By communicating, both of you are blessed: you don't have to hate him anymore, and he can put right what he did not know was wrong.
The first step, then, when a brother sins against you: go to him alone, personally, one to one. Keep the lines of communication open. Even though you are the one who has been hurt, even though you risk being hurt a second time when he says it was your fault, not his — go. The Lord says: at all costs, by whatever means possible, keep those lines open. And notice that in verse 15 the whole point is to gain your brother, not to win an argument. If he listens, you have gained your brother. Then, if he does not listen — if he insists on his version — take one or two others along. These witnesses are not there to take your side. They are there to witness that you are handling this matter in a correct and loving and charitable way. They must be impartial. If you arrive shouting and calling him a hypocrite, those witnesses will report your behavior to the church, not just his. Two or three witnesses are present to see that you behaved as a Christian should. This is why the scripture gives this procedure with such care — not to gang up on the offender, but to ensure that truth is established and that love is maintained throughout the process.
# True Friend — Matthew 18:15–20 (Part B) — The Four Powers of Spiritual Unity; Binding and Loosing; God's Special Presence
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 18:15–20, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 28 September 1980, Montreal.]
If after speaking to the brother one to one and then with two or three witnesses, the offender still refuses to listen, the matter is brought before the whole church. And if he still persists in his closed and stubborn attitude, he is to be treated as a Gentile and a tax collector — as someone outside the community of God's people. The church, as Paul calls it in Galatians 6:16, is the Israel of God, the new spiritual Israel. Anyone who claims to be a Christian but who is completely closed to the brothers and sisters in Christ, who cannot be reached by a personal approach, by the witnesses, or by the whole church, demonstrates by that very fact that he does not know what it is to be a Christian. A Christian, by definition, is one who is open to others. Shutting down the lines of communication, refusing to receive truth in love — this is the conduct of a Gentile, not of a member of the spiritual Israel. And so he is cast out. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:11, you do not even eat with someone who professes to be a Christian and yet persists in unrepentant sin. All discipline in the church is meant not to destroy but to bless — to show that person that he is not behaving as a Christian, so that he is brought to his senses before it is too late. By failing to discipline such a person, we allow him to continue thinking all is well when it is not.
Now notice that in verses 16 to 20 the phrase "two or three" appears repeatedly. There is a vital spiritual principle here: the Christian life simply cannot proceed as God intended without openness, union, and agreement between at least two or three people. Without that, there is no real spiritual power and no real progress. Let me draw four things from this passage that flow from this principle.
The first is witness to the truth. Two or three witnesses are needed to establish truth, according to the Old Testament principle of Deuteronomy 17:6. And Deuteronomy 32:30 shows why this matters so much: "How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight?" One person chases a thousand — already remarkable. But two people put not two thousand but ten thousand to flight. The increase is not doubled but tenfold. The effectiveness of two people in harmony is immeasurably greater than the sum of their individual efforts. This is why the witness of two believers is so much more powerful than the witness of one, and why the church so often fails in its witness when its members are isolated from one another and uncoordinated.
The second thing is authority to bind and to loose. Verse 18: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Notice that the "you" here is plural — this authority is not entrusted to a single individual but to a group. The very same words were spoken to Peter in Matthew 16:19, but there they were addressed to the apostle specifically; here they are extended to any group of people who function in genuine spiritual unity before God. The context is the decision about whether a member who refuses to listen shall be retained or cast out of the church. And the astounding promise is that if two or three people, yielded to God and doing his will, make that decision in the Spirit, heaven upholds it. God is willing to entrust his authority to a team of two or three who function together in spiritual unity — not organisational unity, not a committee, not two crooks agreeing to rob a bank, but two or three who are genuinely submitted to God and to one another.
The third thing is favour from the Lord. Verse 19: "If two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven." When there is genuine spiritual unity — when two people are truly open to one another and are praying together in agreement — what they ask will be done. Why? Because the unity itself is the work of the Holy Spirit, and whatever the Spirit has produced in terms of agreement will necessarily be according to God's will. Many times we struggle alone in prayer and feel that the doors of heaven are like brass. But two or three people in the unity of the Spirit, praying together — God delights to answer such prayer, because he sees the love he himself has put in their hearts.
The fourth thing is God's special presence. Verse 20: "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." But isn't God everywhere? Yes — his general presence is everywhere, as Paul says in Acts 17: in him we live and move and have our being. As the psalmist says in Psalm 139: even if I ascend to heaven or descend to hell, you are there. But this verse is not about God's general presence. It is about his special presence — the same kind of special presence that appeared in the burning bush, that dwelt above the cherubim in the holy of holies in the tabernacle. Where two or three are genuinely bound together in commitment to Christ and to one another, with the kind of commitment that Ruth had to Naomi — where you go I go, where you die I die, may God do so to me and more if even death parts me from you — there God's special presence rests. And you will sense it. How many times in a church meeting have you felt: God is here, he is speaking to me now. And then when you leave, the glory seems to have departed. Because alone, you have only the general presence. With two or three bound together in love, you have his special presence to bless and to guide.
So I earnestly pray that you will begin to build a friendship — starting with just one other person. God knows our weakness and brings the challenge down to our level. He says two or three — not fifty, not the whole church at once. Start with one. Pray for one other person, commit yourself to that person, open yourself to that one. Get a prayer partner. Build a one-to-one relationship of genuine spiritual commitment. Then you will discover the four things in this passage: the power of witness to truth, the authority to act in God's name, the favour of God in prayer, and the presence of God among you. And as each of us builds one bridge to one person, and that person builds a bridge to another, soon the whole church will be linked — one to the other — in this bridge-building of open, committed, Christ-like love.