The Misuse of Matthew 18.15-17 for Conflict Management, Airing Personal Grievances, and Institutional Control
Introduction
In Matthew 18.15-17,
Jesus says,
15
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. 16 But if he
does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may
be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 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 (ESV).
Is this passage about
conflict management, airing personal grievances, and ultimately about
institutional control, or is it about addressing sin, pastoral care of sinners,
and a Christian community's purity?
The Text is about Dealing
with Sin, Not about Conflict Resolution
This passage is used,
rightly, to address a progressive approach to deal with a sinner’s sin in the
church, mentioned in verse 17. The progression presents an ethic of
care for the sinner in which care is taken to seek the sinner’s restitution
rather than condemnation, if at all possible. By first approaching
the sinner individually, gossip and overly zealous judgement is
avoided. By approaching him or her with two or three witnesses,
proof rather than opinion is given priority, and a further opportunity to bring
restoration is offered. By seeking a judgement of the entire church,
factional views are avoided. More will be said later about the
ethics of this passage.
Each step of the
disciplinary action has Old Testament precedent. The role of the OT
at each stage, not just with the two or three witnesses,[1] needs
to be recognized for a proper interpretation of the passage. The Old
Testament passages have to do with giving a personal warning to a person of his
or her sin, establishing the fact that he or she has sinned in a legal context,
and bringing communal restoration to the unclean person seeking to be cleansed
or communal ostracism if the person does not. Note that these texts
are not about conflict resolution. They are about stages of
confronting a sinner with sin, preferably to bring restoration but also, if
ultimately necessary, judgement.
1. Individual
Stage
The first step of the
disciplinary process is to go to the person rather ignore a
sin. Jesus’ statement establishes that the one wronged should go
alone to address the sin with the sinful person. Similarly, God
tells Ezekiel to warn a wicked person that he or she might repent and not die
in his or her iniquity. If Ezekiel does not do so, the sinner’s
blood will be on him (Ezekiel 33.8-9). This passage continues to say
that the righteousness of a person will not save him or her when he or she
sins, but a repentant sinner will not fall by his or her wickedness when he or
she turns away from it (v. 12).
A textual problem arises
in Matthew 18.15. Did the original reading say ‘sins’ or ‘sins
against you’ (ἁμαρτήσῃ [εἰς σὲ])? As noted in the translation given
above, the ESV reads ‘If your brother sins against you….’ The KJV,
NRSV, NLT, among other translations, also have ‘against
you.’ The NIV, however, has ‘If your brother or sister sins...’
(without ‘against you’). The meaning of the passage turns on whether
we include ‘with you’ or not. Is the passage about confronting a
sinner with his sin or about how to address someone who has sinned against
you? The former reading has more to do with the pastoral care of a
sinner, steps in church discipline, and attempts to restore a
sinner. The latter reading would include a concern for how to
address personal grievances and conflict. My understanding of the
passage and my view on the textual issue lead me to understand the passage to
be about the pastoral care of a sinner and not about personal conflict. In
fact, the issue is clearly stated as being about sin, and the matter of
resolving differences is quite foreign to the context. Yet the
passage is regularly cited as a Biblical way to handle conflict.
The above reference to
Ezekiel 33.8-9 as a background text to Matthew 18.15 would tip the scales in
favour of reading Jesus’ statement as a statement about dealing with sin. The
comment before that had to do with how to deal with one’s own sin:
And
if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It
is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two
feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes
you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life
with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire (Matthew
18.8-9).
Matthew 18.10-14 then
turns to dealing with the sin of others with the parable of the Lost
Sheep. One is to go after the lost sheep instead of despising it as
God rejoices over a restored sinner and does not want one to
perish. Following the parable is our passage, Matthew 18.15-17,
which, in context, clarifies how to go after a lost sheep, i.e., a
sinner. The context does not suggest conflict management or personal
grievance.
Also, the parallel in
Luke 17.3 says, ‘If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive
him….’ There is no ‘against you’ in the text. Finally, a
passage in the Holiness Code seems to explain the concern at this stage of
dealing with an individual’s sin:
You
shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand
up against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD. 17 “You shall not hate
your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor,
lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a
grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as
yourself: I am the LORD (Leviticus 19.16-18).
Paul also offers this
advice to the Galatians--probably based directly on Leviticus but also perhaps
coming through Jesus' teaching (since v. 2 speaks further of fulfilling the law
of Christ--i.e., loving one's neighbour as oneself [Lev. 19.18; Mt. 22.39]):
My
friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the
Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you
yourselves are not tempted (Galatians 6.1).
The textual problem in
Matthew 18.15 must also be considered for the interpretation that Jesus is
telling one to go after the sinner, not, more specifically, one who sinned
against him. The majority of manuscripts, including some (early)
uncials, provide the longer reading of ‘sinned against
you’. However, we do not count manuscripts but evaluate them
according to their strengths, paying attention to the excellence of individual
manuscripts and to the explanation that accounts for the various
readings. In this case, two early, excellent Egyptian uncials lack
the ‘against you’ (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus).
Scholars are divided on
which reading is likely. For example, Craig Evans accepts the
‘against you’ reading without discussion of the textual
evidence. While he notes two passages in Proverbs that, he believes,
support a general statement (3.12 and 25.9), he also notes T Gad 6.3:
‘Love, therefore, one another from the heart; and if one sin against you, cast
forth the poison of hate and speak peaceably to him, and in your soul hold no
guile, and if he confess and repent, forgive him.[2] Thus,
there is Jewish support for a word about forgiving personal
grievances. However, the Testament of Gad is not speaking
about dealing with sin on the person’s part, only about forgiveness, and so
fits better as a parallel for Peter’s question in v. 21. On the
other hand, Richard France suggested following the shorter reading, finding
that the ‘personal grievance’ reading introduced in v. 21 is premature at this
stage of the text.[3]
Explanations about how
either the ‘against you’ (εἰς σε) or its omission might have arisen in the text
both consider what scribes copying manuscripts might have heard being read to
them. The previous verb, ἁμαρτήσῃ, has a similar final
sound to εἰς σε. One could imagine one scribe omitting this or
another adding it for the same reason. Bruce Metzger explained that
the decision of the United Bible Societies’ committee included considering v.
21’s similar εἰς σε. Peter asks, ‘Lord, how often will my
brother sin against me (εἰς ἐμὲ), and I forgive him?’ A copyist may
have intentionally added ‘against you’ in the earlier verse 15 to fit with this
further discussion of dealing with a sinner. Equally, they noted, a
copyist may have wished to broaden the text so it dealt not only with sin
against one but sin in general.[4]
Thus, while the committee included 'against you' in the Greek text, they gave
the certainty of the reading a low mark. The current Greek text omits it.
Having considered the
evidence and suggestions, I would, as already noted, follow the shorter reading
as the Greek text is now rendered. The strong, early manuscript
evidence, the previous parable, and the other literary evidence tilt the argument
in this direction for me. On this reading, the passage is not about
conflict management or personal grievances but about confronting a person who
has sinned.
2. A
Second or Third Witness Stage
Then, following Jewish
legal practice, other witnesses are to be called in if the person refuses to
listen. A charge against someone could not be established by one
witness alone: it had to be established by two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy
17.6; 19.15). This principle of justice was, for example, applied to
murder (Numbers 35.30; Deuteronomy 17.6), but, as France notes, it was also
applied to cases more generally (as in John 8.17; 2 Cor. 13.1; 1 Tim. 5.19;
Heb. 10.28).[5]
3. The
Whole Church Stage
Finally, the entire
church is to admonish a person over his or her sin. Numbers 19.16-22
instructs the people of Israel how an unclean person is to be restored. He
may have become unclean by touching a dead person or human bone, and so he must
become clean again. If the man does not cleanse himself, he is ‘to
be cut off from the midst of the assembly, since he has defiled the sanctuary
of the Lord’ (Numbers 19.20). This passage is similar to the
instruction of Jesus in Matthew 18.17: it is about restoring a person or, if
the person will not become clean, being cut off completely (ἐξολεθρευθήσεται)
from the assembly (Greek: συναγωγῆς; Hebrew: qāhāl). Paul
applies this teaching to the case of a man sexually involved with his father’s
wife (1 Corinthians 5). The purity of the community requires a communal
excommunication of a person who refuses to change his sinful ways.
The Misuse of This Text
in Institutions
Having argued that this
passage is not about conflict management but about the process of confronting a
person who has sinned, another misuse of the text needs to be
addressed. The passage is not a text for how to resolve conflict in
an institution where power, office, and work are involved. That this
passage is regularly cited by Christian organizations and institutions is
troublesome.
The problem in using the
text in this way is mainly when the passage is used as a way to engage a person
in authority. A manager, for example, might say that the Biblical
way to resolve issues in the institution is to come to him with any
complaints. What this means is a person whose very job is at stake
is directed to come personally to the person in power to confront
him. In Jesus’ directions, precisely the opposite relational dynamic
is in view. The person with power in the church context is the
person who goes after the sinner to tell him he has sinned. The
sinner does not have power in the relationship. Furthermore, the
passage urges the person who has seen the sinner’s sin to go to him and not
leave the situation unaddressed because, as the previous parable stated, God
does not want anyone to perish and rejoices over a restored
sinner. The passage, far from being about conflict management or
resolving differences, is about caring enough for others to point out their
sins, and not doing so as a challenge to persons in authority but despite one’s
own authority—for not being the sinner—in the relationship.
As I have elsewhere
argued, Matthew 17.24-20.28 is actually an extended teaching on discipleship
that teaches how Jesus’ disciples are to ‘become little’ or humble themselves
in different ways.[6] The
chapter begins with Jesus’ saying that the disciples need to become like little
children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (18.3). The shepherd is not
to abandon the sinner but is to care enough for him to go after him (18.10-14)
to point out his sin in order to try to restore him and so gain a brother
(18.15). When this passage is read in reference to conflict
management and resolving personal grievances, it is turned into a very
different sort of teaching. The person going to talk to the other
person does not go out of care to restore a sinner so much as in fear about
whether a conflict can be resolved. If he is urged on the basis of
this verse to go to a superior in an institution, he goes with the heavy burden
of voicing his grievances in the institution to a superior. The
already humble person in the relationship is humbled further in such a
scenario.
Authoritarian managers,
in particular, want to stop gossip which, of course, happens especially in
abusive situations. They also want to eliminate complaints, just as
totalitarian regimes always oppose free speech. Matthew 18.15
regularly gets dredged up in such situations in Christian organizations as a
proof-text to stop people from speaking to one another, processing workplace
problems, and figuring out together what needs to be done. Gossip
is, of course, a problem when speech is not used to try to rectify situations
and does not have restoration of sinners as an objective (cf. 2 Corinthians
12.20). That said, Matthew 18.15 is not about this, and it is
certainly not a text to use to shut down speech, curtail grievances, and deal
with conflict. It is, as already argued, a passage about how an
equal—a ‘brother’—should care enough for a sinner (someone now with less power
in the relationship) to speak to him about his sin in the hope of restoring him
to fellowship. Yet it initiates a process that has the purity of the
community in view as well, such that the sinner might be expelled from the
assembly of believers if he does not repent. No manager, pulling out
Matthew 18.15, thinks that he should be fired if he does not repent when
workers come to him about a grievance because such leaders think the passage
gives them a way to control speech and conflict in the workplace.
Conclusion
Matthew 18.15-17 is so
often treated as a passage about the management of grievances and conflict that
reading the text as a way to address sin, to care for sinners, and to keep the
Christian community pure must seem to be a surprising
challenge. This is, however, precisely what the passage
says. The passage is actually abused when it is used by persons in
authority in Christian organizations to try to control speech and make workers
reveal their grievances to the management. The passage is turned
into a burdensome passage that controls speech in the
workplace. Indeed, it is not a text putting a person in the lower
position in a relationship in a further bind of going to an authority to
confess complaints.
[1]
R. T. France, e.g., only notes
Deuteronomy 19.15 as background (for the witnesses). The Gospel
of Matthew (NICNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).
[2]
Craig Evans, Matthew (New
Cambridge Bible Commentary; Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), p. 334.
[3]
Ibid., p. 689.
[4]
Bruce Metzger, A Textual
Commentary of the Greek New Testament (London: UBS, 1971), p. 15.
[5]
Ibid., p. 693.
[6]
Rollin G. Grams, ‘Issues Facing
Missions Today 22: The Disciples are not ‘Leaders’ but ‘Little Ones’ in
Matthew’s Gospel; online at https://bibleandmission.blogspot.com/2014/09/issues-facing-missions-today-22.html.
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