An essential characteristic of being a church is that it address sin. Overlarge churches easily lose authority and relational structures that are important for a church to be a church, a community considering itself a 'body' in close fellowship and concerned with health and holiness. Where a church or a group in a church does address sin or perceived sin, however, it might become structurally impaired and reduced to 'groupthink'. These matters can be addressed with regard to the process that Jesus lays out in Matthew 18.15-20 to address sin in the church. The passage in the ESV reads as follows:
‘If another
member of the church* sins
against you,* go and point
out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you
have regained that one.* 16But
if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that
every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17If
the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the
offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a
Gentile and a tax-collector. 18Truly I tell you, whatever you
bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be
loosed in heaven. 19Again, truly I tell you, if two of you
agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in
heaven. 20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am
there among them.’
In this essay, I would like to draw out six points from the passage.
First, the passage addresses the confrontation of a sinner. A more
literal translation—one to be preferred—of verse 15 might be, ‘If your brother
sins’ or, according to some manuscripts, ‘If your brother sins against you’. The parallel passage in Luke 17.3-4 has both:
Pay attention to
yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4
and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven
times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”
Thus, whether the sinner sins
against you or in some other way, a fellow Christian, a ‘brother’, is obligated
to point the sin out. This is also a
parallel to what Paul says in Galatians 6.1: ‘Brothers, if
anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him
in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.’ Christians are to look after one another not
by affirming each other, dismissing sin or underplaying its significance, but
by pointing it out.
Second, and this seen in the verses
quoted, a Christian is not simply to point out the person’s sin but is to do it
with the goal of restoration. The
Matthew passage is preceded with Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the 99 safe sheep to go
after the one lost sheep. Paul adds that
the spiritual person confronting a person about sin is to do so in a spirit of
gentleness and with self-awareness as we are all vulnerable to sin. The ‘spiritual’ are not invulnerable to sin
and should not be self-righteous.
When someone sins in the church,
it is easy to take sides. One may
automatically side with the weaker person as a victim, such as when a woman is
assumed to be telling the truth about sexual abuse or to be right in the case
of a marital break-up. Whether or not
she is right, the point of this text is to help the sinner. We want to prune a tree, but this is the
wrong image for the situation. The right
image is to heal the body, not cut off an ailing limb. This is not so say that we ignore the injured
party at all, but the Christian way is also to want to bring repentance, forgiveness, and
reconciliation. The shepherd does not
say, ‘Good, that stray sheep is gone.’
Third, restoration happens
through repentance. The passages are very clear that the goal is not some sort
of inclusion without repentance or even inclusion by denying that the sin is a
sin. They do not allow a process in the church
that accommodates sin simply in order to maintain unity and peace. Indeed, if the sinner is recalcitrant and
unwilling to repent, he is ultimately to be excluded from the church.
True repentance involves contrition--sorrow for sin. We are not to be like the child who says 'sorry' because he or she is ordered to do so by a parent. One should not 'repent' without being sorry for sin. Repentance also involves an amendment of ways, a turning from sin to righteousness. Repentance further involves, at times, restitution where wrong has been done and can be righted. Finally, it involves forgiveness, which allows reconciliation. Just so is the lost sheep returned to the flock. The process of restoration, then, is: confrontation about sin, repentance for the sin, contrition (sorrow for the sin), amendment of ways, forgiveness extended to the repentant sinner, restitution where another has been harmed by the sinner, and reconciliation.
Fourth, confrontation is to take place one on one, avoiding groupthink. This might be part of what Paul means by doing so with gentleness. In any case, the danger in a church is to spread the news about a sin and to discuss it in a group. The group can begin to function as a unit over against the individual, ostracizing him before he can even repent. 'Groupthink' in a church or some clique in the church may not only work against restoring a sinner but also to exclude someone who has not even sinned. If a group has a strong relationship to one of its members, it will take the side of a member against someone outside the group who is related to the member. This often happens when a marriage struggles and the group takes the side of its member no matter what the real situation is.
In 1972, psychologist Irving Janis identified three preconditions, three
types, and eight symptoms of groupthink.[1] He defined groupthink as
a mode of
thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive
in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation
to realistically appraise alternative courses of action,[2]
Jarvis had different examples of
groupthink than a church in mind (the decision of John Kennedy's advisors to invade the Bay of Pigs despite all the evidence that this would be disastrous, e.g.), but one can see the dangers a church has in
such a definition. We saw how groupthink managed the Covid crisis, denying the origins of the pandemic, denying medical evidence about what is best to do, and pushing false advice. Groupthink occurs in a deeply
involved, cohesive group. Within churches, certain in-groups easily and all
too often form structurally that create the perfect situation for groupthink: a prayer group, a Bible study group, a choir group, and so
forth. The sin of a sinner is easily and
eagerly discussed as a way for the group to affirm its own identity ('we are right') and cohesiveness (excluding the other) rather than to restore the sinner to fellowship.
Even worse, groupthink can
misidentify a person and accuse him of sin when there is no sin. This easily happens when a member of the
group is affirmed in his or her wrong accusation of another, such as in a marriage or regarding some incident. Like buffalo, the group coheres as a group around their own in the face of a perceived danger. The excluded person is demonized, becomes a Cretan to be destroyed by defamation and slander, if not also formal accusations to legal authorities and courts.
According to Jarvis, the three
preconditions to groupthink are a high cohesiveness in the group, certain
structural faults of the group such as ‘insulation from outside opinions,
preventing fresh perspectives from challenging internal consensus’, and a sense
of anxiety or high stress of the group.[3] The last of these might be a group’s recent
failures, moral discomfort, or time pressure.
In church situations, groups exist with high cohesiveness, structural faults
(as noted), and anxiety when a sin or perceived sin or a wrongfully identified
sinner creates disruption in the group’s community. Conditions are right for groupthink, and this
is particularly destructive when a person is wrongfully accused of something.
Jarvis’ three types of groupthink
are associated with the eight symptoms, as follows:
Type 1: Overestimations of the
group
Symptom 1:
Illusion of Invulnerability (‘excessive optimism and risk taking. Members believe nothing can go wrong and
dismiss warnings as overly cautious’)
Symptom 2:
Belief in Inherent Morality of the Group (‘unquestioned assumption that the
group’s cause is just’)
Type 2: Closed-Mindedness
Symptom 3: Collective rationalisation
(explaining away warnings and contradictory
information)
Symptom 4: Stereo-typing
outgroups (‘Viewing opponents as too weak, evil, biased, or stupid to pose
serious threats or counter the group’s plans’)
Type 3: Pressures toward
uniformity
Symptom 5:
Self-censorship (‘suppressing personal doubts’, minimizing concerns to maintain
group harmony)
Symptom
6: Illusion of unanimity (‘mistaking silence for agreement’ in the group)
Symptom 7:
Direct pressure on dissenters (‘questioning the loyalty of members who express
doubts, pressuring them to conform to the group consensus’
Symptom 8:
Self-appointed mindguards (‘members protecting the group from dissenting
information by filtering out contrary evidence and viewpoints’)
When a group forms a viewpoint, individuals support each other by dispelling doubts, presenting evidence, weaving it into a narrative, distorting facts, trashing the whole person for a sin or imagined sin, and so forth. The person may not be guilty at all, but groupthink will make him into the worst rogue imaginable despite his innocence. By telling a Christian to go privately to a brother who has sinned or who has sinned against him (both), Jesus avoids groupthink in the church. The first step is pastoral, and the process is meant to restore the lost sheep.
Fifth, by taking one or two others to confront the person, the group
dynamics of groupthink are further halted by introducing judicial proceedings. Having refused to repent, the question of
whether the person really has sinned or not must be addressed. Witnesses are now required. This judicial process is important because
the person may be wrongfully accused. He deserves to face his accusers, and he deserves a fair trial. A judicial process is meant to protect the innocent person, whether that is the one sinned against or the one wrongly accused of having sinned. If
the person has sinned and refuses to repent, the person needs to be expelled
from the church and ostracized. Paul
provides a real example of this in 1 Corinthians 5 when removing a person who has
sexually engaged, possibly married, his father’s wife. Paul further affirms the church’s role in
making judicial judgements in the next chapter. In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul tells the same church to restore someone who has been judged and has repented (this seems to be a different person). In Matthew 18, this judicial role of the church is what Jesus has in
mind when he says,
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. 19Again, truly I tell you,
if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by
my Father in heaven (vv. 18-19).
These words are directly about
the church’s deciding matters about a sinner’s sin. The church may, metaphorically, bind or loose
the sinner, as long as there is not a single person passing judgement. These verses have wrongly been used in reference to prayer, but that is not at all their context: this is about the church's judicial role.
A sixth matter to observe in the
Matthean passage is that the situation between a sinner and the person going to
him to tell him his sin is not about a person going to a person in a superior
position of authority and doing so. This
is especially so if the right reading of the text is that the sinner has sinned
against the brother who then confronts him.
In that case, the one who has been sinned against is in an inferior
position, if anything. He is not a
manager or leader in authority who is going to sort out an employee. A person sinned against struggles to confront
the sinner.
Matthew 18.15 has often been
misused in this way. A leader of an organization,
wanting to suppress dissent and exact loyalty from others, quotes this verse
and says, ‘If you have a problem with something or with me, you are not to
start gossiping but are to come directly to me and tell me.’ In Jesus’ example, the person going to the
sinner is the shepherd, the sinner is the stray sheep. The leader of an organization using this
verse wrongly turns the situation upside down: he is expecting the sheep to go
to the shepherd, so to speak.
Related Blog Posts:
Judgement
among the People of God
[1]
A good summary of this is ‘Groupthink Theory: Irving Janis’ 8 Symptoms, Causes
& Historical Examples,’ Psychology Notes HQ Editorial Staff (March 22, 2026);
https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/groupthink/
(accessed 26 May, 2026).
[2]
I. L. Janis, ‘Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy
decisions and fiascoes’ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
[3]
‘Groupthink Theory’, Ibid.
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