Matthew 19

KingComments

‹ Chapter 18 Matthew — All Chapters Chapter 20 ›

Matthew 19:1

Church Discipline

This section of Mt 18:1-14 deals with a little one and the kingdom. This section of Mt 18:15-20 is about a brother and the church. Just like a little one can go astray, a brother can also go astray. Just as a stray little one must be brought back to the herd, a stray brother must be won.

If a brother goes astray by sinning against another brother, the brother against whom he has sinned must reveal the same spirit of gentleness as the Lord supposes in the case of a little one. He should not sit down and wait for the other person to confess his sin. He must go there himself and convince the brother of the wrong he has done and thus win him. He has to go alone. Nobody should know about it. If the brother listens and confesses his sin, the brother is won. Nobody knows about it and never needs to know because it is confessed and therefore gone.

However, it may happen that the brother does not listen. Then he has to take one or two brothers with him and look for the other. Thus there are two or three witnesses to the conversation that then takes place. The intention is that the brother, in the presence of one or two witnesses, will still be convinced of the sin he has committed. If he is convinced and confesses, the brother is also won.

However, if he does not listen, a report must be made to the church. However, it is necessary that the report is made by two or three witnesses, because only then is the report acceptable to the church. According to the report, the brother is visited for the third time, this time by a delegation of the church. If he does not listen to the church either, the case is settled for him against whom sin is committed. For him the brother is no longer a brother, but he is like the Gentile and the tax collector with whom he cannot associate.

It is clear that the church cannot let the matter run its course. Maybe some more attempts can be made to bring the straying brother to repentance. If he persists in his sin despite all the loving efforts to win him, the church has the responsibility and the authority to bind sin to such a person. He must then be regarded as an evil one and remove him from among the church (1 Corinthians 5:13). This very last act of the church seals the fact that any attempt to win the stray brother has failed.

By binding sin to the person, the person is surrendered to the Lord with the prayer that He will yet work repentance. The Lord Jesus also points this out when He then says that the church can also loose, that is, loosening sin from the person. This happens when the person confesses his sin and the church pronounces forgiveness over it and accepts him again in its midst. These acts of discipline by the church of binding and loosing are recognized by heaven. The church must therefore know well that what it does in this respect must have the consent of heaven. She can only convince herself of this if she acts according to the Word.

In order to know for sure whether an act of binding or loosing will be acknowledged in heaven, any act of discipline must be the result of unanimous prayer to the Lord. The whole church must ask the Lord for His will. The Father will make His will known through His Word. Therefore, a church must be able to base a disciplinary action on God’s Word.

It is a disciplinary act of the church and not one of some random believers. All believers belong together. However, it is not just about belonging together, but really being together. The power of prayer and the action of the church do not depend on the number, but on His Name, that is the Name of the Lord Jesus.

It is important to read the Lord’s words about His presence in the middle of the two or three in the context in which they stand. From Matthew 18:15 it is about sin in the church and how to deal with it. After the various steps, sin must be made known to the church.

The church here cannot be the entire church on earth. It must be the local church. For example, the Bible speaks of “the church of God which is at Corinth” (1 Corinthians 1:2). That is, the believers are the church of God there. They also come together as a church (1 Corinthians 11:18; 20) to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and to encourage and build each other up in the faith (1 Corinthians 14:23; 26).

There are many privileges attached to the meeting of the church. How important and blessed it is to come together as believers with Christ in the midst, we see with the Lord Himself. After His resurrection from the dead, His first thought, spoken with reverence, is to be with His assembled disciples (Psalms 22:22-23; John 20:19-20; Hebrews 2:11-12).

As said, there are also responsibilities connected to it. One of them we find in this section is the exercise of discipline. The context shows that it is about the church and it is in connection with it that the Lord Jesus speaks about being gathered in His Name. We can conclude from this that the Lord Jesus connects His presence to the church in a special way when she comes together.

Certainly He is always with each of His own. According to His promise He will be that “always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Here, however, it says that He is in the middle of the two or three that have met in His Name. That’s something else than His nearness that every believer may experience anytime and anywhere – and what a tremendous encouragement that is!

Before the Lord says “I am there in their midst”, He first speaks of being gathered in His Name. He attaches His personal presence to the condition of being gathered in His Name. He talks about the smallest possible number – “two or three” – to be able to be gathered.

He says more. It is not just a meeting of two or three believers. Believers can gather anywhere and for many purposes, but that does not mean that wherever believers meet, this is a gathering of which the Lord says they are ‘gathered together in My name.’ What does it mean to be gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus? It means that those who have come together have all come because they know that this gathering is only about the Lord Jesus. His Name is the center.

To come together in His Name means to give Him full authority in the gathering. He exercises that authority through His Word and through His Spirit. All those who are together there want to acknowledge that. No one who would like to be with the Lord Jesus may be refused. All those who belong to the church and are pure in doctrine and life and reject any connection with evil have access to it. This does not mean that everyone who says he is a believer should be received. In this section we see exactly how there should be care in the case that sin becomes public in the church. Then it is clear that from an unknown person who comes, it must be determined that he is not connected with sins.

An important aspect here is that no one may enter into the Lord’s rights and set their own conditions for those who come. And someone who comes may not demand to be received on the basis of his own conditions. It is both contrary to the spirit of grace and the sense of forgiveness that characterize this whole chapter.

It is also important for the church that this gathering is not governed by its own rules. Everything is in the hands of the Lord and the Word is the unchanging touchstone. When believers come together in this way, aware of their weakness in the practice of coming together, the Lord says that He is in the midst.

Matthew 19:2

Church Discipline

Matthew 19:3

Church Discipline

Matthew 19:4

Church Discipline

Matthew 19:5

Church Discipline

Matthew 19:6

Church Discipline

Matthew 19:7

Question About Forgiveness

After the Lord has spoken of one who has sinned against another (Matthew 18:15), the next section is about the one who has been sinned against, how his attitude and mind should be. The occasion for this teaching is a question from Peter. The Lord’s answer to that question makes it clear that the spirit of forgiveness must characterize us.

Peter makes a proposal himself, which he undoubtedly thinks goes far. Will he forgive his brother up to seven times? The Lord answers that this is totally inadequate. By speaking of “seventy times seven”, He emphasizes that there is no end to forgiveness when it is asked for. Forgiveness should always be in the heart of the Christian (Ephesians 4:32).

Matthew 19:8

Question About Forgiveness

Matthew 19:9

Parable About Forgiveness

The Lord illustrates with a parable which attitude and mind should characterize the subjects in the kingdom for the sake of forgiveness. He presents the situation that a king is settling his accounts with his slaves. A slave is brought to the king who owes him the enormous sum of ten thousand talents. If we convert this into the euro, we will arrive at a figure of 3 billion euros.

The calculation is as follows. A denarius at that time was the wages of a day laborer (Matthew 20:2). On 1 January 2008, the gross minimum daily wage for a person aged 23 or over was €61.62, which is slightly more than €50.00 net. For the sake of convenience, let’s assume €50.00. A talent is six thousand denarii, which is equivalent to €300,000.00. The slave owed his lord ten thousand talents. That is the equivalent of €3,000,000,000,000.00 or 3 billion euro.

The man can’t afford this. He cannot even make a deposit because he has nothing. In order to still be able to collect some of the debt, his lord orders him to sell him with his wife and children and all that he still has in his possession.

When the slave hears that, he throws himself prostrate before his lord and begs him to be patient with him until he has paid everything. This statement alone proves that the man has no idea how big his debt is and how impossible it is to pay it. If he had indeed wanted to pay his debt, he would have to work 164,383.56 years [€3,000,000,000.00/(365 days*€50.00)] day in, day out, without a rest day and without being able to spend one cent for what he himself would need.

Although the Lord of the slave recognizes his slave’s bluff and knows that his slave will never be able to pay him, he relieves him of all that debt. He does so out of his compassion for the hopeless situation of his slave.

It is extraordinarily disillusioning to see in the next scene how the slave, who has been remitted of an enormous debt, is acting toward a fellow slave who owes him the relatively small sum of a hundred denarii, that is €5,000.00. The mercilessness drips off. It is as if he immediately went looking for that fellow slave who is still a little in debt to him, because he “found” him. The grace shown to him has no effect on him. Instead of telling his fellow slave in the utmost gratitude what has happened, what burden has been taken away from him, he grabs his fellow slave by the throat and demands payment of the debt.

His fellow slave does the same as he did to his lord. The fellow slave falls down and begs him for patience until he would have paid. But this slave does not have that patience, for he has not been impressed by the way in which his lord has acted toward him and by what he himself has been forgiven. It is not about him forgetting it, but it has done absolutely nothing to him. He is not changed by it. This is the greatest ingratitude imaginable. Such ingratitude shows the hardness of heart.

When his fellow slaves see this, they are deeply grieved. They do not understand how this is possible. Instead of taking the law into their own hands, the fellow slaves do the only right thing. They go to explain to their Lord everything that has happened. We should do the same when we notice that there is no sense of mercy in an action. Then we can do nothing better than tell our Lord, with deep grieve in our hearts because of the hardness of a fellow slave.

When the lord hears about it, he has his slave summoned. It is his slave and he can do with this slave what he sees fit. He calls him “wicked slave”. That is what the man made of it himself by his actions. The lord recalled that he had remitted him all that debt because the slave had begged his lord. His lord also tells him that the grace shown to him should have determined his attitude toward his fellow slave.

This is important to us. We have been given great mercy by God Who has forgiven us our sins. We had a debt to God that we were unable to pay. Now that God has forgiven us this guilt, He expects us to show the same mercy to our brothers and sisters.

Such an attitude of ingratitude towards his lord, resulting in no mercy towards his fellow slave, causes anger in the lord of that slave. He hands over his slave to the torturers until he would have paid his debt, as he had said. That means eternal torture, for he will never be able to pay that debt.