Troubleshooting our troublesome people!

“If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him—work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again. If he still won’t listen, tell the church. If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.

“Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action. And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.”

Food for thought!

In many ways this is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to grasp and to apply in real life. By and large, Jesus is saying, "If anyone sins against you, spare no effort to make that man admit his fault, and to get things right again between you and him." Basically it means that we must never tolerate any situation in which there is a breach of personal relationships between us and another member of the Christian community.

Suppose something does go wrong, what are we to do to put it right? This passage presents us with a whole scheme of action for the mending of broken relationships; how to trouble shoot our troublesome people.

(i) If we feel that someone has wronged us, we should immediately put our complaint into words. The worst thing that we can do about a wrong is to brood about it. That is fatal. It can poison the whole mind and life, until we can think of nothing else but our injury. Any such feeling should be brought out into the open, faced, and stated, and often the very stating of it will show how unimportant and trivial the whole thing is.

If we feel that someone has wronged us, we should go to see him personally. More trouble has been caused by the writing of SMS, WhatsApp, etc. than by almost anything else. Marriages have gone sour and sometimes ended because of text messages. The reason is that a text message may be misread or misunderstood; it may quite unconsciously convey a tone it was never meant to convey. And as you know from your experience, many times we send our text messages to the wrong people and at wrong times.

Jesus is saying that if and when we have a difference with someone, there is only one way to settle it, and that is face to face. The spoken word can often settle a difference which the text message would only have worsened.

(ii) If a private and personal meeting fails of its purpose, we should take some wise person or persons with us. Deut.19:15 has it: "A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed; only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sustained." That is the saying which Jesus has in mind.

But in this case the taking of the witnesses is meant to help the process of reconciliation. A man often hates those whom he has hurt or who has hurt him; and it may well be that nothing we can say can win him back. But to talk matters over with some wise and kindly and gracious people present is to create a new atmosphere in which there is at least a chance that we should see ourselves "as others see us."

(iii) If that still fails, we must take our personal troubles to the Christian fellowship. Why? Because personal quarrels are never settled by going to courts. Courts merely produces further trouble. It is in an atmosphere of Christian spirit that personal relationships should be righted. 

(iv) It is now we come to the difficult part. JESUS says that, if even that does not succeed, “start over from scratch, [start all over again and again and again...] confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.” Seen this way, what Jesus says is never to abandon anyone but to keep trying and trying until we win them back. 

(v) Finally, there is the saying about losing and binding. What it means is that the relationships which we establish with our fellow-men and women last not only through time but into eternity; therefore we must get our relationships right NOW; our earthly relationships last beyond death to eternity.

“A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal.”