Text: 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 charge may be established 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 among them.” (ESV)
Everyone’s familiar with the story Jesus tells about the shepherd going into the wilderness to save the sheep who wandered, but what if the sheep doesn’t want to come back? The text above–which we’ll study Sunday–immediately follows the story about the sheep, and I think it’s here so that we can see the biblical tension between grace and discipline. God goes to great lengths to bring his wandering children back to him, but some of them stubbornly resist his pleas. What then? Craig Keener writes: “By holding discipline and grace in their proper tension (with a greater but not imbalanced emphasis on grace), Matthew summons the church to practice tough love.”
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