Matthew 18:15-20, part of Matthew’s fourth discourse on community organization, provides the context for Jesus’s instruction to Peter to forgive an offending brother or sister “seventy times seven” (18:22). The context is important, for it indicates that Jesus is not coercing people who have been hurt to forgive. Nor does Jesus state that people who cannot bring themselves to forgive are psychologically stunted, selfish, or evil.
Especially in cases where the brother or sister who offends shows no remorse, takes no responsibility for harm done, and makes no effort to repair the damage, forgiveness may not be the best response. In such cases, reconciliation may prove not healing but dangerous both for the individual who has been abused and for the community. Thus, Matthew chapter 18 mandates that the ekkelsia, the community, protect those who have been harmed.
In Matthew 18:6, Jesus teaches that anyone who puts a stumbling block before community members, whom he calls “little ones” – the expression “little ones” suggests people who need protection – would be better off drowned. The assembly is where the vulnerable are to be protected, not forced into the presence of their unrepentant abusers.
The chapter continues with guidance on discipline. If “your brother” (Greek: adelphos; we should add “sister,” since women were also assembly members) “sins against you,” private correction is mandated. The model follows Leviticus 19:17, one verse before the more famous “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Leviticus 19:17 states, “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.” Thus, for Matthew, sin should not lead to communal hate; it should lead to communal correction. The first step is to correct the offending brother or sister privately: its intent is reform, not shame.
Should the first step not work, Matthew 18:16 advises that two or three witnesses confront the offender. Public humiliation is still avoided, but the seriousness with which the assembly takes the offense is reinforced. Again, members of the assembly encourage the offending brother or sister to repent.
If the second approach also fails, the assembly is to be informed of the offense and then to speak to the offender. Should this third attempt fail, Matthew 18:17 instructs, “Let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.”Offending but unrepentant individuals are to be removed from the assembly, but they are still brothers and sisters. Indeed, it is precisely to tax collectors and gentiles that the Gospel is directed. In Matthew 9:13, responding to the question of why he dines with tax collectors – known for overcharging the population and colluding with the Roman government – Jesus states, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” The Gospel’s penultimate verse, Matthew 28:19, instructs, “Make disciples of all the gentiles” (panta ta ethne).
By treating the abuser, the sinner, as a gentile and a tax-collector, the community always holds out the hope for repentance.
By connecting the concern for forgiveness to community discipline, the Gospel protects those who have been sinned against.
By connecting the concern for forgiveness to the good of the assembly, the Gospel protects the little ones, the vulnerable ones, who have been abused from additional harm. To do anything else would be to put a stumbling block before the people the assembly is charged to protect.
About the author:
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies Emerita and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. She is also Rabbi Stanley M. Kessler Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace. In the spring of 2019, she became the first Jew to teach a course on the New Testament at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome; in 2021, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.