Condition Critical

A few years ago I had an interesting talk with my mother about the nature of friendship. At one point I made the comment that the only bottom line requirement I had for a friend was that I needed to know I’d be forgiven for my mistakes. Her response was telling. She said that I had unrealistically high standards.

I thought, “How sad... obviously my mother isn’t used to having friends she can trust to forgive her when she blows it.” But then I started to wonder. Were my standards too high? But then, on the other hand, I have a lot of friends, and I’ve had most of them for quite a long time, and I make plenty of mistakes. Do you think that it’s unreasonable?

I suppose it depends on how big the mistake is. If it’s forgetting an appointment that’s one thing. Depending, of course, on how important the appointment is. If it’s pawning your typewriter to buy a guitar when you’re home for Christmas, that’s another. That actually happened to me, by the way. What about the kind of friend who never returns a borrowed book, never has any cash when the time comes to pick up the check, is always flirting with your husband or returns your tools nicked, uncleaned and covered with rust? That kind of behavior is thoughtless, careless, disrespectful. Who needs friends who treat you like that? Friendship is supposed to be a two-way street.

But wait a minute. Peter doesn’t say when a friend sins against you. He says when a brother sins against you. Or a sister, of course. The difference between a friend and a brother is that you don’t have any choice when it comes to family. You don’t choose your family. You get what you get. And that’s the way it is with the church. Once a person is baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, she is your sister, he is your brother.

Or is he? Last week we talked about church discipline. “If another member of the church sins against you,” said Jesus, “go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” Jesus goes on with the next steps in the process of forgiveness and reconciliation, and finally, “if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” [Mt 18:15,17] Is this an example of forgiving 70 times 7? This does seem to be a contradiction, doesn’t it.

But is it really?

If you’ll recall last week’s sermon, step number 3 was telling the church. That is to say, the leaders of the church, whose responsibility it is to maintain church discipline. I’m going to quote what I said: “your responsibility is finished and, if your heart is right, you will have already forgiven your brother if you needed to do so.” Even if the church leaders have to proceed to step 4, and remove the offender from the fellowship of the saints, it is done for the purpose of ultimately restoring that person, not to punish them or get even with them.

The key to the kind of forgiveness Jesus asks for is this: Forgiveness does not mean taking sin lightly, and it doesn’t mean ignoring another person’s destructive behavior. What it does mean is continuing to wish the other person well regardless of the magnitude of the offense. Forgiveness means giving up any desire to get even. Forgiveness is about letting go of the past, while church discipline is about helping an immature believer grow in faith and practice to become a responsible and effective member of the body of Christ.

And if that were all there were to it, I could finish the sermon here and we could all go home early.

But it’s not.

By far the most common conflicts in the church are clashes between different personalities and behavior styles. Most problems between members don’t have anything to do with behavior that rises all the way up to the kind of sin that merits attention from the elders. It just has to do with the fact that different people have different ways of thinking about things and different ways of doing things. Sometimes we just rub each other the wrong way. What we’re dealing with here, then, isn’t about forgiving a sister or brother for doing something. It’s about forgiving that brother or sister for being a particular kind of person.

Now, Paul’s letter to the Romans focuses in on theological differences... But think about it. A lot of things that look like theological differences are really personality differences. Someone who is very cautious and reserved will interpret and act on his or her understanding of Scripture in a very different way than someone who is spontaneous and outspoken. And so I think that the lesson Paul is teaching is teaching on acceptance of one another’s differences applies to the entire scope of human interaction.