How Do We Deal With Sin? We Confront It

9.20.20 Matthew 18:15–20

15 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have regained your brother. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And, if he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as an unbeliever or a tax collector. 18 Amen I tell you: Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Amen I tell you again: If two of you on earth agree to ask for anything, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. 20 In fact where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am among them.”

How do we Deal with Sin? We Confront It

As Lutherans, you will regularly hear that we are born in sin. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags. This is done to emphasize that we have to be saved by grace alone and Christ alone. However, the devil seems to be at work even in true doctrine. If everything is sin, and everyone is a sinner, then there’s nothing you can really do about it. So a little bit of porn, a slander here or there, having too much to drink on occasion, an insensitive comment, it all comes with the territory of “life.” What are you going to do? Don’t worry about it. Sinners sin. Jesus died for sinners. It is what it is.

All of this is true to a point. Sin is everywhere, but that DOESN’T MEAN you shouldn’t fight against it. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve your life. It doesn’t mean you should regard sin as no big deal since everyone does it. The reason we emphasize sin is so that you realize how much you need a Savior, not so that you think it’s ok to be a sinner.

As time goes on under Covid-19, I wonder how many of our members really realize their need for forgiveness. How can you go for months on end without seeking the body and blood of Christ? Do you not realize how sinful you are and how much you need Jesus? Where is your thirst? Where is your hunger? Don’t you care about keeping your faith strong?

I don’t like asking such confrontational questions. Yet this is part of what God calls on us to do - to confront one another when we see sin or the danger of sin. If your brother sins against you, go and show him his sin. Jesus didn’t tell us to ignore it or just live with it. He told us to confront it so that we can repent and cling to Him all the more for forgiveness. You don’t have to be rude about it. You don’t have to be mean or yell about it. It can be as simple as saying, “That’s not right,” or “you can do better than that.” “I want what’s best for you, and this isn’t it. Let’s not go down that road.”

God never said it would be easy. Look at your Bible history.

I think of Elijah who had to run for his life when he was called on to confront Ahab and Jezebel. They hated his guts. They called him the enemy of Israel. He had to live by a brook and get fed by ravens for who knows how long? He didn’t enjoy being an enemy of the state.

In our Old Testament lesson Ezekiel was threatened with judgment if he didn’t say what God wanted him to say in order to correct a sinner. If God had to use threats, it shows how difficult correction can be and how we can buck our heels in against doing it.

Think even of Jesus who confronted the Pharisees and teachers of the law. Do you think He enjoyed embarrassing them? (Well, maybe He did.) I don’t know. But I would tend to think not, not if He wanted them to repent. These were men who knew their Old Testament and were zealous for the Word, but who had misinterpreted it. They needed to see their hypocritical sins, so Jesus pointed it out to them, not in order to roast them, but to have them repent.

If he listens to you, you have regained your brother.

The word for “regained” is kerdainw in the Greek. It means to avoid a loss. Think of someone who is not paying attention while driving and is heading off the road. They’re still on the road. They haven’t gotten in an accident yet, but it is coming pretty quick. By saying something now, you are keeping someone from getting lost in their faith and putting them back on the right path through your correction.