“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17)

The wisdom of Jesus in helping us deal with conflict in the church is simply amazing.
It is simple.

Step One: Meet one on one. If that doesn’t settle it, take
Step Two: Take one or two others with you. If you’re still not able to resolve it, take
Step Three: Share it with the church community. When this fails, then finally take
Step Four: Shut the door.

It is amazing.

Keep it simply between the two of you. If that works, then no one else ever needs to know that there was an issue between you. Only God and you both know.

When Step One fails, take no more than two others with you. Once again, keep it as hush-hush as possible. Use gentle persuasion, not force or pressure.

If there is still no way to settle the conflict, take it to a larger group. As a last resort.

After all three steps are exhausted, now you can treat them as an outsider.

Sad to say, but in thirty plus years of ministry, I have witnessed more violations of this process than not.

Even sadder to say, in those three decades, I myself have violated this process on more occasions than I’d like to admit.

Needless to say the folly of not following Jesus’ words has always led to needless pain.

More often than not, the mistake that I have made is to skip Step One and talk to others first before meeting with the offending (offended) party.

In a way, our employment systems encourage this process, don’t they?

If you are part of a union, you are asked to file a grievance and involve others right away so you are not forced to do the confronting yourself.

Even in the church, in our denomination, for example, we have a Ministry & Personnel Committee that both staff and members can contact when there is conflict.

As valuable as this process can be, the issues do not usually get resolved without the parties meeting face to face, even if it is in the presence of two or three others. So, eventually it is one-to-one communication that settles the matter.

Now, do you see how wise Jesus was to suggest that we do this first in the process laid out in Matthew 18?

The reason why we are tempted to skip Step One is because it is the most difficult one to take.

None of us likes confrontation. We dread the prospect of talking face to face. We are tempted to believe that going through a third party right off the bat is better.

Yet Jesus makes it very clear that we cannot bypass this first step.

In this passage, he is asking the offended party to take the initiative.

Elsewhere, in these words from the Sermon on the Mount, he is asking the perceived offender to make the first move.

“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” (Matthew 5:23-24)

Either way, the message is clear, isn’t it?

Whether you are the offender or the offended, you go first!

Will you?