Conflict in the Local Church: What do we do?

“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.” -Matthew 15:15-20.   

In the first half of this passage, we have Jesus’ process for handling sin in the church, or in our case, conflict.  When believers are in conflict, when there’s anger and bitterness, sin is usually present. 

What’s the first thing you should do if a member of your church has hurt you or sinned against you?  V.15, you go to that person and have a conversation that’s between you and them alone.  That’s step one.  Why would this be important?  It’s important because our natural reaction when we’re hurt is to either bottle it up and stew in our anger, or to talk to everyone about it except for that person.  What’s the result of this though?  -It only makes things worse!  You haven’t solved the problem at all, have you?  You either become more angry or you’ve done more harm to this person than they’ve first done to you.  You’ve done exactly what Christ commands us not to do, by repaying evil with evil.  Jesus’ method is, resist that natural urge, take courage, go and speak to the person one on one to see if the issue can be resolved, or if there’s repentance. 

Now, what if you don’t have a good result?  You’ve approached the individual and you’ve spoken to them but they deny any wrongdoing, or they just blow you off.  Well, Jesus moves us into stage two.  The next thing you ought to do is take one or two other trusted, spirit-filled believers with you and confront the person again.  These others will help the both of you sort through the issue.  Maybe there are some things that you also haven’t seen.  The family of faith will help us to judge the issue fairly. 

Now, what if the sin or wrongdoing is firmly established, there’s evidence, but the individual is still unrepentant.  At that point, Jesus says, take it to the church.  This is a public and official act of church discipline.  The goal of this is not to crush or punish the individual, but to try and bring about reconciliation.  We want all conflict between believers to be resolved.  There mustn’t be hidden sin or unforgiveness in the church of Christ.  So, the matter is brought before the general assembly to be dealt with.  If the person repents, Jesus says, “Praise God!  You’ve won your brother back!”  But if they don’t listen, we are to, in Jesus’ words, “Treat this person as a tax collector or a Gentile.”  What’s that supposed to mean?  It may not mean what you think it means.  It doesn’t mean that you treat them with disrespect or contempt.  Rather, it means that you treat them as an unbeliever.  This person obviously doesn’t understand what it means to be a child of God, a citizen of God’s kingdom.  Hopefully, in time, we would see this person come to repentance and reconciliation, but we aren’t guaranteed that.  The idea and the reality is, that as far as this person is concerned, they’re no longer in Christian fellowship with us until there’s a change of heart. 

That’s the 3-step process.  This is biblical conflict resolution.  Let’s review.  If someone in the church has wronged you or you have discovered them living in open sin, here’s what you do:

1. You have a one on one conversation with them about it, no one else.  (Listen, as a pastor, if you ever come to me with a complaint about another believer in our church, the first question I’m going to ask you is, “have you spoken to them yet about this?”).  That’s the first thing you need to do.

2. Take one or two other believers with you to confront the person.  This is going to help you establish the truth and judge fairly. 

Then,

3. If the person is not willing to change, not willing to address their sin, you bring them before the church for church discipline.  That’s the model we have from Jesus. 

But now I want to point out the last few verses in this passage, Jesus says, “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.”  We like to use that last verse a little out of context sometimes to speak of our worship services, but there’s actually something else going on here.  Jesus is saying that when you have a group of genuine followers of Christ, filled with the Spirit, what you have is a body sufficient to judge these matters.  You don’t have to take other believers to court.  You don’t have to seat a 12-person jury of your peers.  The body of Christ is all you need.  The church, let by Christ, is sufficient in itself to judge all matters in the church.  Period. 

That’s our authority in Christ. 

So, I hope you see how great this is that we don’t flounder in our anger, we don’t seek to crush our adversaries, especially not our brothers and sisters in Christ.  We seek reconciliation.  And this is the process!  This is the way.  I hope that you take his with you and use it!