Preaching Matthew 18:15-20 from a Gospel-Centered Perspective

I taught my last Principles of Bible Study class of the semester on Friday, May 6th. It is hard to believe that my first full year of teaching this class is over. If my students learned half as much in taking the class as I have in teaching the class, I will be very pleased. What would please me most is if they are now convinced of the necessity of discerning the connection that every text they study has with the Gospel. If there is one thing my students might get weary of hearing me say, it is this: “You have not rightly handled or interpreted a text unless ultimately you can clearly identify its relationship to the Gospel.”

Every text has two contexts in which it must be interpreted, namely, its micro (i.e. the immediate context) and macro contexts (i.e. the larger context of the particular book and of Scripture as a whole). It is not enough merely to interpret a text in its relationship to its micro-context. As important as it is to understand a text in its immediate context, to do so does not mean that you have identified its relationship to the Gospel, that is, its relationship to what God has done in Christ to accomplish salvation. The failure to understand a text in its macro or redemptive-context is tantamount to the failure of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to understand that the entire OT testifies to Christ in his suffering and subsequent glory (Luke 24:21).

How many sermons have you heard on Matthew 18:15-20 (process of church discipline) that have actually shown the text’s essential relationship with the work of Christ on the cross? I have heard plenty that have done an adequate job interpreting the text within its micro-context but very few in its macro-context. So how might we preach a sermon on Matthew 18 that takes in to account the macro-context of the entire Gospel of Matthew?

There are many questions that I think Matthew 18:15-20 presses upon us that may help us discern its connection to the work of Christ. Here are a few (all three questions are related and the answers I give are only suggestive):

Question One: What connection does Matthew 18:15-20 have with the climax of Matthew’s Gospel, namely, the passion of Christ?

Answer: In Matthew 18, an individual who refuses to repent is cut off from the community of faith. But it is at the cross where we see (1) what ultimately happens to a man who remains in an unrepentant state. He is cut off from God. At the cross Jesus was cut off from God because he bore the guilt of our sin. (2) We also see that Jesus was cut off that sinners might not be cut off from God’s presence. His work on the cross opened the way for sinners like you and me to enter into the holy presence of God (Matthew 27:51). If we fail to make that connection explicit, those who are working through the process of confronting another brother with his sin might very well fail to do so humbly. After all, both the ones exercising church discipline and the ones receiving it are equally in need of what Christ accomplished at the cross. Only when we see Matthew 18's connection with Christ's work on the cross will we be both confident and humble in walking through the discipline process. On the one hand, we will be confident because we know that the cross is the power of God unto restoring our wayward brother. On the other hand, we will be humble because we know that we too stand in desperate need of what Christ accomplished at Calvary.

Question Two: How is it possible to expel an unrepentant brother from the community of faith with a view to restoration? In other words, how can we hold out restoration as a possibility for one who has remained blatantly unrepentant through the entire discipline process? What hope is there for one who has been excommunicated from the Christian assembly?

Answer: It is possible to expel an unrepentant individual from the community of faith with a view to restoration because there is one who though he never sinned against God or his brothers but rather loved God with all his heart and his brothers as himself at all times, was expelled (i.e. forsaken, abandoned) from the Father’s presence in the unrepentant individual’s place. At the cross Jesus, the only truly righteous man, was treated as if he were the unrepentant one. He who knew no sin became sin for those who are in desperate need of restoration that they might become the righteousness of God in him. The only reason we can practice church discipline with a view toward restoration is because Jesus has already taken the sinner’s place thereby opening for him the path of life (Psalm 16:11).

Question Three: What must we do with the individual who has been expelled in order that we might see him restored?

Answer: Keep lovingly facing him (1) with what it means to be cut off from the community of faith, namely, you are cut off from the presence of God; and (2) with what Christ has done in his place that he might be restored. The cross is the one place where both of these truths are seen most clearly. Why must we bring this two-fold message of the cross to bear upon the expelled individual? (1) That he might be awakened to the sinfulness of his sin and its terrible consequences. (2) Because it is this very message of what Christ has done in his place that is the very power of God unto his restoration.

May we all seek to be Gospel-centered in our handling of texts like Matthew 18:15-20.

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