Hey everybody, if you’ll turn to Matthew 1 I want to issue a trigger warning. Some of you are going to want to walk out. This is going to be traumatic. I haven’t done this in many, many years. I’m going to share a Patriots illustration.
For the past five or six years, I haven’t spoken about them at all as a team because they’ve been really bad. Last season, they were 3-14. No playoffs for years. But this season, they’re currently 17-3 (17 wins, 3 losses) from 3-14 (3, wins, 14 losses) and heading to the Super Bowl where they could get shellacked.
Only a couple of teams in the history of the NFL have done things like this. You have to go back to the 1999, St. Louis Rams. They were 4-12, and the next year they won the Super Bowl. Or the 1981 San Francisco 49ers were 2-14 and two years later, under Bill Walsh, they won the Super Bowl.
These kinds of turnaround stories fascinate me because I want to know, what did they do to totally transform the atmosphere from a losing team to a winning team? What is the secret sauce?
Many, at the beginning of the year, were talking about the easy schedule, which was real. The Patriots had one of the easiest schedules of anyone. But that’s no longer relevant based on recent victories.
We could also talk about key acquisitions. Like Henderson, Williams, or of course, we could talk about the quarterback who—same quarterback as last year—but took it to the next level.
But the biggest change, I believe, is kind of obvious: the hiring of coach Mike Vrabel, a former Patriots player and Super Bowl winner. But even there, so many NFL teams change coaches. Right now, the coaches are just swirling around from team to team, and it doesn’t have this dramatic kind of change. So what specifically changed?
If you listen to the players when interviewed, their answers may surprise you. Listen to this explanation by the oldest player on the team, veteran Morgan Moses. “Don’t you love that name? Morgan Moses. Moses turns 35 in a couple of months. He is 6’6”, 320 pounds, and he talks about the team having what he calls “an ego-less mindset,” ego-less mindset, with high accountability, high encouragement, but low egos. Listen to what he said:
“Just to see them work together as one, and nobody’s bigger than the other, it allows us to see that that’s how our room is. We’ve got older guys, we’ve got younger guys. We all keep each other accountable.”
Let me say it again: We all keep each other accountable.
“…Nobody’s bigger than the other, whether you’re a first-round draft pick or the last pick in the draft. We all have the same standards. When you have coaches in your room that share that same value, it trickles down.”
He talks about how hard it is to be in the film room when the coaches are pointing out a mistake you made or an area you could improve on, how difficult it is to receive that, and then he says this:
“Alright, this is something I can fine-tune and be better at.”
Did you catch that? Moses sees accountability as something good, a gift, not a threat.
Brenden Schooler, one of the team captains, says it this way:
“It’s holding each other accountable. Coaches to players, players to coaches. Everybody’s held accountable. Everybody’s got the same goal. So, there shouldn’t be any division, there shouldn’t be ‘it’s us vs. them’” on the team.
Let me give you a silly example. Last fall, Coach Vrabel noticed that some of the players were leaving wet, dirty, smelly face cloths on the floor in the shower room. So he went to the equipment staff and told them, “When you see these, you can pick them up, dry them off, but stick them right on the shelf.”
Then he went to the players and said, “If you leave your wet, smelly face cloths on the floor in the shower room, I’ve told the equipment staff just to dry them off and stick them back on the rack. So when you grab a face cloth, you may get one of those.”
His point was, if you won’t show any respect to the equipment staff, then I’m telling them not to show respect to you. Now think about this: many of them are multi-million dollar players, prima donnas. And yet, as Antonio Gibson, the running back, says,
“If you want to win, you do the small things. We’re grown men. Pick up after yourself.”
By the way, there have been no wet face cloths left on the shower floor. Some of the other players talk about the small things: be on time, take time to watch the film, put away your phone in the weight room… Accountability.
Many of us, as Americans and even as American Christians, cringe at the word “accountability.” It sounds terrifying to us. Maybe we have good reasons.
Like some of you may have grown up in legalistic churches. Or you may have had a manipulative pastor who was coercive and misused that concept of accountability. Others of you may have grown up in homes with parents who tied their love to your performance: “I will love you if you come through.”
And so, any discussion on accountability can feel and sound oppressive. Then, when you add the concept of church discipline to the conversation, you just want to run.
For many Americans, church discipline conjures up images of the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, or getting a scarlet “A” sewn to your chest. But Jesus has a very different perspective on this. His teaching on accountability is embedded in his sermon on relationships. Let’s quickly review:
The Sermon on Relationships, Matthew 18, covers four big areas:
(1) The basis of relationships is childlike humility (1-9).
(2) The value of relationships is individual significance. “Do not despise one of these little ones.”
(3) The upkeep of relationships is progressive communication or confrontation.
This is where we are today. Then next week, Lord willing,
(4) The healing of relationships.
In order to get our arms around the upkeep or maintenance of relationships, let’s look at it from three perspectives: the priority, the process, and the presence. The priority, process, and presence.
First, the priority of maintaining relationships. Verse 15,
“If your brother sins against you, go!”
Go. The “if” could be translated “when” or “whenever,” implying this is going to happen. You cannot live in community with your brothers and sisters without, at some point, you sinning against them or them sinning against you (or at least believing they have or you have).
When that happens, we have a couple of options: One is you could pout, or you could blog, or you can deconstruct, or you ask for prayer (a spiritual way of gossiping), or you withdraw, or you church hop (like, just keep moving to different churches). But Jesus is discipling us in a better way.
Look at verse 15. What is the first command in that verse? Go. “But what if it’s his fault? He sinned against me.” Go. Well, what if it’s your fault? I sinned against him! Jesus already covered that back in Matthew 5:23. Look at this:
“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and [what?] go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift” (Matthew 5:23-24).
In either case, we need to be ready to go. Before we talk about reasons to go, let’s talk about reasons not to go. A couple of reasons:
1. If it’s a preference.
She annoys you. He bugs you. You have different views on debatable issues. You don’t need to go. You do need to love. Humble your heart and love. Remember the basis of relationships? Child-like humility. But here, Jesus is talking about when someone sins against you.
2. It’s coverable.
It’s coverable. Look at 1 Peter 4:8,
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
Love is not eager to identify or expose another person’s faults. So accountability, whatever else it is, it is not investigative reporting. It’s not looking for ways in which someone else has offended me. 1 Corinthians 13:4, “Love is patient and kind.” It does not keep an account of wrongs.
So if I’ve been forgiven by the Lord, as we’re going to talk about next week, then I am in a posture of forgiving. And this doesn’t mean we don’t necessarily go. We might still need to go, but what it does mean is we pause before we go, and we ask ourselves, can I overlook this? Ephesians 4:32,
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
Before I go to my brother, I must go to my Father, pull the beam out of my own eye, wallow in his forgiveness, and then be in a posture of passing that grace on to someone else so that, even if I still need to go, I will go when I go with a very different attitude.
3. It’s a crime.
If someone is breaking into your home, do you walk toward the door as you hear them smashing in the door and ask them, “Are you a Christian?” And if they say yes, then you need to practice Matthew 18 with them before calling 911? No.
Many years ago, I heard of a woman who had been counseled to go and confront her rapist, as if that’s what Matthew 18 is talking about. You’re confusing Romans 12 and Romans 13. This is Romans 13, a crime. The government has been given a sword to protect the vulnerable and execute justice. Reasons not to go.
Here are a few reasons to go when we’ve been sinned against:
1. It’s a command.
Many of us struggle with this because we might secretly think, “Does Jesus know I’m an introvert?” “Does he know I desire to please people?” “Does he know I have a hard time with confrontation?”
Ironically, many people who aren’t the confronting type are the gossiping type. And others of us often try to prognosticate the future, like, “What’s the use? It’s not going to help. Why go?”
Jesus is saying, “Whoa, maybe that’s not your job to figure out what could happen. Why don’t you obey me? It’s a command.” If I’ve been sinned against, and this sin has ongoing repercussions for the sinner or the sinned-against, I need to go.
2. It’s a way to love.
Going is a way of loving. Some of us view any kind of confrontation as unkind, mean, censorious, unloving… but that is so unbiblical.
Think about going to the doctor. You have a broken arm. The doctor does an X-ray on your arm and comes out with the X-ray and decides, “You know, I want to be loving to this person.” So your doctor says to you, “It’s fine. Your arm is fine.” But you can tell, it’s not just been broken, but it’s not healing straight at all. But he sends you home because “he’s loving” and wants you to hear good news. He’s not the confronting type. Would you view that as loving? Proverbs 27:5,
“Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:5-6).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his classic Life Together, said,
“Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship.”
That’s what Jesus is saying. It’s a way to love.
3. It is also life-saving.
Life-saving. James 5:19,
“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20).
That’s why this is a priority in maintaining relationships.
2. The process. The process of maintaining relationships.
There are at least three big steps that each can be subdivided, but let me go through the big three.
Step one: go alone.
“…go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matthew 18:15).
You’ve maintained this relationship, which, as we saw a week ago, is a significant relationship.
Step two: go with one or two.
“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” (Matthew 18:16).
So you’ve tried to restore the relationship, he blows you off, so you ask one or two people whom he respects to go with you.
If he still won’t listen,
Step three: go to the church.
“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” (Matthew 18:17).
A couple of observations about this process, four of them:
1. The process is relational, not mechanical.
You are trying to restore a brother or a sister. You’re not fixing a machine.
People often ask, “What sins do you, at North Hills, discipline for?” As if there are sins you can get away with and sins you can’t. The Bible gives a lot of examples of sins that have been disciplined. Let me give you a few:
One is divisiveness.
“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive” (Romans 16:17-18).
Second example, unwillingness to work (for those who are able).
“For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies” (2 Thessalonians 3:11).
Paul commands us that this person is to be confronted and held accountable, and even avoided, if they will not repent.
The third example is immorality (1 Corinthians 5:1-5). I could give many more. Here’s the point:
The point is not the outrageousness of the sin, but the unwillingness to move toward repentance.
The point is not the outrageousness of sin, but the unwillingness to move toward repentance. The process is relational.
2. The process is slow, not fast.
For example, step one may include multiple conversations. You ask to meet, you pray, you share, you acknowledge, “I could be totally wrong about this, but this is what I’m seeing, and this is what the Bible is saying.” And then you may give time and prayer, and then have another conversation.
This isn’t a drive-by confrontation, mechanically fulfilling a cold, hard process. No.
1 Thessalonians 5:14, “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle [that’s strong], encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”
Be patient. Let me give you another example:
Step three has multiple steps assumed. When he says, “tell it to the church,” that doesn’t mean somebody jumps up in the middle of the service before the next song and says, “Hey, by the way, I want to expose John.” No.
There are multiple steps implied. Not only step one and step two (that may include a series of steps), but going to the elders, getting them involved … As we often do, asking for prayer from the congregation comes before even that final step of delivering over. In my experience, church discipline becomes harmful and coercive when it is rushed.
3. The process is gradual, not abrupt.
I know this sounds similar to the slow point, but it’s not the same thing. Jesus here is training us in relational triage.
Notice he starts extremely personal, simple: go alone. Then he moves to the next step. It gets a little more public, potentially a little more complex. Then moving toward greater publicity and greater complexity. More feelings can be hurt. More mistakes can be made. But you notice you’re moving extremely gradually, and the goal is always to restore.
4. The process is hopeful, not fateful.
“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” (Matthew 18:17).
Do we hate Gentiles and tax collectors? No. Jesus covered that way back in chapter 5. So the point is not antagonism or despising, but honesty and integrity. You’re claiming to be a Jesus follower, but you’re not living as a Jesus follower.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5 regarding a man who claims to be a Christian but is living in immorality. He says this in verse 3:
“For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if at present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:3-5).
Notice the goal. Even when these steps get to the most serious step, the goal is still restoration. We are not out trying to shun or shame anyone. We cover this anytime we do church discipline, that final step. We talk about the fact that when you bump into someone who has been put under discipline (in that final formal stage), and you see them in Walmart, you don’t evade them.
You don’t give them the evil eye, you’re not rude to them or unkind, but you also don’t pretend everything’s fine. If you claim to be a Christian and you are not living as one, everything’s not fine. So you’re willing to sit down with them, but let’s not talk about the game; let’s talk about repentance for the sake of their soul.
Here’s the irony: When the church doesn’t live consistently with our beliefs, what does the world call us? Hypocrites, as they should. So if I claim to be a Christian but I’m sleeping with my girlfriend, or I’m rude and crude, the culture’s looking at me going, “You say you’re a follower of Jesus? You certainly are not living as one.”
But what’s interesting is, when the church holds itself accountable, doing what Jesus says to do here in Matthew 18, the church then comes around and says, “You guys are hypercritical. You’re hypocritical, now you’re hypercritic. You’re self-righteous. Who would say that about someone else? You bigots.”
Living in that kind of environment, it’s really important for us to know the way of Jesus, to hear his word, and for our thinking and our living to be shaped by his teaching. Doing what Jesus is talking about here is extremely counter-cultural. So how do we do this? Because many of us are thinking, “I don’t know if I could ever do this.”
The priority, the process, and here’s the big one: the presence or the power of maintaining relationships. Verse 18, Jesus says,
“Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound [or you could translate that, ‘shall have been bound’] in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed [or ‘shall have been loosed’] in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name [here it is:], there am I among them” (Matthew 18:18-20).
Remember, the context is still church discipline/restoration. Of course, Jesus is always with his people. “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he says. But Jesus is saying here at the end of verse 20 that when you gather as my church, in my name, holding one another accountable to my word, humbly, respectfully, with childlike humility, my presence is with you in a unique way.
“…there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20).
His presence is so real that what you bind or what you loose on earth will have been bound or loosed in heaven. What is he doing there? He is synchronizing what is happening in the church with what is happening in heaven.
Dr. Alfred Poirier was one of my readers on my thesis at Westminster. He just recently retired. He wrote this,
“Such a promise ought to put a holy fear in us all. It reminds us that our little local church is nevertheless Christ’s church. Moreover, it assures us…elders, that when we make a judicial decision according to Scripture, in faith, and for God’s glory, we are, in effect, applying Christ’s judgment to the unrepentant person. Jesus’s word of promise is a word of encouragement to do the hard thing.”
Pastor Poirier, throughout his ministry, knows that it is a hard thing. Years ago, he had a deacon in his church who abandoned his family. His wife was pregnant with their fourth child, and the deacon just decided to leave home, go get a home on the other side of town, and was unrepentant.
So people from his church went. Leaders went, confronted him, over time, patiently, with tears, with scripture. No repentance. So the day came when they had to walk through this passage in 1 Corinthians 5 and other passages and deliver this man over.
Pastor Poirier was “heavy with sorrow,” but when he stood to speak, he noticed (and this is the pastoral worst nightmare) that there was a group of students in his church from the local university visiting for the first time, and a professor from that university, not believers, visiting their church.
And you’re thinking, “Really, Lord? We’re supposed to do this today?” It feels horrible. He was assuming, “They will never come back to church again. They will slander our church as being hateful.”
He taught the Scriptures, followed through on what the Bible tells us to do, and imagined that he would never see those visitors again. But the opposite happened. The next week, and the next week, they continued to come.
At one point, he and this professor were talking about that difficult Sunday, and the professor said this:
“That is the first church I’ve known that really practices what they believe.”
A year later, he trusted Christ.
Many years ago, when I was teaching Connections (this is way back; we called it “team training”), I would cover some of this similar material. A few times, I got the question: How many people have been disciplined by or are under discipline at North Hills? Do you know what the biblical answer to that is? All of us. All of us. As Morgan Moses says, we all keep each other accountable.
Rarely does it go to that final step (it does, but rarely), but every day, the body is edifying itself in love, speaking encouraging words, and holding one another accountable with difficult words when appropriate. Low egos (child-like humility), high accountability, and loads of love and encouragement.
In our culture of loneliness and disposable relationships, Jesus is showing us the way toward relational reality. Let’s pray and ask him for much-needed help.
Father, many of us want community, but not accountability. Others of us have had traumatic experiences with pseudo-community or accountability. Some of us can’t see or even appreciate the accountability you’ve provided for us because it doesn’t look like what we think it should look like or what we dream it would look like. So please, Lord, grow us in this.
First of all, help us to see the relationships you’ve already given us as gifts, not threats, as imperfect as they are. And help us to grow in childlike humility and in discernment, valuing each person so that at times we’re willing to have, when appropriate, those difficult conversations.
And we pray, Lord, that you would bear fruit in our hearts. And you would even draw people who don’t know you through something that we assume would repel them, but you, Spirit, could use it to draw them. Thank you for teaching us. In Jesus’s name, amen.
