WHERE TWO OR THREE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER (PART III)

“Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out”

By Akin Ojumu

2 Timothy 4:2

“Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.”

Beware of pastors who tell stories on the pulpit. God’s assignment to the shepherds of His flock is to preach the Word and God’s pulpit is a place to do just that. The pulpit should not be turned into a TEDx event, an Amateur Night at the Apollo, or a Comedy Central story-telling platform. The sole duty of the preacher standing in God’s pulpit is to open the Bible, read the Word of God, and teach the people the meaning of the text, one verse at a time. 

Tall tales of drinking tea with God corrupts the mind. Cock and bull stories of traveling to Heaven and visiting the throne room of God may scratch itching ears but are powerless in curing the deadly infection of the soul. Outlandish claims of “Daddy said…” bring nothing but spiritual ruin. Any pastor who engages in these types of performative made-for-TV ponderous platitudes is a clear and present danger to the people who consume the poison he is selling.

This commentary series is not a story-telling exercise. It’s a sober reflection on what Christ meant when He told His disciples that He would be present where two or three are gathered together in His Name.

Matthew 18:20

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

In the previous installment of this commentary, we saw how this statement was made within the context of Church discipline. The Lord Jesus was instructing His disciples on the procedure they should follow when it is discovered that a fellow believer has committed a sin. These instructions are meant to be instituted within the framework of a Church congregation.

Matthew 18:15

“If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.”

If a Christian receives information about the sin of a fellow Christian, he must first go to the latter in private and confront them with the allegation. The purpose of doing this is to remind the transgressing believer of whose they are, who they are, and what is expected of them. The end goal is not to name and shame. Rather, it’s for repentance and restoration.

Galatians 6:1

“Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

Should a one-on-one confrontation fail to bring the believer to repentance, the person with the knowledge of the allegation should go back to the offending brother, but this time around it should be in the company of two or three people who are eyewitnesses to the incident and can corroborate the allegation.

Matthew 18:16

“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.”

This second step is a fulfilment of one of the provisions of the Old Testament Law. To bring a charge of wrongdoing against anyone under the Law given by God to Moses, you need two or three witnesses. 

Deuteronomy 19:15-21

“A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. And the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”

This requirement of two or three witnesses still operates today even in the secular legal systems of many countries around the world. The idea is to prevent false allegations and the harm that may be caused by such unsubstantiated allegations.

Matthew 18:17

“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.”

Now, in case the sinning believer remains impenitent, even with the testimony of two or three witnesses, the next step in the protocol is to bring the matter before the entire Church assembly. Again, the purpose of escalating the matter to the whole assembly is not to ridicule the wayward brother, but to restore him in a gentle and loving manner. The whole Church is so to wrap their hands around the offender in order to get him to repent.

When even that lovey-dovey kumbaya step fails, what’s left is to kick the unrepentant offender out of the congregation. The Church is to regard him as “a heathen and a tax collector” and must excommunicate him, forthwith. A recalcitrant believer who will not repent of his sins following multiple attempts to bring him to repentance and restoration is a cancer in the Body that needs to be aggressively excised before his cancerous influence metastasizes to the rest of the Body.

Among the Jews living under Roman rule, tax collectors were thought of as the symbol of the worst kind of people. They were the bottom of the barrel of the scoundrels. These were disloyal Israelites hired by the Romans to tax other Jews for their own personal profit. And boy, did they extort and squeeze their fellow Jews dry?

Excommunication is not merely to punish the offender, or to shun him completely, but to remove him as a detrimental influence from the fellowship of the Church, and then to regard him as an evangelistic prospect rather than as a brother. Ultimately, the sin for which he is excommunicated is a hardhearted impenitence (Source: The MacArthur Bible Commentary).

We’ll take a pause here for now. When we come back, we’ll discover what God has to say about the excommunication of a hardhearted impenitent believer.