Introduction
Read by itself, Matthew 18:15–20 can sound like a disciplinary policy inserted into the middle of the Gospel.
First, speak privately. Then bring witnesses. Then take the matter to the church. If none of that works, treat the person as a gentile and a tax collector.
It is orderly. It is practical. It is also dangerously easy to preach as though Jesus has handed the church a conflict-resolution flowchart.
But this passage does not stand by itself. The lectionary has skipped over nearly an entire chapter and a half since last Sunday’s Gospel. Without that narrative context, we may mistake a teaching about humility, mercy, and reconciliation for a procedure through which righteous people confront sinful ones.
Since Peter’s rebuke of Jesus, the disciples have followed Jesus up a mountain and seen him transfigured before them. They have heard the voice from the cloud declare, “This is my Son, the Beloved.” It is a moment of overwhelming glory.
Then they come down the mountain.
Below, they encounter a suffering child whom the disciples have been unable to heal. Jesus again tells them that he will be betrayed and killed. The disciples are distressed. Then an unusual dispute about the temple tax raises questions about freedom, obligation, and how Jesus and his followers will live within a religious community whose practices are contested.
All of this leads into chapter 18, where the disciples ask, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
They have seen the glory of Jesus, but they are still trying to determine their own place beside him.
Jesus answers by placing a child among them. Before he teaches the disciples how to confront another person’s sin, he teaches them to relinquish greatness, attend to the vulnerable, examine their own capacity to cause harm, and remember that God does not want even one of the little ones to become lost.
Only then does Jesus say, “If your brother or sister sins against you…”
Jesus is not writing a personnel manual. He is preparing his disciples to become a community. And he makes certain that no one enters the work of reconciliation believing that they are above the need for mercy themselves.
Narrative Context
Chapter 18 is a remarkable pause in Matthew’s narrative.
There are no crowds listening. There are no religious leaders challenging Jesus. There are no opponents attempting to trap him. Jesus is speaking to the disciples, to those who will become the ἐκκλησίᾳ, the church.
The crowds will return in 19:2. In the very next verse, the Pharisees will test Jesus. From there, the journey moves toward Jerusalem, where the controversies grow sharper and the conflict becomes increasingly dangerous.
But here, in this interim space, Jesus speaks privately to those who will continue his ministry. He teaches them about greatness, vulnerability, temptation, restoration, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
The sequence is important. Chapter 18 begins with the disciples asking who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus responds by placing a child among them and saying that unless they change and become like children, they will never enter the kingdom. The question is not which disciple occupies the highest place. The question is whether they are willing to relinquish their claims to status altogether.
Jesus then warns them against placing stumbling blocks before the “little ones.” His language becomes startlingly severe as he tells them to examine whatever within themselves causes sin. Before the disciples are given a process for addressing the sin of another, they are commanded to take their own capacity for harm with deadly seriousness.
Then Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and searches for the one that has wandered away because “it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.”
Only after all of that do we reach this week’s passage.
The movement resembles Paul’s argument in Romans. Before Paul begins exploring what reconciliation and new life might look like, he removes any ground for boasting: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Matthew makes a similar theological move through narrative. No disciple gets to approach another person’s sin as though they are the greatest in the kingdom, incapable of causing harm, or undeserving of the shepherd’s searching mercy.
The person initiating the conversation in verse 15 may be the one who has been wronged, but that does not make them morally infallible. They enter the conversation as another little one whom Christ has welcomed, another wandering sheep whom God has sought, and another disciple who remains dependent upon mercy.
That changes the spirit of the entire process.
The private conversation, the witnesses, and the involvement of the church are not successive levels of punishment. They are an expanding circle of concern. The purpose is stated in the first step: “you have regained that one.”
When reconciliation cannot be achieved by two people alone, others are invited to help carry the relationship. The community becomes involved not to intensify humiliation but because the possible loss of one member matters to the entire body.
And Jesus is not finished. As we will hear next week, immediately after this passage, Peter asks, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Jesus responds with seventy-sevenfold forgiveness and the parable of the unforgiving servant.
The lectionary separates these passages, but Matthew does not. The teaching begins with a child placed in the center, moves through the shepherd searching for one lost sheep, and ends with a warning against receiving mercy while withholding it from another.
Matthew surrounds the practice of confrontation with humility on one side and extravagant forgiveness on the other.
Without that narrative context, this passage can become a weapon.
Within its narrative context, it becomes a practice for people who know that every member of the church stands in need of truth, protection, forgiveness, and grace.
Matthew’s Context
Here, I want to take a small historical leap.
We cannot reconstruct Matthew’s community with certainty. But what if Matthew is writing to a community that is already beginning to come apart?
As I’ve named before, the trajectory of the Gospel suggests that some within the community may have been deeply concerned that the Jesus movement was losing its Jewish identity. As the mission widened and the movement welcomed more Hellenistic Jews, and perhaps a growing number of gentiles, these members may have feared that the scriptures, traditions, and practices that had formed them were being abandoned.
That fear would have been understandable. Their Jewish heritage was not an obstacle they needed to overcome. It was the sacred story through which they knew God and through which they had come to understand Jesus.
But fear of losing that heritage may also have caused them to turn against those whose practices were different. Hellenistic Jewish believers may have been treated as less faithful. Gentile believers may have been pushed toward the margins. Disagreements about Torah, tradition, identity, and belonging may have become judgments about who was truly faithful and who no longer belonged beneath the same roof.
What if Matthew is composing his Gospel in an effort to bring them back under that roof?
Matthew insists that Jesus does not abolish the Law and the Prophets but fulfills them. He repeatedly roots Jesus within the story of Israel. At the same time, gentiles recognize Jesus, receive healing, display remarkable faith, and are finally included in the mission to all nations.
Matthew will not surrender Israel’s story. But neither will he allow that story to become a reason for excluding those whom Christ is gathering.
Read this way, chapter 18 is not merely a record of something Jesus once taught his disciples. Matthew is speaking directly to a community in danger of losing one another. Before they declare someone unfaithful, push someone to the margins, or divide into opposing camps, Matthew reminds them that no one is the greatest in the kingdom. All are capable of causing harm. All can wander. All depend upon the shepherd who searches for the lost.
Perhaps Matthew is doing through the Gospel what Jesus commands the church to do here: seeking to regain a sibling.
The Gospel itself becomes an act of reconciliation, an attempt to tell the story of Jesus in a way that gathers a divided people back under one roof.
The Goal Is Not to Win but to Regain
This passage is often read as a process for determining who is right and what should happen to the person who is wrong. But the goal isn’t to shame or to punish. Jesus’ goal is stated as “you have regained that one.”
The goal is not to win the argument. It is not to establish who holds the greater authority. It is not to assemble enough supporters to overwhelm the other person. It is not even, primarily, to prove that the offended person’s interpretation of events is correct.
The goal is to regain a sibling in Christ.
That does not mean ignoring the truth or pretending that no real harm has occurred. Jesus begins with an honest confrontation: “Go and point out the fault.” Reconciliation that requires silence from the person who has been harmed is not reconciliation.
But the truth is spoken for the sake of the relationship rather than as a weapon against the other person.
This helps explain why Jesus begins with the smallest possible audience. The first step is not public exposure. It is a private conversation. If that fails, the circle widens to include one or two others. Only when those attempts have failed is the whole church brought into the matter.
At each step, the community is asked to use only as much power and exposure as the situation requires.
This is particularly important for Matthew’s divided community. When every dispute concerns identity, tradition, and faithfulness, every disagreement can begin to feel like a battle for the future of the church. People stop seeing one another as siblings in Christ and begin treating one another as threats that must be defeated.
Jesus offers another way.
No one enters the conversation as the greatest in the kingdom. No one comes without their own capacity to sin. No one comes as someone who has never wandered and never needed to be found.
The one who confronts and the one who is confronted both stand under the mercy of God.
Even the instruction to treat an unresponsive person “as a gentile and a tax collector” should be heard carefully. It names a real rupture and permits a necessary boundary. The church does not have to pretend that reconciliation has occurred when someone refuses accountability.
Yet gentiles and tax collectors are not beyond the reach of Jesus. Jesus has healed gentiles, praised their faith, eaten with tax collectors, and called a tax collector to follow him. A boundary may be necessary, but the desire for restoration does not disappear.
This passage is not a promise that every relationship can be repaired. Sometimes the other person will not listen. Sometimes trust cannot be restored. When there is abuse, coercion, criminal behavior, or a dangerous imbalance of power, a private confrontation may not be safe or appropriate.
But when reconciliation is possible, it requires us to enter the conversation seeking something more difficult than victory. It requires us to seek one another.
Preaching Possibility
When Every Disagreement Needs a Winner
We are being formed by an increasingly antagonistic culture. We do not simply disagree with one another. We attempt to defeat one another.
We look for the perfect response that will end the argument. We share screenshots of someone’s worst words. We gather people who already agree with us. We turn disagreements into performances before an audience and measure success by how thoroughly the other person has been embarrassed.
We even have language for it. Someone gets “destroyed.” Someone gets “owned.” Someone “slam dunks” on them. The goal is not to persuade the other person, understand them, or preserve a relationship. The goal is to win while everyone else watches.
That posture does not remain confined to politics or social media. It enters our families, workplaces, congregations, and church meetings. When someone hurts us, we may speak to everyone except the person involved. By the time the two people finally sit down together, each has assembled a team, rehearsed a case, and decided what the other person’s motives must have been.
Jesus moves in the opposite direction.
Begin with the smallest audience possible. Speak directly. Tell the truth. Listen. Do not widen the circle unless the relationship requires help.
And through it all, remember the goal: “you have regained that one.”
Jesus is not asking the person who has been harmed to minimize the harm. Nor is he asking the church to protect its reputation by keeping abuse secret. Some actions require immediate intervention, public accountability, or reporting to appropriate authorities.
But most of our conflicts are not those situations. They are misunderstandings, careless words, wounded feelings, broken promises, competing assumptions, and moments when one person’s fear collided with another person’s fear.
In those moments, we often have a choice. We can approach the other person wanting them to feel the full force of what they have done, or we can approach them hoping that something between us might still be repaired.
Those conversations require courage because reconciliation asks more of us than winning. Winning allows us to remain certain of ourselves. Reconciliation requires us to speak honestly while remaining open to what we have not understood. It asks us to recognize the wrong another person has done without forgetting our own need for grace.
Perhaps that is why Jesus ends this teaching with a promise: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
These are not merely two or three people gathered for worship when attendance is low. These are two or three people attempting the difficult work of truth-telling, listening, accountability, and reconciliation.
Christ promises to be present in that room.
Christ is present when someone finds the courage to name the hurt.
Christ is present when another person resists the impulse to defend themselves and listens.
Christ is present when witnesses refuse to become reinforcements and instead help both people discern the truth.
Christ is present when forgiveness becomes possible.
Christ is also present when the truth requires a faithful boundary.
The church will not be recognized as Christ’s community because we win every argument. The church will be recognized by how we speak truth, how we protect the vulnerable, how we seek those who are becoming lost, and how stubbornly we refuse to treat one another as disposable.
In a world constantly teaching us how to defeat one another, Jesus teaches his church how to seek one another, and how, by the grace of God, we might regain one another.
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Micah Krey 
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