I'm going to read the verse. And the verse is in Matthew 18. We read verse 15 through 18. The title of this class, in this overall class in the ministry, is Matthew 18, 15 through 18. It's scope and power. So let me start reading at verse 15. 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." Now, this is not a class on a doctrine of church discipline. We're not going to bring in 1 Corinthians 5 at all. We might bring in Titus 3, 10 and 11. But that's only if I remember. The purpose of this class is not to give you a panorama of church discipline. One of the things I'm going to say about Matthew 18, speaking of pan, I always say this, Matthew 18 is not a panacea of church discipline. There's a whole lot of things it doesn't tell you. which is no deficiency in it. It's just we want a lot of answers that maybe, you know, it doesn't give us. We want it to apply to things. For example, it doesn't tell you the kind of sin that will get you there. It does tell you one thing about the kind of sin which we'll get to, but it doesn't give you a whole host of sins. It doesn't give you a standard or a threshold. Here's another thing it doesn't give you. It doesn't tell you the time that it takes to go from one step to another. That's not to say it doesn't give you an objective standard, and we'll see that standard as we go, but it just doesn't give you any time. There's a whole lot of things about the psychology of the people you're operating on. What does it mean to refuse to listen? What kind of lesson are we talking about? What level of besetting sin versus is it, as the URC has in their book of church order about church discipline, is it an infamous sin? Because that's the kind of thing that 1 Corinthians 5 talks about, and that gives you a real threshold for church discipline, a sin of infamy. In other words, it defames the name of Christ in some way. It spreads like gangrene through the body, whether it's gossip or some form of sexual immorality or whatever, the usual things that you think of when you think about church discipline. You've got to turn to other parts of Scripture to get the answers to those questions. Matthew 18 is not going to necessarily give you all of that. So, what we're going to talk about today is only what Matthew 18, 15 through 18, does give you. And actually, it gives you a lot, and the vast majority of it is absolutely neglected, just sitting there on the shelf of heaven that the church is not accessing, not just in church discipline, but in conflict resolution. Matthew 18, 15 through 18 tells you a lot about conflict resolution, and that should be a weapon. It should be a tool in the hands of counselors in the church, and you rarely see it. Here's how we have broken down the outline today, and there are three P words. Parties, primacy, and pudding. Here's what I mean. Not pudding, but anyway. Number one, the parties to the sin. Number two, primacy to the sin. We'll talk about what that means. And then thirdly, putting away of the sin. So there's a lot more there, but that's what we're gonna focus on. Number one, parties to the sin. Number two, primacy to the sin. Number three, putting away of the sin. All right. So I read the text. Again, let me state the obvious. This is Jesus talking. This is not a suggestion. This is a command of Jesus. Jesus tells the church to do this. Anybody in the church. And so the first thing we're going to look at is the parties to the sin. The parties to the sin. And that is Three main parties, notice. I have the word church here, but what you're gonna see is that they actually become one of the other parties. Party number one, there's the offender. Party number two, there's the offended. And then party number three, there's witnesses. You say, what about the church? It's step three. They become, so let's put in parentheses, more witnesses. Otherwise, you totally break the flow of the passage and the whole point. to bringing in other people, okay? So very simple, party one offender, party two offended, party three witnesses. And then when the church comes in, the church is being told. So notice that the church is being brought in with the same kind of form as the other witnesses are brought in. It's just at the last step. And they're there, again, to testify. That's why it's as if they don't listen even to the church. So there's three parts. Notice, and this is the easiest part, there's three steps. Everybody knows that. Matthew 18. 15 through 18 gives you three steps of church discipline. By the way, and Jay Adams points this out as well, when you get to the third step, there's a little bit of nuance. You'll see that all the way on the right side of the board. You notice I have here one, two, and then three A and three B. And that's important because if you look at the text, let me get to this, at verse, let's see, I think it's 17. At verse 17, it says, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, so what has he done? He's already got to step three, right? He told the church. If he refuses to listen to you, then, there's an implied then, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, there's two parts to step three. There's the telling to the church, but then as even more of a measure of grace, Hopefully that works on this person. Only then do you have excommunication. So I think that's an important nuance. Jay Adams in one of his books, I think it's his book on church discipline, brings that out. Anyway, those are the steps. 1, 2, and 3. Those are the parties. 1, 2, and 3. And that suggests that these people are being brought in as witnesses. And so right away, you have courtroom imagery. And you'll notice that right before this passage, you have the parable of the lost sheep, and people bring that up too. And so one way to over-interpret that and try to make it nice and kind, and it is kind, But the implication there is that a courtroom is not kind. But actually, a courtroom is very kind to oppressed people. Right? And I'm going to argue, when we get to this second point, the first point is going to be very quick, I'm going to change the language here, another O word, from the offended party to the oppressed party, and the offending party to the oppressor. Now, why am I going to do that? Because, verse 15 says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. I am not saying that Matthew 18, 15 through 18 should not also apply to every other part of church discipline. For example, Jesus could have said, if your brother sins against God. Now, when he sins against you, he is primarily sinning against God. There's no doubt about that. But Jesus doesn't say that. Jesus confines this, the most immediate meaning, to a sin against you. In other words, the very specific sin of oppression. This is not simply... Now, gossip and slander certainly would qualify as that, because that's a violation of a person. But what about sexual immorality if it's somebody outside the body, as you kind of get the idea in 1 Corinthians 5? That's not exactly what he's talking about here. Now that doesn't mean that Matthew 18 should not also apply to those church discipline cases. My main point is that the immediate, and we miss this, there's a reason Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, Of course that's also a sin against God. Of course it's also a sin against the whole body. But Jesus doesn't say any of those things. He very specifically says, if your brother sins against you. So the most immediate meaning and application of Jesus's words is that there is a courtroom to settle a case of oppression. There's a horizontal conflict between people. People in the body of Christ are at each other. And Jesus is calling witnesses to witness between fallible finite human people, sinners. And so this is really our easiest, quickest point, the parties to the sin. The offender in this passage is actually an oppressor. And the offended is actually an oppressed. Now, here's an objection. What if they're both guilty of sinning against each other? Doesn't change the logic of it. Well, then the witnesses are going to have to draw that out. Maybe they both need to repent to each other. Nothing wrong with that. However, when we get to the second step, we're going to start to test out whether or not that's actually an honest objection. So let's move to that second point, and as we move to the second point, the primacy to the sin, we're going to talk about a thing called primal sin. When we move to that, I want to ask a question, what are the witnesses there for, and what does Jesus mean when he says, take one or two others along with you, those are the witnesses themselves, here's the purpose though, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Notice I have on the board witnesses versus the evidence of the witnesses. Are the witnesses the same thing as the evidence of the witnesses? If they are, then anybody can come in and say, hey, I've got three people with me. Better yet, I've got 30 people with me. And these 30 people are willing to say that you are an arrogant jerk. What do you do? Does that count as the kind of evidence that Jesus is talking about here? Well, I would say absolutely not. There can be conflicting witnesses, and all you need to do to contradict that argument is to say, well, if you have two or three witnesses, what if the other side has two or three witnesses, and they completely contradict those two or three witnesses? Does that mess up Jesus? Did Jesus just not think about that? Is Jesus after a majority here? Is he after a simple majority? Or a unanimous vote of witnesses? Well, that's completely subjective. The evidence is the reason for the witnesses. The witnesses are there to serve the evidence. They are to establish the truth of the matter. And that brings us right to the next step. What does that mean? What do you mean by the truth of the matter? Well, let me get to something called primal sin. Primal sin. What is primal sin, and how does Matthew 18, 15 through 18 address it? Because there's other texts of Scripture that I would argue talk about this idea of primal sin. And somebody might say, that is not a biblical phrase, just like Trinity, or monotheism, or all that stuff. Well, I would say that the Bible does teach this concept, even if it doesn't use that particular phrase. So let me define it. By primal sin, we're going to mean that root sin that is the efficient cause of the offense. It's the root of the conflict. And so I have a picture. And on the picture, there are roots going under the surface. The first step is there's a surface. And then when you bring in witnesses, something has come up over the surface. We've brought light into the room. The witnesses are seeing something that previously was under the surface. And when they see that, they want to know, they want to ask the question, what does it mean to establish this charge? What does that mean? It means, I want to find the root that will not let go of the oppression. So for example, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, my brother's sinning against me, I'm trying to call you as a witness. And the other person says, oh yeah, he sinned against me. And then you find out, yeah, I know, I did sin against you, and I apologized for that. Didn't you accept my apology? Well, yes, but you do that same thing. Stop. Matthew 18, 15 through 18 is not about digging up former sins that have been put away. It's about dealing with sins that are still at root, that won't let go. There's current, present oppression. There's somebody oppressing someone right now, sinning against another brother or sister right now. And so primal sin is the root that will not let go of the oppression. We have a phrase around here, and we first put it in our position paper on elder qualification, and it rhymes. we were asking the question, what does it really mean when you're not above reproach? Like in Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3. I mean, I see the qualifications and I see the disqualifications, but anybody can be guilty of these at any point, and so on and so forth. So what we did is we came up with these two words that we think really captures what the Bible is saying. Is the person insisting or persisting in the sin? In other words, does it characterize their life? So, when Titus 1.6 or 1 Timothy 3 says, they must not be quick-tempered. Quick-tempered. Oh man, I've lost my temper before. Okay, do you insist on it with your mind and words? In other words, do you say, no, that thing that you're calling quick-tempered, that really is the right way to do ministry and I'm not letting go of it. Or do you persist in it, denying it, but yet you still do it, it characterizes your life? Insisting or persisting? Insisting with your words, persisting with your actions. So those are the phrases that we believe are meant by someone whose life is characterized by a particular sin. So, let's dig into this idea of primal sin and see if it's biblical. The most important quality of primal sin is that it is the most important problem in the conflict. It's not somebody who's saying, he started it, like some petty little childish thing. We're not saying, well, this sin came first. In other words, he started it. And I think that's what a lot of people might see at first. Oh, that's so petty to talk about a primal sin. That's the same as saying he started it. Not so. Now, this sin may not come first in the chronology as it appears to us. but it is the basic evil happening under the surface of the circumstances. Here's a biblical example that might be helpful, put some flesh on it. In Antioch, the apostle Paul was making a defense of the gospel against the Judaizers. You remember this in Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 14. Even Peter and Barnabas stood in need of correction. According to Paul, the primal sin was the fear of man, verse 12. issuing forth into hypocrisy, verse 13, toward the end of endangering the gospel, verses 5 and verse 14. So in Galatians 2, Paul is pointing to Peter and Barnabas and saying, because of the fear of man, you guys are acting like hypocrites and you're endangering the gospel, and this is a big deal. Now how morally disproportionate would it have been at that moment for somebody to stand up and say, Paul? Paul? Are you telling me that you've never sinned in the whole course of this controversy? Oh, look at sinless Paul over here, talking about primal sin. Of course Paul had sinned in the course of that controversy, and surely Paul would have been the first to admit it. And if you can see that clearly, then let's differentiate what we one time called The Galatians 2 sin, namely what Peter and Barnabas were guilty of, versus Paul's Romans 7 sins on the other. In other words, that chapter in Romans where Paul was having a spirit-inspired panic attack, and he's dealing with these besetting sins that he's wrestling with all the time. Now, if Paul's dealing with those sins all the time, do you think that Paul is dealing with those sins in Galatia, in Antioch? Of course he is. Okay? And so Paul very likely committed those very sins in the course... Let's do this for a second. Come on. Up in Antioch, do you think that Paul got sarcastic? I think he did. He did in the letter. He said, I wish they'd go the whole way and cut it off! Right? Now that's inspired scripture, so that's okay. But do you think he ever lost his top a little bit in the course of ministry in a way that wasn't okay? I think he did. He was a sinner. and he had a lot of passion, and he wouldn't have excused it. So these sins were probably aggravated, probably came to the surface in that showdown in Antioch. So all we mean by primal sin in the Matthew 18, 15 through 18 process, is the same thing as this story is meant to show about the Galatians 2 sin. To point out the Galatians 2 sin, namely hypocrites, fear of man, your nature in the gospel, That's not to deny the Roman seven sins at all. It's to rediscover our sense of moral proportion. And that's what Jesus is having us all do in Matthew 18. He's calling our sense of moral proportion into action for a very, very important task. Okay, now what if somebody says, isn't trying to get to some primal sin just petty? Isn't that nothing more than an attempt to win an argument? Well, my reply is that if it were, then you have to call Jesus petty, because it's Jesus's idea. As it is, he's commending this to us in order to win a brother, not to win an argument. So I would say that that person greatly misunderstands the relationship between truth and love. What does Jesus say that the witnesses are there for? Verse 16, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If we do that, that strikes at the root of the hostility. The hostility is what is separating the brothers, not its removal. And so we have to ask, is Jesus mistaken about the real source of the hostility? Is Jesus mistaken about the real remedy for reconciliation? Are we wiser and more caring than God? Okay? Alright, so that's kind of the psychology of what the witnesses are there for. They're there to discover this primal sin. And so, now having defined what primal sin is, namely the root that will not let go of the oppression, now we have to get a little further here. Someone might say, what if I can't really put my finger on your sin. What if I have an offense against you, but you are... I can't really explain what it is. Or what if I do this? What if I say, you're arrogant. And I say, well, what do you mean by I'm arrogant? to which you can respond, well see, that's arrogant. What do you mean? You sure you're denying you're arrogant? I'm not denying that I'm arrogant, but is it good enough to say, you are arrogant, you are prideful, or something like that, and then not give me some specifics? So I have here in my next chart, and this chart is really going to serve us in our second and third point, I have a circle with a dotted line, just to indicate this sort of a nebulous border here. We can't really tell what's defining this thing, and that just means a generic sin. A generic sin. You're arrogant. You've offended me. You're doing something wrong. And I say, well, what do you mean by that? And that doesn't mean you don't want to entertain that. Now inside the circle I have these X's and these are particular sins. These are specific sins. Here is the first reason why that's important. A general sin, a generic sin, I have an offense against you, what do you mean? I don't know, or stop it, or see, that's what I'm talking about. You're so nitpicky and isn't that arrogant. What do you mean? There you go again. Okay, so a generic sin, here's the problem with it, two problems. It doesn't get to the primal sin, which is the whole reason we're here in Matthew 18. And notice that it cannot be repented of. How can I repent for a generic sin? If I came up to any of you and said, you're a bad father or you're a bad husband, wouldn't you want to know one example of what I mean by that so you can maybe, you know, fix it? Of course you would, right? Okay. So a generic sin cannot be repented of, which means that if I have a general offense against you, then that general offense is going to go on indefinitely. What is there to stop it? What is there to put it away? What is the it that we would put away by repentance? If I'm going to repent of it, I have to have a real conviction of the it, which means my mind has to behold a real wrong that I have committed. Now, a particular sin may or may not be the primal sin. It doesn't have to be, but at least it could be. And, more to the point, the practical point, it can be repented of. So it might be that both parties have committed particular sins. Well, that's great. Then both parties can repent of things, but then step two, you still need to find a primal sin. Why? Because let's say that I'm arguing with you about anything, and I say, you know what, you're right. You're right. I shouldn't have said that like that. I'm sorry, will you please forgive me?" And they say, yes, I will forgive you. And then, you proceed with the argument, and you say, all right, now, let's say you're defending a plurality of elders in a church. I still say that there's requirements to be an elder, and that at this point, you do not meet those requirements, and the person says, wait a minute! There you go again! You just apologized for it. I say, hold on. I didn't apologize for having my position. I apologized for saying this thing. Now, what's the difference between those two things? One is the primal sin. It's the thing you're fighting over. And I can repent of something that's a smaller sin in this regard. And right there, I think, there's a misunderstanding people have. I thought all sins are infinite. Yes, they are before God, and so on. But in this particular case, again, going back to Paul and Antioch, I'm sure Paul got sarcastic, lost his temper, maybe lost his manners at particular points. Nevertheless, his cause was still just. Okay? So, generic versus particular sins is very, very, very important. If they're generic, you cannot move on in the Matthew 18 process. By definition, generic sins cannot be dealt with in the Matthew 18 way, which means we are in disobedience to Jesus if all we have is this idea of generic sins. In order to move on, we have to have particularity to our sins so that there can be any repentance at all. And that brings us to the last point, the third point, putting away of the sin. This is the whole point. So, at every stage, I said that Matthew 18, 15 through 18 doesn't give you a, it's not a panorama, and one of the things it, well, it's not a panacea, that'd be a better word for it, gives you a lot, doesn't give you everything you'd like. I said it doesn't tell you exactly how much time each step is gonna take, that's true, but that's not the same as to say that there is no objective standard, there is. Three times it says at these steps, if he refuses to listen, if he refuses to listen, and if he refuses to listen even to them. And so there's this threefold, if he refuses to listen. So when do you expand the circle of witnesses? Answer, if he refuses to listen. That will bring up more questions. You will have to get wisdom from other parts of Scripture. You will have to know your audience. You'll have to know your own limits and be realistic about that. There's a lot of wisdom that you'll have to call other parts of Scripture into. However, the objective standard is still there if he refuses to listen. Now, as I already said before, and this is another thing that proves it, Matthew 18, 15 through 18 is not, for sin, already put away. That would make no sense. The whole point is that if your brother sins against you, you go to your brother and you win your brother. When do you win your brother? Answer, when he repents. That's what winning your brother means. And so if he's already repented, That sin is put away in that horizontal sense. Of course, only the cross of Christ puts away sin eternally, but we're talking about horizontally. If you win your brother, if they repent of the sin, if you've forgiven them for those sins, those sins are dealt with or put away. And so it doesn't fall under the class of if he refuses to listen. If somebody has done something wrong in the past and they've been forgiven of it, it's obviously not part of the class if he refuses to listen. So Matthew 18, 15 through 18, is not an opportunity for some tit-for-tat sort of thing, where if somebody feels oppressed by somebody else, the charges of that claim of oppression have to be dealt with. Not some never-ending, indefinite laundry list of things that you do. Well, you do that. You do that. That's a childish way to argue. It's irrational. It obviously is not to the point of what Jesus is having us do here. But as a matter of fact, it's also obviously childish. Okay, so the whole point is to put away the sin. And notice at every step there's light coming into the room. So I guess the only part of the drawing I could have added here is that notice that at every step, I'll put it right over the circles, there's light coming in. There's more light coming in. Over here at step three, mega light coming in. So there's an increase of light at all of these particular points. So there's obviously a lot there. As you know, a couple of months ago we had a members meeting where we had a paper that I wrote that I basically read, not necessarily word for word, but almost word for word, and it had to do with gossip. How do you know when you are gossiping? How do you know when you're hearing gossip? And we dealt with that for that reason. And so I brought in two fictional dialogues to make the point. And the whole point is this. There really isn't an allowable fourth party in this process. There's a fourth party in the body of Christ. That fourth party is sort of out here. Now, once they get to the third step, they won't be. But until it's at the third step, 3B, you know, tell it to the church, and then excommunication, before that, there is a fourth party. That fourth party is content to not know more. And perhaps they don't even have an opportunity to know more. Nothing wrong with being that kind of a fourth party. However, there is no such thing as a fourth party in here. Entertaining information but refusing to serve as a witness. If you're going to get information and handle the information, you're a witness, and your job has been spelled out for you very clearly by Jesus. Establish the charge. Namely, get to the primal sin and deal with the oppression at its root. That is your only job as a witness. And you say, well, what if somebody comes to me with this, and I didn't even ask for it? Too bad. At that point, the moment you get the information. You are a witness. Now there is a, and I'm gonna put this in quotes, a passive and righteous way to do a minimal job as a witness. In other words, you're not comfortable being an aggressive witness in the sense, people have different personalities, women and children, for example, or just people with more passive personalities. I get that. You're still a witness, but here's the way to do it in a way that doesn't assert yourself in a way that's disproportionate to your personality. And here's how to do it. Somebody comes to you and they say, and they give you some information, you immediately bring them back to either the offended or the offender party. So one of the two people that are at odds with each other, you bring those people back. You know, Matt's a real arrogant jerk. Well, Matt's right over there. Let's go over to him. Oh, no, no, that doesn't work. What do you mean that doesn't work? Well, every time I go to him, he steps on my toe. Man, that's out of character. I've never seen him step on my toe. Let's go over there and see right now. And at every point, you call the bluff. Maybe it's not a bluff, but you can find out really easily. You just say, hey, there he is right there. Let's go to him. Let's go to that person. And if that person will not go back to the offender or offended party, that person's the one bluffing. It's a foolproof test. Bring them right back to these two parties at step number one. So that's what we went into in that membership meeting. We just drew out the gossip and slander elements of Matthew 18. Let me open it up to questions or discussion here, because there's a lot of, I think we could probably get into more crevices by just opening it up to questions. Yep. If the offended is precluded from approaching the offender unless they are without sin, and you were kind of talking about that a little, it makes this whole process why would it even be spelled out? So it has to be assumed that even the offended party is at some level, in some regard... He's a sinner. He's a sinner. And it doesn't necessarily mean he's guilty in a particular sense against the offender. But it seems like, as Jesus said, He who is without sin, go ahead and pick up the rock. People could use that verse to halt the process from starting. Because, of course, everybody that will ever be in this process is a sinner. And if everybody that's in this process is a sinner, then this process could never get started if all that was after is sins per se. Because by what standard would we sort them out? Clearly, and that's one of the proofs of this doctrine of primal sin, there has to be something very specific in mind by Jesus. And I think the first clue to that is the very first verse. If your brother sins against you, so there's a particularity screaming out of it. This person is doing something. This person is holding me captive right now. I'm claiming that. I'm not claiming I'm without sin. I'm claiming he's doing that. That's all I'm claiming. And so now we're asking somebody, do you see that? Do you see that happening? Just something. And obviously, if either of these two people had to be sinless, In general, or in that particular regard, or at that time, well then the process would never get started and Jesus would be made a fool here. So clearly, the person who's in the right will also be sinning while he's in the right. So they've got to mean two separate things. What the difference would be like with Joe and David, where there's some sort of language, specifically in that situation that they're referring to. Right. Blameless. And of course the classic narrative passage is David and Saul. And I'm actually this close to making a decision on this, but I think in the men's ministry, I'm flip-flopping with Josh here, in the next four I want to do a mini-series called, May the Lord Judge Between Me and You. And I'm going to start the series with the passage from 1 Samuel. Because how does that make sense in the Psalms, where David knows the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and yet here is Psalm 18, for sure, and in other places, he's saying, judge me according to my righteousness. If I have done this thing, this thing, not if I've done anything, he's done a lot of things. He was a murderer and an adulterer. Okay, so there's got to be a distinction here between sin per se, of which we're all infinitely guilty of at all times, versus this horizontal court case going on. And judge in this case, there's an implied in this case, in this case. It's a case. It's a courtroom. It's a courtroom. Oh, my goodness. It's so unkind and sharp and cold. Not for oppressed people. For oppressed people, courtrooms are places of safety. Vindication. Yeah. They have their day. Yeah. So if the offense happens in the presence of zero witnesses, the sense in which you're talking about witnesses can be offended. Is that where you're suggesting that the offended go and get people who can then, in a sense, become witnesses? They can draw it out. Okay, you brought up something here that's interesting that I didn't cover. What if the thing that happened happened utterly in private, so that there's no way For anyone else, how many times as parents do we say that? We have to say it to our kids, like, you know what? I wasn't there, but I never stopped my sentence there. I wasn't there, but I can tell when one of the two of you, or both, are acting like a Nazi right now, and it won't be hard. And so at that point, the witnesses are not going to be really ruling on what happened because they weren't there. Now, there's ways that you can tell, but let's say you can't. Then the primal sin moves to something like, well, who's willing to let it go? the person who's not willing to let, it's kind of like Solomon with that sword, with the two women with the baby and the one baby died and so on. There's ways to tell. And we don't all have the wisdom of Solomon. But at that point, the sword is gonna shift a little bit from the primal sin being I was there and I know, because I wasn't there. So now the question's gonna be, well, is it possible that one of the two parties is acting like a complete baby right now? and is trying to reach for something that nobody should ever reach for. In that case, though I wasn't there for that, I can at least say, you know what? You have no more right in this courtroom, because you are at least at this point starting to oppress in a new case. You're almost opening up a case within the case. And I may never know what happened here, but I can tell you right now that this person's being humble, this person is within their rights to say this or claim this or hold on to this, it's their property and so on, and you're reaching for something that seems to be idolatrous and oppressive. So you're sort of a second case opening up within the case. But that's a good question. I have a question. Yeah. So let's say I believe you sinned against me in some way. And I go to Jason and say, hey, so I haven't even gone to you, right? I just think, Matt did this. And Matt's thinking in some particular way. And I pinpoint it. I go to Jason and say, hey, this is what I'm struggling with. I think Matt did this. And he says to me, no. And I go to him, we're learning to see, am I crazy or not? And I'm really thinking through this rightly. And he says, yeah, you are crazy. And he gets it against you. Drop it. And then I drop it. And then it's done. And I violate the Matthew 18 process Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so. Because, you know, sometimes we call that a sanity check. No, because you could, let's say this, instead of going to Him, maybe you might pray about it. And you might, in a sense, go to God about it. And that might be delayed. Are you disobeying Jesus' command to go to Him? I don't think so. Because, you know, being sinned against is a relative thing. It's already relative because all sin is fundamentally against God, and all of our sin, all of us, have committed the worst sin ever, namely, nailing Christ to the cross. abusing the image of God that God has given us. And so all horizontal sin is relative, at least in that sense. And so I have an opportunity to not hold a fence where, in fact, everything's God's property. He's providentially ordered these things. Be careful in giving this advice because, you know, counseling people who have been oppressed that you should think about this more like me can be abusive too. So, yeah, all relative in that sense. Right, then there's the heart of forgiveness. Forgive them without going to them. As in most cases, you should still go to them. Here's another thing that we didn't bring up, and it's relevant to both of these. What about a case of abuse of a much weaker party? A woman, child, or whatever. Should we then make somebody face their oppressors? No. That was actually part of what apparently was brought against Sovereign Grace Ministries and that whole abuse scandal was that when the abuse happened in these small groups or whatever it was, these children were kind of called on to be supposedly, this is the charge, that, you know, they're being given misapplied true advice, you know, like true advice like, you know, forgiving and so on, which you should. That's easier to say to a grown-up or, you know, whatever else, harder to say to a child and so on. Again, there's a relative thing going on there, too. We don't necessarily say that everybody has to go face their oppressor when that person's an intimidating person. Maybe it's a group of people, and you have to face 20 people, and it's your word against 20 people and that stuff. So there's a lot of... I keep using the word relative, but hear that relatively. There's a lot of relative space here in some of these things. Doesn't it happen often where the offended party Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There is taking offense. And, of course, Matthew 5 uses the word offense, if your brother has an offense against you. But here, if your brother sins against you, and sin is a very objective word. Sin is lawlessness, 1 John 3, 4. So God gets to define what sin actually is. And that's another reason I think I would justify substituting the word oppressor and oppressed for offender and offended. I think offense is a perfectly good word, as long as, you're right, it too is a relative term here, because somebody can take offense when no offense is given, you know. Bye.