The Proper Limits of Forgiveness

Jesus said to his disciples:
“If your brother sins against you,
go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.
If he does not listen,
take one or two others along with you,
so that ‘every fact may be established
on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’
If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.
If he refuses to listen even to the church,
then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.
Amen, 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.
Again, amen, I say to you,
if two of you agree on earth
about anything for which they are to pray,
it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them.”

(Matthew 18: 15- 20)

This passage puts the lie to the common false claim that Christianity calls for overlooking wrongs, turning the other cheek, forgiving without apology or admission of wrongdoing. Rather, it outlines the proper legal procedure. If the violator admits the wrong, apologizes, seeks to make amends, one is obliged to forgive, seventy times seven times. But if he persistently refuses to acknowledge the wrong, “treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” You shun him.

The words immediately following, moreover, look as though they are saying that heaven itself will exact revenge. His behavior (or our own behavior) in such a situation determines his eternal fate. “’Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord.” God will impose the punishment.

The passage makes a second vital point.

The final passage is often misquoted as “where two or more are gathered in my name.” And so is sometimes used to attack individualism in favour of the collective. This overlooks the fact that it sets an upper as well as a lower limit. This same number of witnesses, two or three, seems to be repeated throughout the larger passage; as though it is significant, and not to be glossed over. This is not about the collective, but about individual friendships.

Jesus, with thousands of disciples, chose only twelve apostles. And only the Twelve were invited to the first mass. He seems to have deliberately set an upper limit to the numbers of “the church” in this sense, the local congregation. Twelve is perhaps the rough upper limit at which each member of the group can have a real personal connection with each other member—it is a network of individual relationships, rather than a collective or corporation with a character of its own.

This of course implies that the current Catholic congregations are too large. In my experience, this is so. We need to break out into smaller prayer groups. This may be the key to the success of the Charismatic movement.