How Do I Confront a Friend Who Sins? (Matthew 17:14-18:35; Mark 9:14-10:12; Luke 9:37-50)

A Few Thoughts to Consider

Do you hate confrontation?

Few thrive on having tough conversations, but they remain a necessary dynamic for healthy relationships. Unfortunately, Christians tend to fall into one of two extremes: Either they lean into confrontation and repel others, or they run from confrontation and ghost others. In Matthew 18, Jesus gives four straightforward steps to confronting a fellow Christian who has sinned. As David Platt notes, “This passage is foundational for understanding church discipline and restoration, something that is essential to the health of a church.”^[1] Amid a few stories and parables, Jesus says these words:

¹⁵ “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. ¹⁶ But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

The CSB translates verse 15 as “brother or sister” instead of just “brother” because Jesus intended for this passage to apply to both genders. Terms like “brother” or “man” held different meanings than many understand today. Sometimes, they were gender-exclusive, but other times, they were intended to refer to everyone.

This passage, which only appears in Matthew’s gospel, offers a clear four-step pattern to respond to someone who has sinned. Step 1 is direct confrontation. Talk to the person directly and see if you can resolve the situation privately. “Jewish ethics heavily emphasized reproving a person privately first, so they would have the opportunity to make matters right without facing shame.”^[2]

If they refused to listen, Jesus instructed his followers to move to Step 2, which is to confront this sinner with two other Christians. Why? Because “Evidence needed to be collected in case the offender did not repent. The demand for at least two witnesses (Dt 17:6; 19:15) was foundational in Jewish law, especially as understood by Pharisees and Essenes.”^[3]

If that still didn’t work, Jesus said to bring these concerns to the local Christian assembly or church. By bringing more and more people into the equation, the goal was to help the person who had sinned to realize their need to repent.

Still, if these three steps failed, the final step was the most severe. Craig Blomberg writes, “To treat a person as a ‘pagan or a tax collector’ means to treat him or her as unredeemed and outside the Christian community….Primarily, it means not allowing someone to participate in public, corporate fellowship with the church, even as orthodox Jews shunned the “traitorous” tax collectors or “unclean” Gentiles.”^[4]