Dear Friends:

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 (Matt 18:15).

Pots, pans and kitchen implements are as much fun for a little child to play with as building blocks. You learn stuff while playing with them with imagination.

One of the first things that I remember fascinating me is my mom’s flour sifter, an aluminum cylinder with mesh on the bottom and a red knobbed bar that one ratcheted back and forth to break up the clumps and shower a fine dust of power into a mixing bowl.

Being born and reared in California, the image of the gold rush prospector sloshing gravel and water around in a pan while looking for nuggets is vivid to me.

Sifting and sorting are practical skills that one must learn for critical thinking and verbal reasoning. What is useful and what is not? What is relevant or irrelevant to the issue at hand?

I have known young lawyers who failed out of the profession because they had no sense of the relevant and were overwhelmed when they could not discern what was important and what was not in the cases, statutes and facts that confronted them. As a mentor of mine told me about a colleague, “He’ll give you the whole tool box if you ask him how to do something, but he can’t tell you which tool is the right one to use.”

Prayer is an important sifting tool in my experience. Many times I have sifted through a toxic mess of irritation, concern, humiliation and pain before my heavenly Father. As my jumbled thoughts and feelings tumble from my mind and heart, something will catch in my soul and literally pull me to my feet in indignation or distress. That leaves me with a choice to stuff what troubles me back into the crevices of my heart to be dealt with later in my own devices, or to let it go to God with a plea, “Here, Father, take this and my desire for vindication that goes with it. Remove it from the reach of heart and mind.”

I have inflicted much suffering on myself by refusing to surrender offenses and slights to my Father. Anger and envy are dangerously imprecise and cannot be used without wounding the one who wields them. Their loud report always drowns out the quiet voice of the Holy Spirit sent to counsel and advocate for God’s peace and meekness of soul.

The Apostle James succinctly describes the problem and the solution we can have if we will sift through our morbid thoughts and feelings of self-righteousness and vengeance to find God’s word of truth implanted in our conscience:

“You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your soul” (Js 1:19-21).

I confess this is hard to do. I possess in my flesh a large and powerful capacity for rage, an easily inflamed ego, and a verbal eloquence that are the emotional equivalent of the unstable chemical compound that produces TNT. When shaken up and sparked by the inevitable frictions of life, relationships can be obliterated or distanced and lost by the gulf created by the blast. The only thing to do is to call on God and ask him to remove and safely dispose of the explosives.

This can seem like a very simple clear-cut process to bystanders, especially the pious. But it in reality it is very difficult, because the offense can be genuine, the injustice oppressive, and the pain real. Something does need to be done, but what?

This brings us to our text, “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” (Matt 18:15). This counsel operates as a powerful sifting mechanism when it is powered by prayer.

“Brother” which encompasses “sister,” in this context, implies a relationship, and not just any relationship. This is a sibling relationship between sons and daughters of our heavenly Father. When someone breaches this relationship with offense many of us pile it on the offender with judgmental, self-righteous slander and the alienation of suspicion. Those are cheap and easy shots for us to take and we greatly add to the distress of the situation by doing so.

Jesus, however, is speaking to a much harder case, “If your brother or sister sins against you. . . .”

What are we likely to do when that happens? Perhaps you and I, proud and pitiful in our status as victims, sin in the aftermath of such an insult and injury to us as we do at no other time.

Can you remember such an occasion when your rights were trampled, your honor slighted, and your feelings hurt? Do you recall the terrible thoughts of anger and revenge that filled your mind?

The Book of Proverbs admonishes, “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (Pr 26:20). It is very tempting, though, to wave the torch of our indignation and misery around a bit so others catch fire with the sparks.

You go home, and in time and with prayer, your conscience stirs you to think that maybe the offense wasn’t so bad, but you have made it worse with your gossip. But then you think in self-defense, “Well, of course, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

You think with charitable self-righteousness, “I am not unreasonable. If the offender sees the wrong he or she has done me and comes to ask forgiveness, why of course I will forgive!”

This is the moment when the great sifter of prayer-empowered Word needs to break up and filter out the stubborn clots and clumps of pride in the hardened heart. Jesus asks you to go to the brother or sister who has offended you.

Your wounded heart recoils from the proposition. “But Lord, he has sinned. He will have to come to me.”

Jesus knows your hurt and your burden. He has said, “If your brother sins against you. . . .” He knows that you have been wronged, and he is telling his solution to that wrong, “You go and tell him his fault.”

Will you go as Jesus has requested you to do?

The sifting continues as we must decide exactly what was the fault that I must describe to the offender. Excess feelings begin to be cast aside. Facts that we hoarded to magnify the insult to us, lessen in importance and relevance.

You have to forgo the chorus of critics that you have formed and orchestrated with friends and onlookers to join with you in condemnation of the offender because Jesus says you are to go to the offending brother or sister alone.

How you wish to resist the sifting at this point because isn’t Jesus going too far? I know that this is what sometimes brings me to my feet in agitated objection, “But Lord, I am not the wrongdoer here!”

Well, at least when you go you can give the real wrongdoer a piece of your mind, but another hard lump of selfishness has to be sifted out at this point. Jesus does not tell you to go to the offender to satisfy your agenda. He gives you his purpose for telling you to go which is to “gain your brother or sister.”

Here is a reason the sifting of thoughtful prayer is necessary; you must be clear in your own mind and heart as to what you are going to accomplish with the offender. Are you going to meet with her to show her that she is in the wrong and you are in the right? Or are you going to reconcile with her?

Yes, indeed, you are going to have to pray about this, aren’t you? Jesus’ request does not contain a footnote that lets you bring your weapons and ammunition to the meeting, “just in case.”  Of necessity you need to drop your weapons in practice of the words of the old spiritual–

Gonna lay down my sword and shield
Down by the riverside
Ain’t gonna study war no more

The prayer that focuses on reconciliation rather than “rightness” will change your attitude if prayed honestly and faithfully. Remember, it is fine to pray, “Lord, I can’t, but you can, so empty my heart of anger and defensiveness and fill me with your Holy Spirit.” God has, after all, promised “to fully satisfy every need of yours according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:19). Why not claim the promise for this need. “The one who calls you is faithful and he will do this” (2 Thess 5:24).

Perhaps a beginning to your meeting is your request that she forgive you for your anger and thoughts of revenge. Too much? Are you to ask forgiveness from the one who has cut you so deeply? Why would you possibly do such a thing?

Well for one thing, you have the freedom of a good conscience now having had it sifted through a season of prayer and direct application of the Word of God. For another thing, Christ came to us when we sinned against him while we were still in the very sordid acts for which he paid the ultimate sacrifice ( Rom 5:6-8).

And know this, Christ will come with you to your meeting if your heart is submitted to his name and purpose. We too easily forget that his much claimed promise that “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” was said in the context of his request for you to go to your brother, and tell him his fault. . .and gain your brother” (Mt 18:15, 19-20). He will be the third and mediating party in your reconciliation meeting.

Christ’s hands and feet were pierced through and his heart was broken to reconcile you to God. If he, who washed the feet of his betrayer, is there and in charge, you can trust that you both will be humble enough to come to reconciliation and restoration. This result is far different and better than “coming to terms” for that implies conditions and the shadow thought of future breaches of the peace.

No, the calling here is to let the great sifting of grace do its work as the Apostle Paul described it to the Ephesians: “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 4:31-5:2).

I do not write this message to you out of some glib thought that going to an offending brother or sister with the purpose of reconciliation is easy. The hurt may be great, and the sifting of thoughts and feelings is hard work and the meeting in the end will require a prodigious gift of faith from God.

It is, however, Christ’s expressed will that you go to your offender and there is no denying or turning back from that fact. It is also Christ’s example and he said about his executioners, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34) and to you, “Take up your cross and follow me” (Mk 10:21). Finally, it is Christ’s power, and he says to you in your torment and fear, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

I have looked a long time for a loophole and there isn’t one. He says, “Go” and that’s the end and the beginning of the matter.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.