This is the final installment in this series and I hope it has been as thought provoking for you as it has for me. I want to reiterate this series is not intended to be a final say on these important topics of Biblical confrontation, reconciliation, and accountability. These are weighty questions and the conclusions have very real implications on all the relationships in our lives we hold dearly.
But some conclusions can be certain, one of which is that we are all guilty to some degree of a cut and paste approach to how we understand Jesus’ example found in the first 5 books of the New Testament and the remainder of the NT. Let me be clear on this though. Scripture is infallible. That is settled for me. But our interpretation of Scripture is not infallible. We cut and paste sometimes overtly to suit our own conclusions but also sometimes inadvertently, a victim of our own biases and filters. So may we always be open to questions, challenges, and conversations. I hope that this series has sparked some of those conversations among you and your friends.
I couldn’t close this series and not address Paul’s account of confronting Peter in Galations 2:11-21. There is no indication that Paul followed anything remotely comparable to what Jesus teaches in Matthew 18, which we discussed in great detail during part two of this series. Three things in particular are important to note: Paul confronts Peter in a public setting. Second, Paul writes about it in a letter that is supposed to be read aloud in a church service. Third, that letter is then to be circulated among the churches of that region and eventually among all churches for generations to come. So this then is my question: Have we created in our modern world an expectation of privacy that we are not entitled to have as professing Christians when it comes to certain sin or certain behaviors?
The times when we see Jesus being wrathful toward others, especially publicly, there seems to be pattern. He is consistently advocating for vulnerable people who are being unjustly treated and are outmatched by their adversary. They are not outmatched because truth or justice is on the side of their adversary. Rather, they are outmatched because of means, economics, privilege, access, education, power, influence, and even at times intellect. Isn’t this Jesus’ example to us, how He stepped in to defend? Do we ourselves not have a moral obligation to step in as Jesus did? Are we not permitted to bring emotion to the moment that matches that of Jesus’ passion, dare I use the word wrathful again as discussed before in this series? And does following His example also include a times mirroring His disregard for privacy? Is privacy at all cost a modern social construct that we have overlaid onto Christianity in the same way that many of us done with politics, social reform, and governmental structures?
A word to pastors…have we been silent out of fear of losing people from our churches? Have we been silent driven by a desire to please others instead of pleasing Jesus? Are our actions or lack thereof a result of enculturation instead of spiritual formation? Have we in our silence not just made room for those mistreating the vulnerable but also made room for those who enable them by their own lack of private and public accountability. Have we under the guise of being peacemakers created a safe place for the verbally and emotionally violent to inflict harm on the most vulnerable in our midst? I think these are important questions that all of us must ask ourselves and especially those of us who are spiritual leaders.
Andrew Murray writes that “pride must die in us, or nothing of heaven can live in us.” I hope this series provokes us all to a place of glourious clarity in understanding Jesu's’ full, unedited example for us as revealed by the Holy Spirit. May we forever learn from Him as we endeavor to live and love like Him.