Through the Flaming Sword

A promise more than a condition for gathering (and a thing with numbers)

I suspect that many of us tend to read Matthew 18:20 as a condition: If you gather in my name, then I will come. But he actually says wherever you gather in my name, there I am in your midst. He is making a promise, not necessarily establishing a condition for his presence, though I think it’s reasonable to think that he’s implying a condition. We will return to the role of his name and this possible condition for gathering in a later post.

The wider context for this promise is Matthew 18:15–20, which defines a 3-step process that Jesus prescribed for dealing with conflict in his household churches. The promise in 18:20 is the third in a series of three promises, and each promise relates to one of the three action steps in the reconciliation protocol.

The first promise confers on one person heavenly authority to “bind” or “loose”. “Binding” and “loosing”, which also appears in Matthew 16:19 in which Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, represents the authority of the church and its leadership to settle matters of doctrine and of discipline. The second promise confers on two people (or three) the Father’s authority through an answer to prayer.

The third promise—the promise we’re looking at specifically—confers on the whole church Jesus’s own authority through his presence to expel the offender. Or at least, to treat them as a Gentile or tax collector, an outsider of some kind. The gospels give mixed messages about Jesus’s attitudes toward Gentiles, but from the stories of Zacchaeus and the call of Matthew, we know he had a special mission of conversion focused on tax collectors.

Furthermore, there’s a subtle number thing going on here. The action steps involve first one, then one or two more people, then two or three more people, and so do the promises. Here’s what that structure looks like:

If any member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.	Whatever you (singular) bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth with be loosed in heaven.
But if you ae not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.	If two of you agree on earth, about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you a Gentile and a tax collector.	For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.

The three promises form a binding triangle of authority in which the disciple(s) derives authority from the Father through Jesus. Jesus somehow represents or mediates the Father’s ultimate authority through his presence.

We will discuss the nature of his presence and what his name has to do with it in later posts.

Tagged: Jesus