I like to joke that I would view my life worthwhile if my tombstone read:

“He got them to pay attention to context and culture!”

Rethinking Matthew 18 Conflict Resolution

Working a crowd into an “amen-ing” frenzy with a proof–text having no biblically legitimate application is a widely practiced and learnable skill. A shoe salesman’s persuasion, with Tony Robbins’ charm, and a breathy evangelist’s passion can entrench a good bit of doctrinal and methodological nonsense into the Body of Christ. Accuracy sometimes suffers in direct proportion to heart rate and goose bumps: an adrenaline rush being equivalent to “the anointing” or “the Spirit moving!”  Mmmmmm . . . maybe . . . maybe not . . .

If a thumping heart has no essential spiritual significance, neither does intellectualism. The danger in any study of the Scriptures is that an idea or a theory of God can easily become a substitute for God: impressive to the mind when God as a living reality is absent from the soul. [1]  A.W. Tozer decried the substitution of the voice of the parrot for the voice of the turtledove in the Church: [2] that is, the uncritical repetition of what we have been taught or experienced, assuming that what is, must be; or that assent to Paul’s doctrine is the same as possessing Paul’s life.

None of us are totally free from the imperceptible influence of our experiences, assumptions, and culture upon our understanding of Scripture. If the Scripture is alive, and it is, the ever-present challenge is to allow its Voice to speak to us, not to project our voice onto it, thus hearing only what we have been conditioned to hear. [3] The Word of God does not present itself to us. We present our selves to it. Familiarity deadens the hearing and numbs the conscience. The curse of modern Christian leadership is the pattern of looking around and taking our spiritual bearing from what we see, [or what we desire!] [4] rather than from what the Lord has said. [5]

By neglecting culture and context, Matthew 18 (Mt.18) has suffered from careless interpretation and questionable application. It is commonly used as a procedural template for gossip control, resolving interpersonal offences, and local church issues. It’s also frequently applied to the believer’s authority in spiritual warfare to: bind and loose principalities, bind satan, bind the strong man, “bind people to the will of God,” and “loose” angels, etc.

I believe we have seen what we wanted to see and heard what we wanted to hear.

The Rescue of Matthew 18

This blog is an excerpt from our booklet: The Rescue of Matthew 18, available in print and electronic formats at www.stevecrosby.com.

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Copyright 2014,  Dr. Stephen R. Crosby, www.stevecrosby.org. Permission is granted to copy, forward, or distribute this article for non-commercial use only, as long as this copyright byline, in totality, is maintained in all duplications, copies, and link references.  For reprint permission for any commercial use, in any form of media, please contact stephrcrosby@gmail.com.

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