11/27/25

This week, CSUF was on Thanksgiving break; however, I had a wonderful conversation with a group of young adults from my church community! We meet weekly to read and discuss the Bible together, but once a month we meet just to fellowship over a meal. Not to brag, but our group leaders are pretty legit and always make to best food! They are amazing hosts, and this week they made Japanese curry for us all! It was so good! Anyways, back to the story!

As we were just eating and spending time together in relatively casual community, we had a wonderful opportunity to have a conversation about practical theology - that is, how we live life in obedience to God. It can be very easy for us Christians to move from the army to the armchair in our theology, so I'm always excited when these kinds of conversation arise on their own! Someone in the group posed the question of how to forgive someone that has really hurt them, along with other people that they care about. A valuable question, and deeply practical in Christian life! What I appreciate about these conversations is how much is at stake - this is not theoretical but will directly change how we live today!

As we further unpacked the question and its particular facets (more context for the heart of the question), we found another issue that was a key player in the discussion: Does Jesus' command to not judge disqualify us from correcting those within the body of Christ? The initial question was now expanding and painting a more accurate picture of the situation. Now the question is closer to how Christians ought to engage with fellow believers when they sin against us or others. Many people improperly point to Jesus' words in Matthew 7 to teach that we cannot boldy confront believers in their sin, but that misses the actual emphasis of His message and clearly contradicts other teachings of Jesus and the apostles. So, what is this teaching about, and how does it change the way I interact with Christian correction?

We decided to stop and take a careful look at this text, seeking to understand both what Jesus said and what Jesus meant. I find that, though it's not the only way of engaging with the Bible, the Bible-dialogue format is very helpful when engaging a group with a biblical text as it keeps the weight of the discussion within the text. As we did this, we found that Jesus was not throwing out the correction of others, as verse 5 clearly talks about removing the speck from your brother's eye, but rather describing the way in which we engage other in correction. Similar to the parable Jesus gives in Matthew 18, we are called to extend mercy to those who owe us debt, as we too have been forgiven a great debt. Like the unmerciful servant, God will not forgive us mercifully if we refuse to forgive those who sin against us. Matthew 7 describes a way of correction that is humble and gentle, cultivated by an experience of being corrected by God towards righteousness. Those who have experienced God's merciful correction ought to also extend correction in merciful and compassionate way - not arrogantly or in pride. The way in which we correct others, God will likewise correct us - in mercy or without. This kind of correction is very valuable to those seeking righteousness; however, verse 6 warns us about those who don't care about this valuable correction. 

Jesus describes a type of person who disregards gentle correction, who is not concerned with righteousness. For them, Jesus warns us not to throw this valuable correction to as they don't desire it and will toss it aside in pursuit of your own destruction. There are people who have no concern to follow God, and it seems that they choose their own destruction by ignoring godly correction.

We continued to explore this conversation in depth and eventually explored Matthew 18 to understand the process we are instructed to undergo when someone sins against you within the Body of Christ. This seemed to be a very productive conversation and led to a great deal of conviction as we established that "forgetting" someone's offense is not the same as forgiving them, as you merely glaze over the issue and don't actually address it. This is firstly disobedient to Jesus' commands concerning reconciled relationships inasmuch as it depends on us, but secondly, it sets our relationships up for destruction later as this ignored issue will certainly arise the next time they offend us. This is a very unhealthy way of engaging with conflict, but a very common issue people engage with. The sooner conflict is addressed, the less likely it is to grow exceedingly out of hand and destroy relationships and communities. It's much like a snowball rolling down a snowy hill - you can ignore it, but that doesn't mean it goes away. We can pretend that we don't hold resentment against someone, but if we don't go through the work of forgiving and reconciling, then we will discover later that we have held hatred in our hearts and disguised it as "forgetting".

All of this happened because we had an environment where imperfect people came together in Christian fellowship seeking to edify those in the Body over a meal. Who can you invite to a meal and likewise open the door to Christian fellowship? Sometimes the best ministry is done at the dinner table!