(DOWNLOAD) "Church Discipline and Forgiveness in Matthew 18:15-35 (Essay)" by Currents in Theology and Mission * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Church Discipline and Forgiveness in Matthew 18:15-35 (Essay)
- Author : Currents in Theology and Mission
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Politics & Current Events,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 253 KB
Description
Forgiveness is one of the foundational acts of Christian practice and theology, and nowhere is it more strongly advocated than in the Gospel of Matthew. At the same time, the Gospel of Matthew includes warnings that seem to contradict the idea of unconditional forgiveness. In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, for example, we find a story where a king orders an unforgiving servant to be handed over to torture until the servant can pay every penny of his debt (Matt 1 8:22-35). Jesus warns that anyone who causes a little one who believes in him to stumble would be better off dead (Matt 18:6). The same chapter contains instructions for dealing with an unrepentant offender in the community: such a person should be given several rebukes and, thereby, several chances to repent--but in the end, if she or he does not listen to the community, that individual should expelled and treated as an outsider (Matt 18:15-21). How can the same Gospel that testifies so strongly to the importance of forgiveness include stories of permanent rejection? Part of our difficulty may be in our understanding of what forgiveness is. We tend to think of forgiveness as feeling less angry about some injury to ourselves or as excusing bad behavior without insisting on consequences for the offender. We also frequently pair forgiveness with a resolve to forget about the hurt we have just excused. Unless the difficulty is money-related, we may not even have a clear idea of what, if anything, could have been done to repair the hurt if we did not excuse it and forget it.
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