Community

January 17, 2021

This week we’ve stumbled upon one of the more difficult and important teachings of Jesus. It’s deceptively simple—“If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

Without this teaching, the church falls apart. It walks the fine line between holiness and grace—when you transgress, there is correction; when there is contrition, there is restoration. Without this teaching, we each go our own way wounding one another, slowly drifting apart, increasingly angry at one another yet never giving voice to the anger lest we be considered intolerant. 

Rather, when someone sins against me, I bring it to their attention. It is not good for disciples to sin against one another. With sin comes a rupturing of community and fellowship. With sin comes pain, anger, hate, distance. This cannot stand in the kingdom of God, the community of faith, so it is addressed.

Once addressed, it can be dealt with. The offender, being themselves a faithful child of God, humbly recognizes their fault in the matter and repents, asking for forgiveness. The offended, also a faithful child of God, humbly forgives. In this way they are restored to one another as fellow children of God.

No community can survive without this sort of system. Repentance and forgiveness are necessary in any community. When we’re wrong, we have to take steps to rectify it. When we’re wronged, we have to allow the wrong to be rectified.

This teaching is a direct attack on individualism. To repent and to forgive both require dying to self in favor of loving others. To repent is to say that I was wrong, that I am fallible, that I have sinned and transgressed. To forgive is to welcome back the source of pain, to let go of the pain and anger caused by the transgression in favor of reunification with another, to say that community is more important than the pain and anger I feel or the power I have as the wronged party.

It is hard to do once. It is nigh impossible to do seven times in one day. It is a system that almost begs to be abused, but it is the only system we have, and it’s the only system that works. Transgression leads to repentance leads to forgiveness and the restoration of community. Last week I mentioned that the church exists as an alternative to societal brokenness, and that through our being a community of healing, reconciliation, justice, and peace, we bear witness to and are the means by which the kingdom of God is present in the world. This teaching, transgression leads to repentance leads to forgiveness and restoration, is a key way we do that.

—John Coffey