Question

I have a question on Matthew 18:15-17 that has to do with confronting another brother.  There are three steps that are outlined in those passages [four steps actually--the final one being putting them out]. The first, go to your brother in private and try to win him over; the second, if he won't listen to you take two or three witnesses so that every word my be established; the third, if he won't listen to you in a group go to the church and tell them, and if he won't listen to the church, then you are to treat him as a Gentile or a tax-gatherer.  How do we treat Gentiles or tax-gatherers?

Answer

What you have to understand is those are basically terms that reflect an outcast.  Gentile is used here not in the sense of a racial slur but in the sense of an unbeliever--someone outside the covenant.  In other words, treat them like an unbeliever.  The tax-collector was the most despised person in the nation of Israel.  You see, what you have to understand is that Rome had taken control of Israel, and Rome made Israel into a province and, of course, put Pontius Pilate in there to sort of be the Roman governor and exact Roman order and Roman law. 

In order to carry out the Roman occupation there was a tax collecting process, and what happened was the Roman government sold franchises to willing Jews to exact tax from their own people.  That is what Matthew did, he was what the text called a "Little Mokhes"--he was a tax collector--what the Hebrew would call that.  He was a man, in behalf of Rome, took taxes from his own people.  Well, the oppressed Jews, under the yoke of Rome, literally thought that that was the epitome of being a traitor.  Here was a Jew buying into the franchise to collect taxes from his own people to pay an oppressing government--in their view.  Furthermore, they oppressed the people in taking those taxes. 

You remember the story of Zacchaeus, don't you?  You remember that when Jesus came to his house he made all kinds of vows and promises that he was going to pay back fourfold everything that he had taken, and he had extorted from the people and overcharged them and he was going to do it all, give it all back, multiple times.  And then the Lord said, "This day has salvation come to this house."  So, the people literally despised the tax collector because, in a sense, he had sold his birthright as a Jew to Rome for money, and was exacting taxes out of his own people, which they saw as oppressive and invasive.  So when Jesus says, "Treat this person as a heathen and tax collector," He means, treat them as somebody that doesn't belong and somebody who is an outcast.

Now, if a person is in the church and they follow up in sin, and sin, and sin, and they won't repent when you go through the process--you treat them like an outsider.  You treat them like someone who doesn't belong--you don't let them come in--1 Corinthians 5, "A little leaven does. . . ."  What?  "Leavens the whole lump."  You don't want them around.  You want them to be treated as if they were heathen and as if they were an outcast.

Now, furthermore, let me go a dimension beyond that.  I believe also, that we have to treat people who are heathen and tax collectors or outcast with some consideration for what they need to be, so I would see in that even the implication that you might pursue them that they might cease to be a heathen and cease to be an outcast.  So I think that there might even be an evangelistic intent in that, that we go after them as we would an unbeliever.  How do you treat a heathen and a tax collector? 

Hopefully, you don't curse them.  Hopefully, you compassionately call them to salvation.