Matthew 18

The discourse on the church addresses three interlocking problems: the problem of status within the community, the problem of causing weaker members to stumble, and the problem of what to do when a member sins. The child placed in the midst is the counter-image to the disciples' question about greatness: the child has no social status, no rights, no claim — and this is the posture the kingdom requires. The warning against causing the little ones to stumble extends the logic of the child into the community's responsibility for its most vulnerable members. The lost sheep parable, which in Luke 15 is addressed to Pharisees complaining about Jesus eating with sinners, is here addressed to the disciples about their responsibility for one another: the shepherd's going after the one is the pattern the community is to follow.

The procedure for dealing with sin in 18:15-20 is one of the most practically detailed passages in the gospel and the second of the two appearances of the word ekklesia. The binding and loosing authority, first given to Peter personally in chapter 16, is here given to the community, suggesting that in Matthew's ecclesiology the two are not alternatives but different registers of the same authority — Peter as individual representative and the community in assembly. The parable of the unforgiving servant that closes the chapter is one of the most morally direct parables in the gospel: the arithmetic is extreme (the forgiven debt is astronomical; the debt refused is trivial), the servant's failure is inexplicable given what he has received, and the king's reversal of the forgiveness is presented as justice rather than cruelty. The parable ends with the statement that gives it its force: the heavenly Father will do the same to you if you do not forgive from the heart.