Go Tell it To the Church! A case for authority.

Many different scriptural verses are sighted to establish the case for the authority of the Catholic Church. However, one particular verse, Matthew 18:15-18, tends to be overlooked, but when taken in context, I think it makes one of the strongest cases for authority. Here it is:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Think about what is happening here. Jesus is alive. That may seem like an obvious statement but it provides an important context. This is still well before His entry into Jerusalem and well before His death and resurrection. While He is alive He is telling His Apostles about the Church. He is doing this in a manner of His everyday teaching of them. He is planning it with them. He is telling them that they are now, and will be, a part of this Church. One day they will be running it and He is specifically telling them how they will solve problems. Jesus, while He is alive and living with his Apostles, is establishing rules and procedures by which the Church will deal with problems. This shows that the Church is not something created by the Apostles after Jesus’ death. It is something Jesus starts while He is alive. He plans it, organizes and instructs the Apostles how it will be run. It will have structure and rules that HE is giving them. An organization that has structure and rules will have officers and officials. The Church is therefore is NOT simply an invisible body of all believers.

Notice how this passage begins, “If your brother sins against YOU…” It does not say, ‘if your brother sins against the Father', or 'if your brother sins against Me (Jesus)', but it says “against you”. Who is the “you”? It is the Apostles. Now, to sin is to fail to do the will of the Father. So when Jesus says, “if your brother (a fellow Christian) sins against you”, that implies that the fellow Christian is not doing the will of the APOSTLES. In other words, the Apostles have authority that is to be respected and followed by fellow Christians. Their will, i.e. their decisions, are to be followed.

Look at the procedure Jesus laid out. If the brother does something wrong then first, speak with the person. If they don’t listen, take witnesses and speak to them together to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Then if he still doesn’t listen – go and tell it to the Church. Which Church? Can a Catholic go to a Baptist church to settle a dispute? Can a Methodist get a fair hearing from a Lutheran? We would like to think that as brothers and sisters in Christ they could, but we know that as a practical matter we fall far from the ideal. Five hundred years of the Protestant Reformation hasn't cleared up all the questions about salvation, the interpretation of scripture, etc. Of course, Jesus would have known this too. For this to work there can only be ONE CHURCH with authority to settle disputes. Further, for this to work that Church must also be visible. A mystic brotherhood of all believers cannot be sought out to decide controversies. The Church must be a visible public organization. Further still it must be clearly identifiable as the Church that Jesus established. It must have a lineage going back to the first century so that people can tell which Church is the one to consult. Finally, it must also be universal. It must exist in every country of the world so that when a dispute does arise it has a local visible place to which the people of that region can go. Only the Catholic Church fullfills the necessary criteria.

What happens to this person who has sinned against his brothers? There is no penalty when the first person talks to him. There is no penalty when the person goes with one or two witnesses. But notice what happens when they go tell it to the Church and the brother still doesn’t listen to the Church? Then there is a penalty, a BIG one. If they refuse to listen to the Church then they are to be treated as a Gentile and a Tax Collector. How did first century Jews treat Gentiles and Tax Collectors? They were considered unclean and kept separate. Gentiles were not allowed to enter the inner courts of the temple. Jewish tax collectors were ostracized from society. Jesus is saying if they don’t listen to the Church then you kick them out! To be kicked out of something that thing must be visible. One cannot, in this life, be kicked out of the mystical body of believers but one can be kicked out of a visible defined Church.

Then notice, Jesus give the Church the same authority as a whole as that He gave to Peter individually in Matthew 16. He gives the Church the power to bind and loose. So when the Church meets to decide an issue the Church's decision is binding. (See my discussion on Matthew 16 - Peter and the Keys here: Understanding Peter and the Keys). Thus, we see that the Church is a visible thing with leaders, with rules, with authority and with penalties.

Maybe you think that this is just my interpretation of this verse. However, we see this all play out in the book of Acts and the Book of Revelation. In Acts 6, seven deacons are appointed. One of them, the one listed last, is Nicholas. Like Judas, it’s seldom a good thing to be last on a list in the Bible. We are told that Nicholas is a proselyte (an adult male convert to Judaism) from Antioch. This means he was circumcised as an adult, a difficult procedure to undergo with today’s modern medicine, let alone in the first century. Consider, why would the Holy Spirit inspire the writer of Acts, Saint Luke, to share this private information with us? (We will see why the next paragraph). Nicholas was obviously a man of conviction. He believed in the God of the Jews so much that he was willing to undergo circumcision as an adult to become Jewish. However, his strong convictions would ultimately do him harm.

Then we see at the end of Acts 14 and the beginning of Acts 15 that Paul and Barnabas come back from Antioch to Jerusalem to discuss the question of whether adult male converts to Christianity have to be circumcised. Because of where Paul and Barnabas are traveling from and from the issue they are coming to discuss we can tell by inference that Nicholas is the one causing the controversy. That is why the Holy Spirit had Luke share with us that Nicholas is a proselyte from Antioch. Now, Paul was an Apostle, we know he had authority yet even he could not solve this problem. So he travels to Jerusalem to consult the other Apostles. Acts 15 is an example of the Church using the procedure Jesus describes in Matthew 18. Nicholas is the brother who has sinned against us, Paul is most likely the one trying to fix the problem and Barnabas is the witnesses brought in to establish the evidence.

The Apostles meet in Jerusalem and decide the matter. They rule that circumcision is not required of converts and write a letter that is distributed to all the Churches. We are told that the decision “seemed good to the Holy Spirit”. Notice what it is that the Apostles, convened together in Jerusalem have done. What is the question they have decided? It is a question of the INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. The question is, “How does the scriptural command of circumcision apply to new converts?” The Church, convened together in Jerusalem has authority to answer this question, it has authority to interpret scripture. They decide the issue and send out letters to all the Churches, binding the faithful to their decision. This is exactly the procedure that Jesus set out in Matthew 18.

Apparently Nicholas did not accept the decision. Historically, we know that the Nicolaitans were an early sect of Christianity that was located in the region of Antioch that split from the Church. They believed Christian converts still had to follow the Mosaic Law, specifically the law of circumcision. In Revelation, we learn that Jesus Himself was not happy with what they did. In Revelation 2:6, Jesus says,

Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, WHICH I ALSO HATE.

In one way that is a shocking statement by Jesus, for to be involved in something that Jesus hates is to be on the wrong side of that issue (to say the least). When you think about it however it really should not be surprising to us. In Acts 15, the decision of the Apostles “seemed good to the Holy Spirit”. Thus, it was obviously good to the Father and the Son. We should not be surprised that Jesus agrees with it. The decision was "bound in Heaven". Finally, we should carefully notice what Jesus says. He does not say that he hates the people that make up the Nicolaitans, He says He hates their works. He hates what they have done. He hates that they did not follow the decision of His Apostles. He hates that they left the Church.

We see in these events things happening exactly as Jesus planned for. Jesus knew there would be complex issues of theology that would be debated. He knew there would be passions on both sides. He knew that brother would turn against brother and that there would need to be a way to decide disputes, particularly disputes about how to interpret the Bible. In Matthew 18, while planning his Church, He established a procedure by which men appointed to offices with responsibility would decide controversies. In scripture we see this procedure in action. We are even given a glimpse into heaven itself and see that Jesus means what He says, what the Apostles bound on earth was bound in heaven. This is the same procedure the Church has used down through the ages. From the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, to the Council of Nicea, to the Council of Trent, to Vatican I and II and all the councils in between.

Sometimes it might be hard to accept the teaching of the Church. Sometimes, like Nicholas, we might have really strong feelings on an issue and we might genuinely and honestly believe that the Church is wrong. Yet even still rejecting the decision of the Church and leaving it is not an option. Jesus himself reveals to us that he “hates” that work.

Don’t be a Nicolaitan.