The theme verse of this installment is Philippians 4:2-3, in which Paul first exhorts Euodia and Syntyche to put their differences aside and agree with each other, then encourages one of the other leaders in Philippi, who he calls his “true partner” to help the two women come into agreement:
This appears to be a request by Paul to his “true partner” in Philippi to “mediate” between Euodia and Syntyche:
There are two things to pay attention to here. First, the goal of mediation is, by definition, reconciliation–either in the stronger sense of restoring “friendship OR harmony” or in the weaker sense of merely settling the pending dispute.
This is exactly what Paul was asking his “true partner”–to help the two women come back into harmony with each other (definition 1a).
Second, neither Euodia nor Syntyche was asking for any help settling their disagreement. They appear to have been fully content remaining at odds with each other. Instead, because their disagreement was disrupting the church so much that Paul, far away from Philippi, had heard of it, Paul asked his partner to attempt to mediate their dispute. So it appears that, at least where a dispute is noticeably disrupting a church, a neutral believer may be asked by the church to go to the parties to attempt to mediate it–although it would remain the parties’ choice whether or not to accept the help offered. Thus, mediation is the only means of seeking reconciliation that the offended party does not have to initiate.
Based on the theme passage, mediation clearly may be undertaken or initiated by the leaders of a church. And it appears that the offended party likely also may initiate mediation, as the one or two witnesses the offended party would take with them in the second step of the Matthew 18 procedure function in part as mediators, helping the offended party to obtain agreement, However, this passage, in its context, simply provides no answer to the question whether it may be initiated by someone whose only role is that of offender or of a third person affected by the dispute (but not a party to it), or what effect it would have if each party had some grievances against the other one.
Still, regardless of who initiates an attempt at mediation, the mediation will only go forward if both parties agree to work with the mediator. This is true even of the mediators God sends to stand between him and his people, as Paul explained in speaking of Moses as the mediator of the Law:
That statement is pretty obvious, isn’t it?
I don’t need a mediator to stand between me and myself. It’s only when I am in disagreement with another person that having a mediator makes sense. Moses was not a one-way conduit of God’s words to his people. He stood between God and the Hebrews, representing each to the other.
Our prayers for each other, and for everyone in our lives, is tied to Jesus’ role as the only mediator between each of us and God:
We are to pray for everyone in our lives to the end that we may live in peace, showing lives that lead others to be saved and come to a full knowledge of the truth (two different things, the second following the first). We have one mediator with God, the “man” Christ Jesus–it is in his humanity that Jesus stands between us and God. So we are able to participate in this as humans having the Holy Spirit, by praying for others.
In this, Moses and all mediators are like Jesus, our mediator. Jesus represents God to us and also represents us to God. But his mediation only succeeds in bringing us peace with God if we abandon our hostility toward God and learn to accept his mediation and work with our mediator. Notice two things particularly in this passage: who is reconciled to whom, and why this is needed. This passage consistently says that people and things were reconciled to God, not that God was reconciled to them. God was never really their enemy, and didn’t need to be reconciled to them.
I, other people generally, and “all things,” needed to be reconciled to God because we humans had, as a race, become hostile toward him. We had made ourselves his enemies, because we thought, incorrectly, that our sinful acts made him hostile toward us. We were “enemies in [our] minds”, not in God’s mind. Jesus reconciled us to God by taking the sins which made us fear God as an enemy in his body in his death, washing them away with his blood. We can now see, I can now see, that it was always God’s purpose to present us, me, without defect and blameless before him. His purpose has always been good.
In this passage, again, I am reconciled to God; God is not reconciled to me. Again, I need to be reconciled because of my sinful acts–my transgressions. God reconciled me to himself by not counting my sins against me–thus leaving me no reason to think of him as my enemy. Now that I have been reconciled, he has made me his ambassador to the world. The world, the world of human beings, every other human in it, needs to know that God was also reconciling them to himself in Christ. And he is reconciling then just the same way he reconciled me–by not counting their sins against them. So that is my message as his ambassador–be reconciled to God.
Jesus my mediator, our mediator, with God is the center of this message. To know the reconciliation God has provided me, and us, we need to know and learn to work with our mediator.
With this introduction, I return to the matter of resolution of offenses between believers. The objective of this is reconciliation of the parties to each other–“gain[ing] back [my] brother”–just as the objective of Jesus’ mediation between us and the Father is reconciliation of hostile humans to God.
With reference to the role of a mediator in settling a human dispute, there are several things that a mediator is not…
A mediator is not a judge or an arbitrator. A mediator does not decide how the dispute should end. A mediator listens to both sides and explains each party’s position to the other–this explanation is particularly important if the parties are meeting with the mediator at different times and places, and not together. The mediator hears the parties’ responses and communicates them. A mediator may help the parties arrive at a settlement and may suggest what the settlement should be. But a mediator decides nothing and cannot force either party to agree to a suggested settlement.
In a human dispute, a mediator is a neutral trusted by both parties. So a mediator also cannot be an advocate for a party. Mediators cannot come into their roles supporting the interests of one of the parties. Jesus, as both God and man and the one who died to reconcile us to God, is the only exception to this–he is both our mediator and our advocate with the Father. But he is one with his Father who trusts him. It doesn’t work that way among mere humans choosing neutrals to mediate a dispute!
Finally, a mere messenger is not a mediator. A mediator has to be free to transmit information in both directions and to explain the parties’ positions to each other seeking an agreement. A party ho sends a messenger with demands, but without other information or the ability to respond, has not attempted to mediate.
What is the outcome when we fail to seek to resolve offenses within the church?
I have already gone into some detail about the effects on the parties involved, and those who pick up bitterness from them. I have also mentioned the loss of unity in the church.
But one other effect needs to be observed: church members, unable to resolve their differences in unity within the church, become litigious. So, when a dispute arises that can be heard by a civil court, they sue each other, bringing disgrace on the church (“that bunch of hypocrites!”) and on Christ:
Paul’s question needs to be asked here: wouldn’t it be better to endure being wronged?
This, in turn, encourages some members to wrong and defraud other believers, knowing that they will probably get away with it==lawsuits are hard and expensive to pursue–and that the church will do nothing to stop them.
The obvious answer to this question is: there certainly should be!
But we almost never hear of a church going to its members who are divided by an offense, offering a mediator.
Why is this?
Link: Write to me
Next: Preface to Matthew 5:21-26: The Golden Rule: I love my enemies because I want them to do the same to me. Luke 6:27-31.
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