So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. Matthew 5:23-26
I’ve read the above passage numerous times over the years. For a long time I operated under the notion that if I had bad feelings toward someone for some perceived wrong done against me, I should go and confess my feelings toward them with a view toward reconciliation. While well-intentioned, it sadly missed the point. Often the person hearing my words looked like a deer in the headlights as they were totally unaware of what I was talking about. Yet here I was forcing them to deal with a problem they didn’t know they had.
In other cases, the other party simply couldn’t or wouldn’t admit that there was a problem. Perhaps they were blind to it. More than likely, I was putting myself in the role of the Holy Spirit trying to convict them of their sins against me. All of this was being done in a misguided attempt to honor the words of Jesus.
In recent years I have come to a different and I hope a clearer understanding. Jesus is not talking about my bad feelings toward someone. Instead He is focusing on the need to make confession toward those we have wronged. Even more specifically, these are wrongs that others know we have done against them. They have something against us. We have by our words and/or actions hurt them. If so, we need to go and confess that wrong to them, before we attempt to continue in our worship of the Lord.
Notice again the criteria. I did something wrong to someone else, and they know I did it. They are aware that they have something against me. That is what needs confession. It’s not my bad feelings. Those are matters that I need to work through with God. It’s my bad actions toward others that I must address with those I have wronged. Ideally, this needs to happen as soon as the offense takes place. Sadly, we don’t always recognize the wrongs that we’ve done that quickly. And yes, sometimes it takes awhile for the Holy Spirit to cut through the willfulness in our souls that blocks our ability to see ourselves in a true light. But when it happens, when we know we have wronged another, and they know we have wronged them as well, that’s when we must go to them in confession.
Ideally, the person who hears your sincere confession will offer forgiveness and open the door to the process of reconciliation. But if that doesn’t happen, you can still be at rest. You have owned your sin and taken responsibility for it. The channel for authentic worship is reopened.
One other thing should be noted. There are times when others feel hurt by us when we haven’t done anything wrong to them. Perhaps they just didn’t get their way and hold it against us. Maybe they are projecting the past hurts of others onto you. Or it could be that they are simply people who carry chips on their shoulders and are just waiting for someone to come along and unknowingly knock them off. Such people call for patience and forbearance on our part not confession.
So let me ask you, have you wronged someone else by your words and/or actions? Do they know that they have something against you? If so, there is a helpful confession you need to make.