In Mat 18:20 we find this saying from Jesus: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” This is a great passage for this blog because it requires both textual and cultural context to be understood properly.
In a previous post I explained that textual context is reading the verse in harmony with its surrounding verses. And in just about every post, I’ve explained that cultural context seeks to determine what the individuals standing there at the time would have understood given the cultural setting.
Without either of these contexts, the meaning is odd at best. It means something like, “If two or three of you have gathered in Jesus’ name then Jesus is there.” Otherwise what? He’s not there? Most people believe in God as being omnipresent, so in this respect, God is everywhere regardless of whether there’s one is there, a frog is there, or it’s the vacuum of space.
I’ve heard some who read this passage without context say it seeks to encourage disciples that even if their number is small, Jesus still remembers them. They also tend to replace the “three” with “more” so that it encourages a group of believers of any size. However, no matter how you spin it, it doesn’t make sense for the lone Christian. And in my mind, the verse was “where two or more”. I checked fifteen popular versions and they all read “where two or three”. The Greek is “δυο η τρεις”, which means most definitely means “two or three”.
But if enough of this–let’s add in textual context. The context of this passage is found in verses 10 through 35, which is a paragraph about dealing with sin in the church sandwiched between two parables also about some caught in sin. In instructional paragraph, verses 15-20, Jesus says if you find someone in sin, go to them alone and try to point it out them. Here’s where the “two” comes from in verse 20: you plus the person in sin. Jesus then says if he or she doesn’t listen to you, go back and take along one or two folks with you. This is where the “three” comes in: you plus the person in sin plus the one or two friends you brought. Yes, I realize if you bring two friends there are now four of you, but apparently Jesus didn’t want to say, “Where two, three, or four are gathered- -or maybe he couldn’t add. 🙂
Therefore by adding textual context, we see the meaning is that Jesus will be there in Spirit to help you and some of your friends help another person repent and heal from their sin. It’s only after this fails that we are to bring the whole church in. On a side note, I’ve only seen the third step happen a couple of times personally but I’ve never seen a case where it causes the person to repent—at least not immediately. As was the case in 1Cor 5, perhaps the person will repent after they’ve been away from the church.
Also, although Jesus doesn’t specifically say this, it seems like the person in question has sinned against you. That is to say, it’s not that you just happened to catch the person in sin, but that you know they’ve sinned because it was against you. Since most sin involves or affects another person or persons, it would seem that Jesus intended the person who had been sinned against to confront the individual. I dislike this personally because now I feel like I’m the victim twice–once for being sinned against and secondly because now I have to go and deal with it! I’m being open here, but clearly this is when my lack of love for people shows itself.
This then seems to be the reason why Jesus felt the need to instruct his disciples in this matter; namely because people don’t like to approach an individual about their sin alone–they’re more likely to skip this step and immediately get some friends involved for support, or possibly might not want to be there at all and would get someone else to go instead. As an Individual who avoids conflict like the plague, I totally get this! Even when I do end up going alone to talk to the person, it’s usually only after I’ve spoken to someone about the situation first.
But I digress because that’s not what this blog is about. It’s about what cultural context can add. From Jewish history primarily in the Apocrypha, we know that after the Maccabean wars (167 to 160 BC), the Jews sent ambassadors to neighboring countries to tell them that they were again a sovereign nation. The question arose about how many rabbis need to be sent in order for them to form a synagogue and be a Jewish community while away from Israel. The answer they arrived at was ten. That seems extremely random, how did they up with this? The answer is found in Gen 18:20-33. Here we find Abraham bartering with God about the number of righteous people that had to exist in Sodom before He would refrain from destroying it. Abraham goes back and forth with God with the numbers 50, 45, 40, 20, and finally stopping at 10. Did Abraham stop here because Lot and his group numbered ten or more? If so he must have figured Lot and his family were safe from destruction. We know from the story that the number was either less than ten or that God was now obliged to get Lot and his family out in order to get the number below 10. Either way it was from this that Pharisees determined this number. Like with the Fig Tree, it doesn’t matter whether this rationale was correct or not–just that the Pharisees believed this and taught the people this.
Another thing about the Temple and synagogues is that the people went there, not the other way around. Rabbis would go out to start a new “church” unless they had the before mentioned quorum of 10 rabbis. The disciples would have known about this number ten and the idea that one goes to temple, not the temple comes to you, as the Pharisees would have taught about it. Therefore Jesus not only establishes that even one person was enough to help someone, but more importantly that it is we, the church, who go out to where our people in sin are and not the other way around. Not that we should refrain from inviting our friends to church, but that the Christ’s church was to go out from Jerusalem, in groups as small as one. Naturally Jesus was not hypocritical and did this himself.