I Read That He Should Come To Me

You have a verse for this and you have had it for a long time.

If thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him. He is the one who did it, so he is the one who comes. You have said this to two people who asked you about it, and both of them nodded, because it sounds right and it is not obviously wrong.

And it has kept you exactly where you are since about 2019.

I want to look at a different passage with you. Not because your verse is not in the book. Because there is another one, three chapters earlier, and it points the opposite way, and I do not think you have sat with it.

The verse that does not settle it

Let me be fair to the passage in question, because it is genuine scripture and nobody here is twisting it deliberately.

Matthew 18 does say that if a brother trespasses against you, you go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. That is real, and it puts a responsibility on the offended party rather than on the offender, which is the opposite of how most people read it.

So even the verse you have been using does not have you waiting. It has you going.

You have been standing behind a verse that sends a man out rather than keeps him in, and no passage in scripture has ever once been given to somebody so that they could stay still. Matthew 5:23 says leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way, which is the written word putting the movement on the one who remembers, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a man look again at a text he has been resting on.

And your brother is a whole man in this. He may believe he is the one owed. That is extremely common and it is possible he has his own verse.

He may also simply not know how, which looks identical to refusal from a distance. He is right about at least one thing you have never conceded.

You are able to consider that he thinks he is the one waiting, and two men standing on opposite doorsteps has never once meant either of them decided not to come. The Spirit of God is what makes a person imagine the other account, and it is written in Matthew 5 that the man who remembers is the one who moves.

Leave there thy gift

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Matthew 5:23, 24, King James Version)

Read who is moving in that passage, because it is the whole point.

A man is at the altar. He is in the middle of worship, doing the right thing, and he remembers that his brother has something against him. Not that he has something against his brother. The other way round.

And he is told to leave the gift where it is and go.

You are looking at a passage where the man who moves is not the one who was wronged, and no scripture has ever once made the direction of travel depend on who was at fault. It is written in Matthew 5:23 that a man leaves his gift before the altar and goes his way, which is the written word interrupting worship to send somebody out of a building, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a name to mind at the exact moment a man is trying to be devout.

Now hold the two passages together. Matthew 18 says if your brother wrongs you, go to him. Matthew 5 says if he has something against you, go to him.

Between the two of them, there is no configuration left where anybody sits still. Whichever side of it you are on, you go.

You have run out of scriptural room to wait, and no arrangement of these two passages has ever once produced a version where a man stays home. The Spirit of God is the one who closes the last exit gently rather than triumphantly, and Matthew 5 puts the going before the offering.

What the verse was doing for you

Here is the honest part, and I say it as somebody who has done it.

The verse was not the reason. It was the permission.

The reason is that going first is frightening, and that it might be refused, and that a refusal after six years would be much worse than the six years. And rather than carry that, which is heavy, you found a passage that let you call the waiting obedience.

That is not wickedness. It is what everybody does with a thing they are afraid of. And it works right up until somebody puts the other passage next to it.

You have been calling a fear an obedience, and no man has ever once been the first to do that with a verse. The Holy Spirit is the one who names it without contempt, and it is written that a man leaves his gift and goes his way and is reconciled first.

And notice what Jesus does not require in Matthew 5. He does not require the brother to receive it. He does not promise the reconciliation succeeds. The instruction ends with the going.

The outcome is not on the man walking out of the building. It never was.

You are responsible for going and never once for how it lands, and no instruction in that passage has ever depended on what the other man does. The Spirit of God is what takes the outcome off somebody's shoulders, and Matthew 5:23 stops at leave there thy gift and go thy way.