Character and Conduct – 23 April – Reconciliation

IT is exceedingly noteworthy that in the rule laid down here by our Lord, the responsibility of seeking reconciliation is laid primarily, not upon the man who has done wrong, but upon the man who has received the wrong.  It is the injured man who is to take the initiative, to go after the offender, to seek him out, and to exhaust all proper means of bringing him to a right state of mind, and of getting him reconciled to the man whom he has wronged.  It is only after all these proper means have been exhausted, after the man who has been injured has done everything in his power – a great deal more than the law prescribed – it is then only that he is to regard the offender as ‘a heathen man and a publican.’  Is not this the exact opposite to the world’s code of morality upon that subject?  Is it not the rule among men of the world – I do not use the word in a bad sense – is it not the rule among Christian men of the world, who live what we should call on the whole good honest lives, to wait until the offender has come to them with a confession and an apology?  And if they then accept the apology and forgive the offence, they probably think they have done something very magnanimous;  nor would they consider they had done anything very much amiss if they refused to accept the apology, especially if the offence had been a gross one.  If the offender did not apologise, even an otherwise good Christian would probably think that he might treat the matter with indifference, take no notice of it, and say to himself, ‘He has offended me, I will take no notice, I will leave him to himself.’  Would not men of the world – Christian men – consider that they had upon the whole discharged the Christian duty of forgiveness if they treated the offender in that way?  But the law which our Lord laid down in his answer to Peter, which governed His own conduct, the law which rules the dealing of Almighty God with sinful man, is that the man who has been injured, to whom the wrong has been done, is to make the first move, is to take the first step, is to go after the man who has done the wrong, and use his utmost means of persuasion to convince him of his guilt, and to bring him back from the error of his ways.

Life Here and Hereafter, Canon MacCOLL

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