Go to Them Alone
“If another believer sins against you, go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back.” (Matthew 18:15, NLT)
The most avoided conversation in every organization is the one that should have happened three months ago. Someone dropped a commitment. Someone took credit that was not theirs. Someone’s behavior is eroding the team, and everyone sees it except the person doing it. The whole office knows. The whole leadership team has discussed it in hallways, in side conversations, in venting sessions after hours. Everyone has talked about the problem. No one has talked to the person.
Yesterday we studied Proverbs 27:17 and the iron-on-iron friction that keeps a leader sharp. The question that verse raised was whether confrontation is an act of care or an act of aggression. Today, Jesus answers it directly. Matthew 18:15 does not leave room for ambiguity. Confrontation done right is restoration. Confrontation avoided is abandonment.
This month we are studying what Scripture says directly to the person in charge. This verse speaks to one of the most common leadership failures in existence: the refusal to go to someone directly when something has gone wrong.
The context matters. Jesus is teaching His disciples in Capernaum. The chapter opens with the disciples asking who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and Jesus responds by placing a child among them. He talks about humility. He talks about the seriousness of causing someone to stumble. He tells the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine to find the one that wandered. Then He gives verse 15. The sequence is intentional. Before Jesus teaches confrontation, He establishes the motive: you go after the one because the one matters. The shepherd does not write off the lost sheep. The shepherd goes to find it.
That framing changes everything about how confrontation is supposed to work. The goal is not punishment. The goal is not correction for its own sake. The word Jesus uses at the end of the verse is kerdaino, which means “to gain” or “to win.” You have won that person back. This is recovery language. This is rescue language. The entire point of the private confrontation is to restore the relationship, not to establish who was right. Jesus spoke this instruction to a community of believers, but the wisdom extends everywhere people hold authority over others.
Matthew 18:15 is one of the most disobeyed commands in the New Testament, especially by leaders. The demand is specific. When someone wrongs you, go to them. Privately. Directly. Before you tell anyone else. Before you vent, document, or build a case. Go to the person first.
Most leaders do the opposite. They talk to everyone except the person involved. They gather allies, create paper trails, and schedule meetings with their boss to “get alignment” before having the conversation. They call this wisdom. Jesus calls it skipping the first step.
The reason most leaders avoid direct confrontation is not cowardice. It is self-protection disguised as professionalism. Going to someone privately means you are exposed. There is no audience to validate you. No ally to back you up. No record being created. That vulnerability is precisely why Jesus prescribes it. The private setting strips away every motive except restoration. If you need an audience to confront, your motive is performance. If you need documentation first, your motive is protection. If you need allies, your motive is power. The private conversation is the only format that forces you to check whether your goal is winning the person back or winning the argument.
Notice the escalation structure Jesus provides after verse 15. If the private conversation fails, take one or two others. If that fails, bring it before the church. If that still fails, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. The process has steps. It has boundaries. It has an end point. None of this sequence begins, however, until the private conversation happens first. The private meeting is not optional. It is the foundation of everything that follows. Skip it, and you have built a disciplinary process on an illegitimate foundation.
Leaders in organizations violate this pattern constantly. They skip to step three. They involve the broader team before they have sat with the individual. They send the passive-aggressive email to the group when a five-minute private conversation would have resolved it. They restructure someone’s role rather than tell the person what needs to change. They let the annual review carry the weight of a conversation that should have happened in real time, nine months earlier.
The cost of avoidance is not neutrality. It is compound damage. The person who needs to hear the truth never hears it, so they continue the behavior. The team watches the leader tolerate what everyone knows is unacceptable, and they draw conclusions about what the leader values. Trust erodes. Resentment builds.
The leader eventually reaches a breaking point and delivers the feedback with accumulated frustration, which guarantees the conversation goes poorly. What should have been a private, measured, restorative conversation in January becomes a punitive, emotional reckoning in September. The leader blames the person for not changing. The person never knew they needed to.
The practice for this week requires courage, not planning. Identify one conversation you have been avoiding. One person whose behavior or performance needs to be addressed, where you have talked about the situation to others but have not gone to the person directly. Schedule that conversation. Make it private. Enter it with restoration as the goal, not vindication. Say what needs to be said clearly and specifically. Then listen. The verse does not say “go to them and deliver a speech.” It says go to them and point out the offense. That requires as much listening as speaking.
This is where the series arc sharpens. Yesterday’s study showed that the leader who stops being sharpened starts getting dull. Today’s passage reveals that the leader who avoids confrontation is not protecting peace; they are abandoning it. The biblical model is direct, private, and motivated by love, not leverage. If that sequence feels uncomfortable, the discomfort is the diagnosis.
Tomorrow we turn to Romans 12:18 and a verse that draws a critical boundary: “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone” (NLT). Notice the qualifier. All that you can. Paul does not say “make peace happen.” He says do your part. You own your side of every relationship. You do not own theirs. That boundary changes everything about how you carry relational weight.
Leadership Challenge: Think of the one conversation you have been avoiding, the situation everyone around you can see, the one you have discussed with others but never addressed with the person directly. What is stopping you from going to them this week, privately, with the goal of winning them back rather than proving your point?
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