The Sixth Sunday after Trinity

July 12, 2026

Matthew 5:17-26

“First be reconciled to your brother.” First. Wouldn’t you rather it be last? When someone is angry with you, do you want to go to the person and get it resolved right away?

It’s easier to tell someone else. To complain. To spin the narrative such that the other person looks bad. “It’s not my fault. It’s never my fault. Everybody else around here is terrible.”

But this fifth chapter of Matthew won’t let us get away with that. The Lord JESUS reveals our hypocrisy. “Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” They were scrupulous law-keepers, the scribes and Pharisees. You must be better. By the end of the chapter, Jesus lays it out plainly: “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

Perfection. That’s the standard.

So if “your brother has something against you,” he maybe has good reason.

And then there’s what you have against him … or her. The fifth commandment says, “You shall not murder,” but Jesus shows us the full extent of the commandment: It includes anger.

What is anger, really? It’s a judgment. When you are angry, you judge someone else is in the wrong. And he should pay!

There is today a deep societal anger brewing. Good people suffer, bad people are going unpunished. That should be fixed!

Resentment builds. And it builds very close to home. The family member making your life difficult. The church member gossiping about you. The friend you thought would stick around, but betrayed you. A seething animosity bubbles just below the surface. It only serves to make us more miserable.

And then comes the guilt. I know I’m supposed to forgive. I want to forgive. But it doesn’t feel like it inside.

What happens if we remain unreconciled? The warning of Jesus should terrify us:

First be reconciled to your brother…. Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are on the way with him, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Assuredly, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there till you have paid the last penny.

In the parable on forgiveness in Mt. 18, there the man who refuses to forgive is handed over not to an officer but to the torturers.

What can we do about our anger? How do we handle the people with whom we are unreconciled? You’re unlikely to get any justice in this world. And that’s okay. Because justice cuts both ways. We will not be found righteous, when the books are opened, the browser histories examined, the words whispered played back for all to hear. We will not be found then to be in the right.

“Agree with your adversary”? What does this mean? It means (at least in part), acknowledge your own sins. We all kneel at the same time, we all say the same confession. And the pastor doesn’t give his own forgiveness, but he speaks Christ’s absolution. Mine is no good. You need Christ’s.

And He takes the initiative. Rom. 5.8, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He did not wait for us to apologize, to get our act together, to humble ourselves. We deserve nothing.

Christ’s forgiveness is the basis of our own attempts to reconcile with others. NT scholar Jeffrey Gibbs has a helpful distinction between forgiveness and our emotions. He grounds this in the root meaning of the word we translate as forgive. It means to release. It’s a decision to not retaliate, to not seek justice. The other person may well deserve some kind of punishment. But you decide to release them from it.

What happens if you have no opportunity for direct reconciliation? Perhaps you have a friend who turned away from you, refusing even to say goodbye. He cut you off, closing the door to friendship. When one cannot reconcile in person, we still must be reconciled in heart. The grudge, the debt is released. Perhaps one day the LORD will turn his heart, and there will be opportunity for reconciliation in this life. The decision is made, even if the friend-turned-enemy remains as he is.

Gibbs writes about deciding to forgive (because we know that’s what Jesus wants us to do), while our emotions “may need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new situation.” It takes awhile—maybe years!—for our emotions to get on board with the choice we’ve made.

And that means we may need to keep on forgiving someone else. When someone sins against us, it hurts. The wounds may go so deep it takes a lifetime to heal. Western Christianity has become accustomed to thinking of forgiveness as a kind of mathematical equation, or a ledger full of debits and credits. The Bible does speak that way. But the heart doesn’t operate that way.

When the emotions makes us feel like we are not forgiven—or that we have not forgiven—then we go again to the absolution God gives, and decide anew to forgive our brother. The intellect keeps on telling the heart, “Put that anger away now. We forgave that sin. And Jesus forgave ours.”

St. Paul says, “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men.” As far as it depends on you. We can’t control others. We can only remind ourselves to do what is right: to speak words of peace, to speak forgiveness, and invite the emotions to follow along.

In his first epistle, St. John tells us, “The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” All sin: the sins we have committed … and those committed against us. The grudges and hurts we are carrying around wound us. The blood of Jesus heals them.

That’s why we keep on going to the Supper. We need to remember. We need the therapy, the healing of soul and body.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.” So don’t rely on your own righteousness. Jesus gives you His. And you give it to others.

+INJ+