Go ahead and rebuke someone…if you want to be stuck with them.

3 Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4 and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.”

Luke 17:5   The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 

This is one of the few times in the Gospels where the disciples seem to know exactly what's going on. They understand the high calling of rebuke and forgiveness, and the burden seems too much to bear. So they ask for more faith. Henri Nouwen understood both the deep ask and profound connection worked in those of us who both confront and heal:

“Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.” (Henri Nouwen, The Prodigal)

There is a kind of rebuke that is offered by Jesus against true enemies, demons, etc., and there is a kind of rebuke that the crowds seek to place on Jesus' disciples for ministering the Gospel. Both of which are different than the rebuke Jesus introduces into the Christian community in Luke 16. His instruction for the disciples is that for them, and for the little faiths they teach and over whom they watch, their rebuke is to be closely tied to their forgiveness. 

“But if among Christians even this is a sort of honor received, then perhaps it is not possible to rebuke without honoring the one we rebuke.”

The rebuke is for someone in a deep hole. They are more than in the weeds, they are hopeless to get themselves out. The Bible's word for rebuke here is an interesting one. It combines a word translated "honor" with a preposition, put upon. And so the implication is that one places a heaviness upon the one who is living/abiding in sin. So the calling of Christians is to lay heavy upon them the burden of repentance. But if among Christians even this is a sort of honor received, then perhaps it is not possible to rebuke without honoring the one we rebuke. It means that the rebuke must be personal, it must cost the one who rebukes. Because what they lay upon that person is their own breaking heart, when done well. It is an act of vulnerability for the one who rebukes. Of sadness, never of superiority. If the rebuke is done biblically, both are weighed down: one wears the millstone of rebuke, the other one wears the millstone of grief and prayer and hope. The one who rebukes, and the one who is rebuked, God help them -- they are stuck together. 

“And the one who lifts the burden must pay attention that their forgiveness goes at least as far as the rebuke, ensuring that the burden of rebuke is not replaced by a burden of shame. ”

And then there's forgiveness: the language here makes these two terms companions to one another. The word for forgiveness is to lift away. To lift away what? The burden laid in rebuke. If someone who does not know me and has no responsibility to me forgives me, what does it mean? If the one who laid the rebuke on my shoulders, a rebuke burdened by their own broken hearts, and then they are the ones to tell me that the burden has been lifted, what a gift that is! These two must work together. And the one who lifts the burden must pay attention that their forgiveness goes at least as far as the rebuke, ensuring that the burden of rebuke is not replaced by a burden of shame. They must be not only forgiven but restored. Like God himself not only seeking out Adam and Eve in the Garden, but stripping away their false coverings and placing a greater clothing upon them. This is the Christian burden of rebuke and forgiveness.

Now, why is all of this so important? Because Luke has taught repeatedly that forgiveness and rebuke, forgiving one another, in particular, is one of the signs of the Kingdom of God's in-breaking. It is a sign that the Gospel is true and that darkness is not the last word. The rebuke|forgive relationship is the Gospel shown in miniature: we dramatize his redemption by the way we rebuke and forgive one another. The Cross is itself not one or the other but both.  The Cross of Christ lies heavy on us at great cost, showing our sin, and when we turn to it in repentance it is the means for our absolution, the lifting of our burden. And the Christ makes each of us little crosses for one another, to bear-away one another's hardheartedness and bear-to each other's great healing.