COURT COSTS


Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison. Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent.
(Matthew 5: 25-26 – NAS)

After Jesus has made a very dramatic statement about how we should deal with those closest to us (and the awful consequences to our spirits if we do not), He moves a step further out in our social circles. He says that if you are in conflict with someone else, such that you are on your way to court (especially if it is a matter of debt you owe), make peace quickly with that person.

It is interesting that He doesn’t say anything here about who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Instead, He says that we must make peace. Even the statement about paying up the “last cent” is not necessarily about a debt to the opponent, for it can also mean the fees to the court or to the jail (since prisoners were often liable for the costs of their incarceration on top of everything else). Jesus focuses on the spiritual drag on our natures by the conflict itself.

What Jesus expects from His followers at this point requires a great change in the way we respond to conflict. Our first impulse, our strongest impulse, is to demand justification. Not justice, though we like to believe that is our motivation. No, we want to be justified. We want to be told that we have a right to the anger we feel toward someone else, that we have cause for our hostile feelings, that the other person is in the wrong, is sinning greatly, even. We want the upper hand.

But Jesus tells us not to go about things that way. He says that if your conflicts have gone so far that you are actually heading to court, you’ve got things wrong. If you get that far as a follower of Christ, you will not find mercy in the court. Instead, your opponent will hand you over to the judge, the judge will likely find you in the wrong and off to jail you will go

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches, and this seems very harsh. “But Lord! We are your followers! How can you say the judgment would go against us?”

I think by this point in His sermon, Jesus expects His audience to start to have a grasp of the kind of character He expects us to have as His followers. The Peacemakers, the Merciful, those Who Mourn: all that. If you have gotten this far in listening to His words, He’s expecting you to start treating others a certain way.

For the sake of discussion, let us say we know someone who is in conflict with another person, and they are about to enter the court to have a judge resolve the conflict. What sort of person has gotten to this point?

First off, Our Representative has some baggage called Anger. This would have to be the case if things have gotten so far as going before a judge. One or both of the parties to the conflict has become so emotionally entrenched that he cannot step back. Anger is in the air.

Secondly, as I mentioned, there is the desire to be justified, vindicated in the eyes of the community. If Our Representative is willing to take the conflict to court, he wants the community to know what is going on. It is no secret any more. It has become everybody’s business. And Our Representative wants to be center stage.

Thirdly, if things are headed into court, Our Representative has set aside any claim to being a Peacemaker. And in setting that aside, he is also letting go of his participation in the kingdom of heaven. He is letting worldly concerns become more important than his relationship with God.

If that is the portrait of a so-called follower of Christ when that person insists on taking things to court, is it any surprise that Jesus says that person is likely to receive the unpleasant consequences of a worldly judgment?

“But what if you are justified in taking the matter to court? What if you are truly striving for genuine justice? What if you have attempted all the possibilities of reconciliation, and they have failed?”

When we step into court without having reconciled with our opponent, we carry the weight of that failure with us. We carry the load of anger in our hearts, where it smothers the life of love by taking up so much space. When we enter the court without reconciliation, no matter what the decision might be we shall remain bound to the other party.

I know a single father who is very vigilant in seeking justice for his two children. His former spouse ought to be paying child-support, but she doesn’t. He works hard at humble jobs to take care of his children, and his love for them is great. He is a model of good parenting. But every time he has to go to court to try and have the child-support enforced, it opens up a box of anger for him. It is the burden he has to deal with, struggle with, for a resolution is beyond his power.

Jesus knows that matters will not play out ideally for us in this world. That is why He began this teaching with the Beatitudes, and why that set of admonitions ends with reminders that as His followers we will be persecuted. There is very little that is easy about the life He calls us to. Every little thing has an effect on every other little thing. Because the reality is that in God’s eyes there is nothing that is little about our lives.

If you are in conflict with someone, work toward reconciliation. And be prepared for the consequences if you cannot achieve it, for they are costly.