Jesus said;- Don't wait for the Final Demand

“As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him along the way, lest he drag you before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper” (Luke ch12 vv58-59).

This advice is given to people who are debtors, in one way or another.

Readers in the time of Dickens, when they still had debtors’ prisons, would have had no difficulty in recognising the situation.

Your accuser is your creditor. That is why it is acceptable, as it would not be in the case of a criminal charge, to offer him money to forestall your appearance in the courtroom. You are offering payment on the first demand letter, instead of ignoring the increasingly strong language, with red type and underlined headings, and waiting for the bailiffs to arrive.

William Dorrit will tell you- Once you get into the Marshalsea, you won’t get out again easily.
(I must admit that the Wiki article on debtors’ prisons ignores this Biblical reference and treats them as a mediaeval invention.)

This is good prudential advice, of course, in its own right. But it comes in the middle of passages about anticipating the judgement of God. The previous passage (ch12 vv54-56) is Luke’s version of the complaint that people can read the signs of the sky but not the signs of the times. That is, they refuse to see the warning signs that judgement is coming. The following passage (ch13 vv1-5) is the warning that the people in general are no better than the victims of the falling tower of Siloam, who have already been punished.

So the advice about “getting your debts paid early” is really about our relationship with God. He holds many debts of ours, and it would be advisable to sort out the problem now instead of waiting for the Final Judgement.

Matthew arranges these passages differently. His version of “signs of the times” is inserted into the middle of a voyage across the Lake (ch15 v39 to ch16 v5). He does not have the discussion about the Galileans and the Tower of Siloam. And his version of “Settle with your accuser” is brought forward into the Sermon on the Mount (ch5 vv25-26). But it remains in the context of “anticipating judgement”.

The previous passage there is “leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled with your brother” (ch5 vv23-24) which has the same theme. Indeed, we may need to look twice before we can recognise that “be reconciled with your brother” (v24) and “make friends with your accuser” (v25) are dealing with two different situations. At first glance, the first passage appears to run into the second, with a sudden change to a more ominous mood. They have been placed together because, in both cases, the prudential advice about our relations with other people is also about the need to be reconciled with God.

I’ve done a separate thread on Leave your gift there at the altar

In that thread, I was complaining about the way preachers of my acquaintance reversed the meaning of the words in the gospel
.
The text says very clearly that if your brother has something against you, you must go to him and seek his forgiveness.
But these people were preaching the text as, and on one occasion even quoting the text as, “If you have something against your brother, you must go to him and offer your forgiveness.

Of course they are trying to promote peace among the brethren by insisting on the importance of generosity. But I still think the reinterpretation is bad advice even in those terms, because it lets the persistent offender off the hook. There is no motivation for him to change his ways by taking the advice in the real text.

It’s worse than that, though. The reverse interpretation is completely obliterating the implied moral “You must seek forgiveness from God”, which is the real point of having the passage there at all. The listener is not being allowed to hear it. God is being turned into an automatic dispenser of knee-jerk forgiveness, so that Christians can be encouraged to imitate him by doing the same.

a reply to: DISRAELI

There's something to be said of these TV ministers that do nothing but talk about "someone doing you wrong, give it to God, God's got your back, God will fight your enemies, when someone slanders you, uses you, takes advantage of you, let God fight your battles" and then quote a verse from Psalms or cherry picks statements made by Jesus; meanwhile you NEVER hear these TV ministers put the shoe on the other foot and tell you what you need to do, according to His word, when YOU are the offender, the slanderer, the user, the one that takes advantage of others. Not once have I heard a certain "mega church" talking head say what steps to take when I am doing the wrong.

We've gone from one extreme to the other, from "you're going to hell because...." to "God's full of blessings, God's gonna pour down riches on you and you're not going to know what to do with the overflow" that's said with a #eating grin.

I DO understand what He said when He warned of false teachings. Our reward is in heaven, not on earth. The message has changed from mansions in the sky to mansions here on Earth.

All I can say is if you're in tune with God you can spot them out in a heartbeat.

"You'll know a tree by its fruit."

Forgot to say thank you for the thread.

Interesting, thank you.

We all owe a debt we can never pay to our Lord Jesus, he paid another debt we could never pay on our behalf with his blood.

As long as we are repentant and trust in him but an unrepentant sinner is like a debtor that has the money but does not pay it back to the one to whom they owe the debt and they will continue to take if they can.

a reply to: DISRAELI

You are mixing Kingdom teaching for Church Doctrine.

Does Paul's teaching to the church agree with Jesus Teaching in Luke 12?

The answer is a resounding NO! So it is not a church doctrine.

However to give you a little encouragement it does have an application one can use today as a Christian or non-Christian. Reconcile and issue without going to court. And guess what many do that without having to go to the bible to say we must do it.

Now, can you find what Paul teaches about going to court with anyone, believer or unbeliever?