Thursday, March 5

Scripture: A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained. (Deuteronomy 19:15).

Observation: Moses is establishing a minimum requirement for the number of witnesses in a trial. One witness is not enough. There must be at least two witnesses for the testimony to be considered valid. Modern readers of the Old Testament need always remember that there was no government-funded court system in Israel, no guarantee of a legal advocate for the accused, and no other infrastructure for a judiciary than what is provided in Scripture. If a person was accused of a crime, then the verdict was to be decided by a volunteer court composed of the town’s elders (see Deuteronomy 16:18-20). If the only evidence in the case was the testimony of one witness, then the chance of an unfair verdict is high, given the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony. But if two witnesses corroborate the testimony, assuming they’re acting in good faith, then the chance of an unfair verdict is low. Because there was no such thing as a court-appointed legal advocate in ancient Israel who could build a case in defense of the accused, the testimony of witnesses was usually the one barrier between the accused and a wrongful conviction.

Application: Readers of the New Testament might have heard the echo of this verse already. Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20). Much like Moses, Jesus is establishing the minimum requirement for what counts as fair witness testimony, except where Moses is concerned about justice in a court case, Jesus is concerned about members in the church reconciling after a disagreement. The “two or three rule” in Matthew 18 is usually cited as the requirement for what counts as church, as in, wherever two or three believers in Jesus happen to gather, then church exists. But the context of Matthew 18 is how believers work through their disagreements in the church, rather than what counts as church. When church members locked in conflict cannot come to an agreement on their own, they are to bring other members of the church into the conflict to help the disagreeing parties come to a just resolution. Jesus reinterprets the “two or three rule” from Deuteronomy. Whereas Moses uses the two or three rule for the sake of rendering a fair verdict in court, Jesus uses the two or three rule for the sake of peaceful conflict resolution in the body of Christ. Jesus is saying, “Wherever two or three people gather in my name to work out their differences, then I’m right there with them.” In both scenarios, in Deuteronomy and in Matthew, God is trusting people to be vessels of fairness and to discern what is the next right step forward in God’s great cause of peace.

Prayer:

You will judge me, I know it. You will call me into the great big courtroom at the end of all things and hold up the substantiating evidence of my shortcomings and failures to bother to love and the times I really did love You, the Undercover Boss in the least of these, the hungry, thirsty, prisoner, stranger, naked, and sick people, immediately bookended by my foibles laughable and regrettable and the stretches of time I wasted on pointless pursuits and the delicious moments I put a smile on Your face; and I imagine You with arms stretched wide in the perfect shape of a cross approaching me to swallow me in a great big bear hug that will go on and on and on… Yet for now You are putting your trust in me, aren’t You? You are counting on me (imagine that, You counting on me) to be a daily witness to eternal mercy. My life is the vessel of what You call fairness and what You would discern to be the next step forward for me and for others (yikes) in Your great cause of peace; the gravity of the risk of the trust You put in me to be fair and kind and a sin-streaked mirror of You is like a teenage elephant sitting on my chest, and I take that to be a good thing because Your trust in me is supposed to be heavy so I might take You seriously and the people You entrust to my care seriously, so I ask for wisdom and grace and insight to choose what the Undercover Boss would choose, now and always. Onward we go: amen.