Someone wronged me and I have said nothing for months. I keep telling myself I am being gracious, but really I am avoiding it and it is eating me.

“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.”

This sits in the chapter that also gives us love your neighbour as yourself, which is exactly where it belongs. Israel is told not to hate a brother in the heart, and in the same breath to rebuke him plainly. The two halves are one instruction. Silent resentment is treated as the failure here, not as the polite option. Saying the hard thing to someone's face is the loving alternative to quietly writing them off.

“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.”

Jesus gives a procedure for a wronged person inside a community that has to keep living together. The first step is startlingly small: go to them, alone, and tell them. Not a group message, not a mediator, not a sermon aimed sideways from the front. The privacy protects their dignity and keeps the matter contained. Most conflicts he describes never need step two, and most of ours never get step one.