Matthew 5:23-24 (NIV): “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
The context of this teaching (“Therefore…”) is verses 21-22. But Jesus wasn’t teaching what many people hear. A lot hear in this section, “If you have something against your brother…”, which they interpret to mean that they have to forgive their brother before they can legitimately worship. They do, but that is not what Jesus was talking about here. “If you…remember that your brother has something against YOU…” In other words, if God brings to our mind a wrong that we have done to someone else, something that would cause him or her to be angry with us, and therefore cut of his or her relationship with God because it cuts off His forgiveness (see Matthew 6:14-15), then we are to go and make it right – apologize, make restitution, whatever we need to do to enable them to forgive us so that they can once again be in proper relationship with God. Then, when we are no longer a stumbling block to someone else’s relationship with God, we can return to worship God, and He will receive our worship.
Father, this IS a very different interpretation than most have heard, but it is right. Help me, help each of us, to search our hearts for anywhere we have become a stumbling block to someone else, and help us to make it right, so BOTH of us can worship You. Amen.