Matthew 18:15
Matthew 18:1515If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
JWs cite as the biblical basis for their judicial committee process. The passage is used to justify internal dispute resolution handled by appointed elders rather than external authorities. The two-witness rule (v. 16) is applied to abuse cases: allegations cannot proceed without two witnesses to the same incident, a policy that has shielded perpetrators for decades.
carefully specifies a personal grievance between two believers: "if your brother sins against you." The procedure that follows — private confrontation, then witnesses, then the congregation — addresses interpersonal disputes within the faith community. , just nine verses earlier, addresses something qualitatively different: harming a child, with Jesus' strongest recorded warning ("it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck"). One is a pastoral process; the other is a crime. Conflating the two by applying the two-witness rule to child abuse cases has cost children decades of unanswered harm. The passage also supports local, congregational accountability — the final step is "tell the congregation" (v. 17), not "escalate to a centralised judicial body." The biblical model is transparent, community-based resolution, not secret committee proceedings.