Peace or Sword?
W. Carl Ketcherside
[Page 28] |
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household (Matthew 10:34-36).
We have before us as we write this a letter from a brother in Kansas, who plaintively writes: "You constantly stress peace in every issue of your paper and emphasize that all division is a sin. Have you forgotten that Jesus declared he did not come to send peace, but a sword? Why do you not emphasize that?"
It is apparent that our brother is perturbed because someone has come who preaches "peace to them that are afar off and to them that are nigh." He must find a scripture which makes it appear that Jesus is the prince of strife rather than the Prince of peace. He is as careless in reading what we write as he is in reading what the apostles wrote. We do not believe that all division is a sin. It would be a sin not to be separated from those with whom one has nothing in common--no fellowship, communion, concord or agreement. We are specifically told to, "come out from among them, and be ye separate" (2 Cor. 6:17).
We say that division among brethren in Christ is wrong. It is a sin for the members of God's family to be divided. Jesus did not come to unite us to the world but to call us out of it. We are not to be one with the world, but we are to be "one body in Christ and members one of another" (Rom. 12:5). Division among believers is contrary to the prayer of Jesus (John 17:21), it violates the apostolic doctrine (1 Cor. 1:10), and it is a work of the flesh (Gal. 5:20). It is a symptom of carnality and immaturity (1 Cor. 3:1-4). It is produced by those who are sensual, and have not the Spirit (Jude 19).
The kind of wisdom that produces envying and strife is not from above. It is earthly, sensual and devilish. It results in confusion and every evil work (James 3:15, 16). We are to be likeminded one toward another, according to Christ Jesus, that we may with one mind and one mouth, glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:6). Brethren who engage in strife are not "walking honestly as in the day" (Rom. 13:13).
What did Jesus mean by the expression, "Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth?" This statement occurs in the context of a speech made to the apostles when they were launched into a hostile world. They were sent forth as sheep among wolves (Matt. 10:16), and they were to beware of men. They could expect to be brought before governors, delivered up to councils, and scourged in the synagogues (17, 18). They were to be hated of all men for the name of Jesus (22), and hounded from city to city by persecutors (23). They were to overcome fear of those who can only kill the body but are not able to kill the soul (28).
When a hate-filled world is confronted with the claims of Jesus and his demand for unconditional surrender to his lordship, unbridled passion and unreasonable antagonism will know no bounds. "And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death" (21). Yet there can be no compromise. Jesus must be accepted or rejected. He did not come to give us a way out of persecution but a way into life--eternal life! And the choice is not easy. It is difficult to accept Jesus when the dearest friends on earth oppose and the fondest ties must be broken.
Literally, the words of Jesus mean, "I did not come to cast peace on the earth," that is, as men cast seed into the ground. Peace was not to be sown broadcast. It was to be the product of personal faith. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1). "These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye
[Page 29] |
For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall he they of his own household.
What spirit prompts men to take these words and apply them to the saints, as if the mission of Jesus was to rend and tear the fabric of brotherhood bought with his own blood? It cannot be the Holy Spirit because "variance and emulations" are described as works of the flesh and contrary to the Spirit (Gal. 5:20). Did Jesus come to "sow discord among brethren" and thus become an abomination unto God? Surely he would not set us against each other when he said, "When you stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any" (Mark 11:25).
What would be thought of a father who, while sitting at the table with his children, would hand a sword to his eldest son and tell him to cut the other children to pieces before his eyes? Would he not be regarded as having gone insane and become berserk? Did the Father of mercies send Jesus to teach us how to smite and slay his other children. Is he so devoid of parental regard and affection that he rejoices when we slash each other and spill the fratricidal blood at the common table? What kind of distorted, warped and twisted reason prompts men to take comfort in our sad, sorry, sinful state of division and factionalism, by making it appear that it was the mission of Jesus to create such a state of tumult, turmoil and pandemonium?
I emphatically deny that kind of thinking which implies that my blessed Lord is pleased and happy when we set at nought our brethren over their opinions relative to cups, classes, colleges, orphan homes, the millennium, instrumental music, or any of that motley multitude of transitory things which have fragmented us in this generation. I simply refuse to transfer his right to rule over my life to any preacher, prelate or priest, or to any group or faction composed of men no better than myself--a mere sinner saved by grace! No faction was crucified for me. I was not baptized in the name of any party. My Lord is not divided and I shall recognize no division in his body which he did not create and does not condone.
Let me serve notice, here and now, to factional leaders and promoters who may wait for me to weaken so they can "line me up," that they wait in vain. I have hitched my wagon of spiritual hope to a star--the bright and morning star- I never intend again, so help me God, to be either a partisan promoter or a party puppet. I am dedicated to the fight against the factional spirit. I am not interested in engaging in the petty and puerile battles of one faction against another, but in the warfare against the spirit that produces them all. I intend not to be turned back from the long and arduous battle to make His blessed prayer come true and be answered among the sons of men.
There is burning within me a fierce determination not to be deterred by fright of my enemies or flattery of my friends. I intend to labor to expose every misuse of the words of the Holy Spirit sent from God, and to let men see the raw, bare and naked ugliness of that body of orthodoxy which proclaims unity and practices division. To me there is no greater sin than to wrest the words of my precious Lord in such a manner as to make it appear that he was a dissembler and double-dealer who would pray for the oneness of all who believe in him and then assert that he came to cleave these very ones asunder with the sword. The crime is not mitigated by the fact that I once thought I served Him loyally by misuse of these same passages in my own biased and bigoted attempt to make all men conform to my views in the mistaken and fallacious notion that I was "leading them to Christ." I freely confess the sin of such
[Page 30] |
I glorify God that all over this great land, in every faction and splinter of the strife-torn restoration movement, there is a stirring of hearts, a striving for recapture of integrity and probity. Men are tired of traditional trumpetings of irrational and irrelevant explanations that do not explain, and of interpretations that do not interpret. Alarmed factional leaders brand this revolution as the "gravest danger to the church in a century," but thoughtful men now know they confuse the church with the faction of which they are a part. Be of good cheer, the word of God is coming into its own, and we shall see great things!