Getting Along

Matthew 10:35-36 ESV

“For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.”

Why can’t we all just get along? This is an amazing question isn’t it. At the same time being so simple it is truly one that jumps immediately to what is wrong with the world. As different members of our society like to point to the inherent inequalities of different person’s in our society and then assign the fix to the responsibility of the government Christians have to look deeper. As other groups like to point to government involvement and the coercive power of the state as one of the chief problems of our society Christian here, also left to go deeper.

In this passage Jesus is attempting to help his disciples manage the reality of what will happen when sin is addressed. For in the end that is what Jesus came to fight. He came to wage a war against sin and death (the consequence of sin). This war was not waged with political intrigue or military coop but with obedience and love. Sometimes that love and obedience played out in the form of a whip for the backs of the moneychangers (John 2:15) at other times it was writing in the sand to bring an adulteress to repentance (John 8:1-11), and finally it was an innocent man dead on a cross, a lifeless body hanging in view of all creation.

Why can’t we all just get along? It is as simple as a man and women in a garden. Sin has entered into our hearts. The depths of that sin are beyond finding out for mortal man (Jeremiah 17:9). The American church has engaged in a persistent rejection of the world shown in scripture, choosing to think that man and women is inherently good and children are born innocent. In such a world it is amazing that we can’t get along but when every man, women, and child is born in sin, and only the constant work of sanctification (Philippians 2:12) reduces any of it, only God entering into the lives of Christians through the work of the Holy Spirit will accomplish the peace we long for, the peace that passes all understanding. Sin is the answer to the question yours and mine.

When you look out and see all the evil in the world, do you also see your sin as the cause. When children are born dead, cancer strikes, and an accident puts a young family in the grave, what is the cause? Until you see the reality of the magnitude of sin you will not be willing to thrust it from you. Until the reality of every sin is set against the necessity of its wage, death (Romans 6:23). Will you see your sin as the cause or will you hide behind the spec in your brother’s eye?

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO