The Epistle of James - Godly Values
Part 26 - Fights and Quarrels
James 4v1-2a
26th October 2018
Last time, we looked at this verse:
James 3:18
Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.
I think a harvest of righteousness is people being saved. If you sow a wheat seed you get a harvest of wheat. If you sow a barley seed you get a harvest of barley. If you sow righteousness you get a harvest of righteousness. God calls us to sow our righteous lives (if indeed they are righteous) to reap other righteous lives. If we sow our relationship with God, we will reap other people who have relationships with God. What you sow is indeed what you reap.
God wants to use you and me and His people together to help other people find the love, truth, grace, peace and righteousness of God. If you're a Christian who sows peace, if whenever you see a situation of conflict, you seek to bring peace to that conflict, you will recognised as a child of God. And if you're recognised as a child of God, you'll bear fruit, and other people will come to know Jesus through your life, your testimony and your peace.
If we will live at peace, we will raise a harvest of righteousness. But how can we offer peace to the world if we can't live at peace with each other? How can we love non-Christians if we can't love Christians? And according to 1 John 4v20, we can't love God if we don't love his people. The peace of the local church is fundamentally important to the wellbeing and the mission of that church. If we're fighting among ourselves, we'll be very ineffective at fighting against the enemy of our souls.
In Matthew 5v14, Jesus told us that the church is the light of the world. The church is the best picture the world will ever get of what God is like. How will they hear about Jesus except through us? How will they experience the love of God except through us? How will they know what peace is except through us? So we must live at peace with one another, with God and with ourselves. As Paul says in Romans 12v18, "If it's possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone".
But, sadly, James has to ask the people in his church this question:
James 4v1
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within
you?
I'd like to be able to say, "What fights? What quarrels? We live at peace with one another". But, disgracefully, there are fights and quarrels in churches. They're caused by the desires that battle within us.
We have a simple choice: we can quarrel and fight, or we can make peace. We're called to be peacemakers but sometimes our desire for what we want, or for something to be done the way we think it should be done, somehow trumps our desire to be peacemakers. This should never happen in God's church. Even if our brother in Christ is doing something that we think is unwise, we shouldn’t quarrel with him. We should sadly, gently and lovingly share our concerns with him.
The next verse is profoundly challenging:
James 4v2
You want something but you can't get it. You kill and covet but you can't have what you want.
You quarrel and fight. You don't have because you don't ask God.
This raises the question: Did people in James's congregation really kill each other? Opinion is divided about this. Much as I want to believe that no Christian would ever kill another, I've come to the conclusion that James wouldn't have written this if it weren't true. But if it happened frequently, James would have given it a rather bigger part of his letter than this one verse, which leads me to the conclusion that it happened, but not often. Now and again, our desire for our way, our preference, our opinion has - at least in first century Judea - sometimes resulted in death in the church.
That's not as farfetched as it sounds, because of the political situation in Judea at the time. A lot of Judeans in the first century were Zealots - people who thought it was a good idea to kill Romans to get what they thought was the right political settlement. They thought that getting the Romans our of their country was worth committing murder. They would kill as many Romans as they could. This was a strong movement in first century Judea, as it is in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places today: "If you disagree with me, you deserve death".
At least one of Jesus's disciples was a Zealot - Simon the Zealot. At some point in his life he must have killed people for his political and religious beliefs. And another of Jesus's disciples, Judas Iscariot, may also have been a Zealot. His second name means "dagger man". Jesus loves sinners. He even loves people who murder Romans. And if two of the twelve disciples were people who would have killed for their religious beliefs, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that, in the Judean church, there were other people who would kill for their religious beliefs.
This at least goes to show how important it is that we endeavour to live at peace with all men.
Just as you can ruin a bowl of soup with tiny bit of impurity, there are various things that can ruin a healthy church, and one of them is quarrelling and fighting between brothers and sisters. We can ruin a church, if we choose, by choosing conflict over peace. May it never be.
The church I go to isn't exactly what I wish it was, but it is God's church. Some of the people there don't behave exactly the way I wish they would, but they're my brothers and sisters. I can't claim to love God if I don't love them. I plead with you in Jesus's name: never quarrel or fight. Find a peaceable way of living with difference of opinion. Because a peaceable church can raise a harvest of righteousness, and a church in conflict will destroy itself.
It’s up to each one of us to choose peace.