STRIFE AND CONTENTION
"Spoiling and
violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and
contention." Habakkuk 1:3.
CONTENTION is
uncomfortable, with whomsoever we fall out: neighbours or friends, wife or
husband, children or servants; but worst of all with God.
Consider the unhappy
contentions and divisions that are found among the people of God. Contentions
ever portend ill. Christ sets up the light of His gospel to walk and work by,
not to fight and wrangle; and therefore, it were no wonder at all if He should put
it out, and so end the dispute. If these storms which have been of late years
upon us, and are not yet off, had but made Christians, as that did the
disciples (Mark 6:48), ply their oars, and lovingly row all
one way, it had been happy; we might then have expected Christ to come walking
toward us in mercy, and help us safe to land; but when we throw away the oar,
and fall to strife in the ship, while the wind continues loud about us, truly
we are more likely to drive Christ from us, than to invite Him to us; we are in
a more probable way of sinking than saving of the ship and ourselves in it.
There is nothing
(next to Christ and heaven) that the devil grudges believers more than their
peace and mutual love. If he cannot rend them from Christ, stop them from
getting heaven, yet he takes some pleasure to see them go thither in a storm,
like a shattered fleet severed from one another, that they may have no
assistance from, nor comfort of each other's company all the way. One ship is
easier taken than a squadron.
If the gospel will
not allow us to pay our enemies in their own coin, and give them wrath for
wrath, much less will it suffer brethren to spit fire at one another's face.
When children fight
and wrangle, now is the time they may expect their father to come and part them
with his rod. "He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and
the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth
with a curse" (Mal. 4:6). Strife and contention set a people
next door to a curse. God brings a heavy judgment upon a people when Himself
leaves them. "Be of one mind," says the apostle, "live in peace;
and the God of love and peace shalt be with you" (2 Cor. 13:11), implying that if they did not live
in peace they must not look to have His company long with them.
In our divided times,
wherein there is so much difference of judgment, had there been less wrangling
among ourselves and more wrestling with God, we had been in a fairer way to
find the door of truth, which so many are yet groping for. The way of
controversy is dusty, and contentious disputes raiseth this dust, and blows it
most into their eyes that gallop fastest in it, so that they miss the truth,
which humble souls find upon their knees at the throne of grace. . . . Sinning
times have ever been the saint's praying times: this sent Ezra with a heavy
heart to confess the sin of his people (Ezra 9.). And Jeremiah tells the wicked of
his degenerate age that his "soul should weep in secret places for their
pride" (Jer. 13:17).
"The love of
many shall wax cold," and no wonder when self-love waxeth so hot. It was
foretold also by the apostle (2 Tim. 3:1, 2), "In the last days . . . men
shall be lovers of their own selves"; and what a black regiment follows
this captain, sin! If once a man makes self the whole of his aim, farewell
loving of, or praying for others: charity cannot dwell in so narrow a house as
the self-lover's heart; yea, it is opposed to it: "Love seeketh not her
own" (1 Cor. 13:5).
They were none of the
best Christians of whom Paul gives this character, "They sought their
own." As the heart advances in grace, so it grows more public-spirited:
the higher a man ascends a hill, the larger will be his prospect: his eye is
not confined within the compass of his own wall. The carnal spirit thinks of
none but himself; whereas grace elevates the soul, and the more grace a man
has, the more it will enable him to look from himself into the condition of his
brethren.
I have known one that
when he had some envious unkind thoughts stirring in him, against any one (and
who so holy as may not find such vermin sometimes creeping about him), he would
go to the throne of grace where he would most earnestly pray for the increase
of those good things in them which he before had seemed to grudge.
When love has once
laid the dust which passion and prejudice have blown in our eyes, we shall then
stand at greater advantage for finding out truth. Pity thy weak brother, and
take him by the hand for his help, but despise him not; God can make him to
stand and suffer thee to fall: Christ doth not quench the smoking flax — why
should we?
The persecutor's
sword is not at the church's throat among us; but are not Christians falling
out among themselves? The question has often been asked, why the word preached
has been no more effectual to convert the wicked, or to edify the saints? One
of the chief causes is the divisions amongst those that have made the greatest
profession of the truth. The body of Christ is edified by love (Eph. 4:16). The apostles themselves, when
wrangling got little good by Christ's sermon, or the supper itself, administered
by Christ to them.
One would have thought that was such a meal, in the strength
whereof (as so many Elijahs) they might have gone a long journey; but, alas! we
see how weak they arise from it; one denies his Master, and the rest in alarm
forsake Him. Christ prays for His people's unity, "That the world may
believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:21). This should stir up all that wish
well to the gospel, to pray for the reunion of divided hearts; hot disputes
will not do it; prayer will, or nothing can. The God of peace can only set us
at peace: if ever we are wise to agree, we must obtain our wisdom from above;
this alone is pure and peaceable.
The unreasonableness
of the strife betwixt Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's is aggravated by the near
neighbourhood of the heathens to them, "And there was a strife between the
herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite
and Perizzite dwelled then in the land" (Gen. 13:7). . . . O Christians, shall Herod and
Pilate put you to shame? They clapped up a peace to strengthen their hands
against Christ; and will not you unite against your common enemy? . . .
Contentions put a stop to the growth of grace. The body may as well thrive in a
fever, as the soul prosper when on a flame with strife and contention. Observe
that place (Eph. 4:15): "But speaking the truth in
love," or being sincere in love, "may grow up into Him in all
things."
The apostle is upon a cure, showing how souls may come to thrive
and flourish; and the receipt he gives is a composition of these two rare
drugs, sincerity and love; preserve these and all will go well. There may be
preaching, but no edifying, without love. You cut off your trade with heaven,
at the throne of grace; you will be little in prayer to God,
if much in squabbling with your brethren. It is impossible to
go from wrangling to praying, with a free spirit. And if you should be so bold
as to knock at God's door, you are sure to have cold welcome, "Leave there
thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift." As we cut off our trade with heaven, so
with one another; when two countries fall out they must needs both pinch by the
war. No Christian could well live without borrowing from his brethren. There is
that "which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in
the measure of every part" (Eph. 4:16). Contentions and divisions spoil all
intercourse among believers. Communication flows from communion, and communion
is founded upon union. The church grows under persecution; that sheds the seed
all over the field, and brings the gospel where else it had not been heard of;
but divisions and contentions, like a furious storm, washes the seed out of the
land, with its heart, fatness, and all. Contentions not only hazard the decay
of grace, but growth of sin. "If ye have bitter envying, and strife in
your hearts, glory not; . . . for where envying and strife is, there is
confusion and every evil work." Contention is the devil's forge, in which
if he can but give a Christian a heat or two, he will soften him for his hammer
of temptation. Moses himself, when his spirit was a little hot, "spake
unadvisedly with his lips."
We are prone to
mistake our heat for zeal, whereas commonly in strife between saints it is a
fire-ship sent in by Satan to break their unity and order; wherein while they
stand they are an armada invincible: and Satan knows he has no other way but
this to shatter them: when the Christians' language, which should be one,
begins to be confounded, they are then near scattering.
Was there ever less
love, charity, self-denial, heavenly mindedness, or the power of holiness, than
in this sad age of ours? Alas! these are in great danger of perishing in the
fire of contention and division, which a perverse zeal in less things has
kindled among us.
Lay this deep in thy
heart, that God, which gives an eye to see truth, must give a hand to hold it
fast when we have it. What we have from God we cannot keep without God; keep
therefore thy acquaintance with God, or else truth will not keep her
acquaintance long with thee. God is light: thou art going into the dark, as
soon as thou turnest thy back upon Him. We stand it better advantage to find
truth, and keep it also, when devoutly praying for it, than fiercely wrangling
and contending about it: disputes toil the soul and raise the dust of passion;
prayer sweetly composeth the mind, and lays the passions which disputes draw
forth; and I am sure a man may see further in a still, clear day, than in a
windy and cloudy. When a person talks much and rests little, we have great
cause to fear his brain will not long hold out; and truly, when a person shall
be much in talking and disputing about truth, without a humble spirit in prayer
to be led into it, God may justly punish that man's pride with a spiritual
frenzy in his mind, that he shall not know error from truth.
A truth under dispute
is stopped in the head: it cannot commence in the heart, or become practicable
in the life.
Many a sharp conflict
there has been between saint and saint, scuffling in the dark through
misunderstanding of the truth and each other.
There is a day
coming, and it cannot be far from us, in which we shall meet lovingly in
heaven, and sit at one feast: full fruition of God shall be the feast, and
peace and love the sweet music that shall sound to it; and what folly it is for
us to fight here who shall feast there!