The Sure Word for Today's quotation for the week:
God Has Forgiven Me.
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Jesus and Conflict — Part 2.
Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Philippians 2: 3-4 (KJV).
The mere fact, you are born again is a conflict on its own. Jesus said they will hate you because they first hated him. The miracles of Jesus were ground for conflict. The religious leaders in his days hated him so much that they prefer to save a robber Barbnabas and instead condemned the innocent Jesus to death. Probably they are jealous because they needed his attention, but he came for the sick.
If you pay attention to look into the details of the life of Jesus, he was the source of his own conflict, and it is not a bad thing. He became the focus and the occasion of the conflict that invested his life. Jesus is the stone on which people will stumble; he is the sign that will be spoken against. It became explicit in one of the rare sayings of Jesus in the synoptic tradition:
Matthew 10:34 (GW) "Don't think that I came to bring peace to earth. I didn't come to bring peace but conflict.
Luke 12:51 (GW) "Do you think I came to bring peace to earth? No! I can guarantee that I came to bring nothing but division.
The Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Herodians were on his face. They never gave him a breathing space. They honestly believed without prejudice that they were protecting the sanctity of their religion. They assumed Jesus’ message was toxic to their congregations, so they had to protect their flock. But the problem here is they literally interpreted Jesus’ comments and missed the point.
Jesus came to love, but there is a conflict between love and the law and between love and religion. The peace Jesus did not come to bring is the peace that most believers seem to have opted for: the peace of compromising happily with the Mammon (ref Matthew 6:24). Jesus was at odds with a radically unjust and oppressive society, driven not by love but by greed.
Jesus challenged his society outrageously. He forgave people, healed, especially on the Sabbath, ate and dined with the social outcast.
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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the HOLY BIBLE unless otherwise indicated.
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