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Crisis of Peace in Christendom:


As I look out across the world, I’m sobered. There are a lot of scary things happening. I’m on my knees, pleading with God for mercy.

But when I look out at the Church, I’m deeply grieved and concerned. I see deeper divides. I see Christians themselves fanning flames. I see disunity in ways we haven’t seen in a long time. And Christians are called to be ONE with one another, just as Christ is ONE with the Father.

“The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” John 17:22-23

Christians Radicalized:
My heart broke this weekend. Vance Boelter, a man who had been a devout Evangelical Christian, assassinated former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. He tried to assassinate Democratic Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Christians are becoming radicalized. More and more each day. The way we discourse online is fueling these fires of hatred. It’s not just happening in the US, but around the world. How we speak matters. How we post on social media matters. As Christians, we should be beacons of peace, and pray fervently for the unity that God calls us to.

I pray that God will grant all Christians extraordinary grace to communicate with grace and love, even if some of us need to speak hard truths. I pray that Christians will exercise discernment in what news they choose to intake, and stop watching anything that fuels and inflames hatred. I pray that Christians will refuse to trust in politicians who fuel and inflame hatred. I pray that Christians will obey God more than man, and seek to live in the kind of unity that God has called us to. I pray that Christians will guard and protect their children from adopting any kind of radical tendency by being good examples.

Saul and the New Testament Church:
Nothing is new under the sun. Saul (who would become the Apostle Paul) was a radical. He was a Jew of Jews! He was of the very ‘People of God’. He persecuted Christians, and actively sought to inflame hatred towards them. He breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord (Acts 9:1). But he was saved on the road to Damascas, when Jesus spoke to him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). God saved Saul miraculously, humbling him for a time by blinding him. And why did God save Saul? He saved Saul to be an instrument of grace to the Gentiles: “…for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.” The Apostle Paul would become the man to seek to bring peace to Gentiles and Jews in the early Church. He would become the man to disciple these churches on how to live together and love one another well. This was what some might have thought to be an impossible task, given the attitude of Jews towards Gentiles. However, with God, nothing is impossible. And this is part of God’s plan of redemption since the very beginning.

Paul taught over and over about the importance of unity and love. I confess, I have struggled intensely with all of these passages, weeping over them as I struggle to submit to God and love Christians who have harmed me or with whom I have disagreement or difference. I am weak and sinful. I struggle deeply. But what God calls me to, what Paul teaches me, is stunning! There is no other way I want to live this life! Unity is glorious! May God grant that we will eagerly and strenuously seek to be unified with one another, as Christ is with the Father.

Most Christians that I talk to think of Paul as the scholarly, theological Apostle. And he is. But he’s also the Apostle seeking to teach unity in churches with deep and seemingly unyielding differences. 
Here’s a list of some passages where you see how Paul does these things, but in reality, this is, at least in part, at the heart of why he writes all of his epistles: Rom 11; Rom 12:3-21; Rom 14; Rom 15; most of 1 Cor; Gal 5:16-25; Eph 4; Phil 2:1-18; 3; Phil 4:1-9; Col 3:1-17.

One of my favourite passages in Scripture is this one in Colossians. It is not an easy passage for me. But it gives me life. It sets my face towards Christ, which helps me to love others. I pray that the Church today will live and breathe the words of these Scriptures where such deep divisions threaten to permanently divide.

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.
But now you must put them all away: Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  Here there is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but CHRIST IS ALL, and IN ALL.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these PUT ON LOVE which BINDS everything together in PERFECT HARMONY.

And let the PEACE OF CHRIST RULE IN YOUR HEARTS, to which indeed you were called in ONE BODY.

And be THANKFUL. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
~Colossians 3:1-17

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