In Matthew 24:50, the coming of Christ is mentioned as a terror to those who so much as begin to smite their fellow-servants. We may wrangle and stand out one against another in our contentions now, but it will not be so easy to answer Jesus Christ as it is to answer back to one another. In the name of Jesus Christ I speak to you now, and indeed, as from Him I charge you. Let no reason move you to contend with, differ from or separate from your brethren.

Some people are expert at identifying disagreements and upsets and then probing continually to keep the difficulty at the forefront of everyone’s minds. This is not the honest interest of wanting to arrive at a settled view of a doubtful question in their own minds, but comes from a darker motivation that finds some kind of satisfaction in seeing other people at loggerheads. Yet this is the opposite of what a Christian should be like. When there are disagreements between Christians, fellow believers should do all they can not to make things worse, and everything possible to bring reconciliation and harmony. In the following updated extract, Westminster Assembly member Jeremiah Burroughs offers a series of considerations to help us prioritise peace between Christian and Christian.

Think of How Far We Can Agree

We differ in this way and that way, but what do we agree in? Do we not agree in enough things that we may spend all the days of our lives and all the strength we have in glorifying God together?

Many love to be altogether busied about their brethren’s differences. Their discourse, their pens, and all their ways are about these. But it is not to heal the breaches, but rather to widen them. You do not hear them speak of or get involved with their agreements; their strength is not bent to heighten and strengthen agreement. If at any time they do take notice of their agreements, it only to render their disagreements the more odious, or to strengthen themselves in what they differ from them. They desire to get in men, and to get from them, only what will serve their own interests. This is an evil spirit.

Pliny tells us about the famous painter Apelles, who was drawing the face of King Antiochus, who only had one eye. In order to hide this deformity, Apelles came up with the idea of painting him with his face slightly turned away. From him, says Pliny, came the invention of concealing the defects and blemishes of the face. But the painters of our time do things quite differently. If there is any deformity or defect on any side, they will be sure to paint that side in all its detail, and set it forth fully to the view of all. Indeed, if it may be made to look more ugly and monstrous than it is, then that is what they will use all the skill they have to do.

But, my brethren, this ought not to be! God does not treat us like this. He takes notice of the good of His children, and conceals their evil. There was only one good word in what Sarah said to Abraham, in what was otherwise a speech of unbelief (Gen. 18:12), yet when the Holy Ghost speaks of her afterwards, He conceals all the evil in it, and mentions only the respectful title she gave to her husband, commending her for it (1 Pet. 3:6). This is what we should do, and if we had peaceable hearts, it is what we would do. All the good of our brethren we would amplify to the utmost, and what is evil, so far as we could with a good conscience, we would conceal.

Realise That What We Gain by Contention Will Never Be Worth the Cost

A merchant thinks it a bad venture, if when he comes to do his accounts he finds that the cost of his voyage exceeds his income. If you can calmly sit down and look at your accounts truly, and set down in one column what good you got by such and such contentions, and in the other column add up what hurt you have done, what sin has been committed, what evil has got into your spirit, I fear you will have little gain to rejoice in.

“To be freed from the expense that comes in by strife, is not a little gain,” says Ambrose. In strife you will find there is a very great expense of time, of gifts and of abilities. Many men have good gifts given by God, and might have proved shining lights in the church, but by reason of their contentious spirits, they prove nothing but smoking firebrands.

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