There’s an important truth that, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you need to discover: If you win the fight with another follower of Jesus, you’ve lost the war against the evil one.
The fight is inevitable
Conflict in any relationship is inevitable. There’s no way you’re going to actually get to know someone without disagreeing with them. You’ll disagree about politics, about eschatology, about how money should be used, and dozens of other things both important and not. Be connected to someone deeply for any length of time – whether it’s as a part of a church community or in marriage or in friendship – and there will be a fight.
The loss
The problem with fights within the body of Christ is that we are incredibly quick to forget what the actual battle ground is. Paul describes the church as the body of Christ, and each individual within the church as members of that body. A body isn’t meant to fight itself. That’s called an auto-immune disorder, and bodies with auto-immune disorders almost always face a host of other problems. The sad reality is that many churches are bodies rife with auto-immune disorders.
The win
The belief that you can win a fight with a brother or sister in Christ assumes three things: that there are two opposing sides, that there is a finite resource to fight over, and that one party can possess the resource being fought over.
The biblical reality is that those who have been born again are one in Christ. It is also a biblical reality that – whatever the conflict is over- it’s not a finite resource. We serve a God of abundance. Any sense of lack is probably more evidence of a lack of faith and creativity than it is a sign of actual lack.
The win in conflict among God’s people isn’t that one person comes out as a victor; it’s that all parties involved grow in love together because, as Jesus says, love fulfills the law.
The war
The real war that you and those around you fight as followers of Jesus is a war fought together against the world, the flesh, and the devil.
If we truly grasp this then any conflict that arises in our marriages, our churches, and our friendships become an opportunity for learning together what it looks like to live out who we are in Christ and leverage the abundant creativity that can result in a deeper love and connection between us. And that’s something that will amaze the world around us.
No Comments