A House Divided

Ancient Manuscript: Gospel of Thomas

Saying:  16

My Reflection on Verse:

A house divided is a rough situation for all involved.  When two or more people in a house cannot be on the same side friction is caused.  Sometimes there will be more on one side and will use their power to make the other side do what they want.  There are often hard feelings formed over time.  Distrust begins to grow because there is always a struggle going on.

We see this every day when we watch or listen to the news.  We hear opposing sports teams, government parties and religious denominations fighting each other.  Our humanness leads us to take sides and then persuade others to believe what we now believe.  What is amazing is that a lot of times we do not originally believe what we now accept as truth.

When we read this scripture we might be wondering why Jesus is saying that people will find conflict with each other.  We talk about Jesus and we talk about love.  How can Jesus also bring along conflict?  Again we are assuming that it is Jesus that has caused the conflict.  What we miss is that Jesus comes bringing love, yet we n our humanness decides to take sides.

Jesus offers the gift of salvation.  Yet, we are the ones that accept or reject the gift.  It is in this action that conflict arises.  Whichever choice we make we have made a decision on what side of the conflict we are going to stand on.  Some of us will pick Jesus and when we do we are on his side.  Yet, if we do not choose Jesus we stand against Jesus. There are two major conflicts that arise from this choice.  One battle we face is an internal conflict the other is an external conflict.

We have to first face the internal conflict within ourselves. We have to realize that once we become Christians our whole lives change.  No longer are we a part of this world.  We are to live our lives in service and worship of God.  We are to leave our old ways behind and take on our new life.  In the process of accepting Jesus into our life we become new creations.

Our mind will try to tempt us to do the things that we did in the past.  Yet, our sprit will tell us to live for God.  We will daily struggle with this conflict.   We do not have to face these temptations on our own.  We have Jesus in our life and we only need to ask Jesus to help us and the help comes.  We have to remember that we are not what we used to be before Christ.  In this new life, we have to ensure that we listen to our spirit not to our humanness. 

When we fall to our temptations we need to ask Jesus to forgive us.  We need to then strive not to fall again.  Yet, this is where it gets very tricky.  We are not perfect we are forgiven sinners.  Therefor we will succumb to temptations over and over again.  Yet, as Christians our goal should be to stride toward not following our temptations.  We need to focus on serving God. 

We need to know that because Jesus knows that we are not perfect Jesus not only forgives our past sins but our future sins.  Jesus’s blood covers all our sins.  Yet, this doesn’t mean that we should go out in the world and sin.  Instead we should strive every day to live without sin.  Once you realize that the internal conflict is a daily battle the more prepared you become to fight it.

The second battle is an external battle.  We will see people who we loved and trusted do things which harm us.  These are our friends and families who have not accepted Jesus into their life.  There will come times when they will try to convince us to go back to our old way of life.  The problem isn’t that they are not fighting us instead it is our way of new life that they are fighting back against.  They do not have the same saving grace in their life and they cannot understand how we are so free. 

We have to see that we are a representation of the love that they have not found in their own life.  We have to turn the other cheek.  We have to make sure that we do not give into temptation.  We have to remember that we need to always keep our eyes on Jesus.  He will help us through these struggles.

Even when people rise up against us physically we can call on Jesus.  Do not assume because you have Jesus in your life that you will not face physical challenges.  These physical challenges when they come from our friends and family seem to hit our moral much harder than an outsider.  Yet, we have to remember to keep focused on God just.  We have to remember to have the same faith and strength as Job.  No matter what happened in his life he did not lose his strength.  We need to keep that in mind as our loved ones come against us. 

We also need to remember is that they are not coming after us.  They are attacking Jesus which has changed our life.  We become a part of Jesus’s family when we become a child of God.  Those that do not accept Jesus are often jealous or mad at the new self that we become.  They desire the same peace yet, they choose not to accept it from God.

Questions:

Have you accepted Jesus in your life?  What battle are you in today?  Are you focusing on Jesus to help you through it?  Do you need to ask Jesus to help us overcome the struggle that seems impossible for us to handle?