A post that I wrote last year that has great relevance still in church and society.
Division, whether in politics, families, or churches, arises often from insecurity. Paul’s prayer of blessing in Romans 15:13 underscores the role of trust (faith) in achieving peace. Disunity disrupts growth; it displaces hope with confusion and anger.
Even as Christianity began to spread across the Roman Empire in the first decades after the resurrection of Jesus, the apostles and other church leaders had to deal with potential division within the Christ’s church. In Acts 6, Greek-speaking Jewish Christian widows are overlooked in the daily distribution of food to the needy. It provokes unrest in a predominantly Aramaic-speaking church. The apostles respond by appointing seven from the same background as the overlooked to oversee distribution. In Acts 10-15, the conversion of Gentiles introduces new variables for disagreement into the Christian community. Which Jewish practices remain binding for non-Jewish disciples of Jesus? In the book of Galatians, the disagreements over the answer…
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