Articles
“Tensions in the Church”
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
James 4:1-3
You have to be careful restringing your guitar. When turning the tuning pegs to reach the desired pitch, the tension audibly builds higher and higher. If you over-tighten one it can easily snap, lashing out wildly to scratch you.
Some local congregations can be ‘high strung’ too. It may be just an undercurrent for a while, but little things can increase the tension over time until… SNAP! The flood gates open and people get hurt. What causes tensions in the church and what are we to do about them? The Christians addressed in James’ letter were an agitated bunch. Both external and internal factors contributed to their tension.
Outwardly, they were facing persecution. They were poor and being taken advantage of by wealthy landlords (5:4-6). They were also being hauled into court by the rich (2:6) who scorned their Christian faith (2:7). These outward pressures were no doubt a great source of stress so James admonished them to meet their trials with endurance, trusting that through them they were being shaped and strengthened by God who would eventually give them victory (1:2-4, 12).
Inwardly, they were struggling with worldliness. James was concerned that their culture was influencing them instead of the other way around. He warned that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (4:4) and highlighted that one key ingredient of “religion that is pure and undefiled before God” is keeping “oneself unstained from the world” (1:27).
When we think like the world instead of like Christ (what James calls “earthly wisdom” in 3:13-18) and then encounter some form of persecution, we are not poised to respond in God-honoring ways to that stress. Worldliness in the church manifested in several ways: a deference to the rich and a callous indifference to the poor (2:1-4); uncontrolled, critical speech (3:1-12; 4:11-12; 5:9); envy and selfish ambition that degenerated into quarrels (3:13-4:3); arrogance (4:13-17); and, most of all, an essential “double-mindedness” with respect to God that short-circuited the effectiveness of prayer (1:5-8) and resulted in a failure to put faith into practice (1:22-27; 2:14-26). James called upon these Christians to repent from this worldliness by humbling themselves before the Lord so that the Lord might exalt them (4:7-10). Then they could work diligently to bring other sinners back from the error of their ways (5:19-20).
Perhaps we can attribute tensions within the church to three failures:
A failure to think like Christ — Jesus has sanctified us (‘set us apart’ from the world) “in truth” (Jn. 17:17). We are called to shape our thinking after God’s word and resist the world’s efforts to squeeze us into its mold (Rom. 12:1-2). James tells us to adopt the wisdom from above that is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere” (3:17). When we think according to Christ’s wisdom we begin to sow seeds of peace within the church, reducing and resolving tensions, producing a “harvest of righteousness” (3:18). If there is tension within the church, check your heart first. Is there tension there? James says that his readers were at war with each other because their “passions [were] at war within [them]” (4:1). Many quarrels between Christians are not due to justifiable zeal but self-indulgent desire.
A failure to forgive like Christ — Many tensions can be traced back to an unwillingness to forgive those who have wronged us in the past. We must remember that wisdom from above is “full of mercy” (3:17) and that “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (2:13). It may be argued that Jesus taught us only to forgive those who repent of their sins (Lk. 17:3). While true reconciliation (the repairing of the relationship) cannot take place until there is contrition and ownership of one’s sin, we must always have the mindset of mercy. When we truly want reconciliation, we are ready to forgive and pray for it. Jesus prayed for those who crucified him, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:34) Many of those for whom he prayed never repented but some did. The point is, Jesus had a heart primed with mercy and ready to reconcile.
A failure to restore like Christ — Perhaps all the steps have been taken to reconcile (Mt. 5:21-26; 18:15-17) but tension still exists. When full restoration is lacking it may be due to a failure to forgive as we have been forgiven. Paul clobbers us with instructive grace: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Eph. 4:28) How did God in Christ forgive us? Once we repented and came to him for mercy, he did “not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” (Psa. 103:9-13) So Paul urges us to look to God as our model for forgiveness. Psalm 103 poetically describes how God forgives us in Christ: he does not dwell on our forgiven sin, use it against us, gossip to others about it or let it come between us and him.
Christians will always experience tension as we live in this world while not being of this world. But the church should be a place of peace, mercy and goodwill.
