Bound Together In Him

September 7

“Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures,” James 4:1-3.

If we seek our desires, life will be filled with conflict because everybody who is not surrendered to the will of God for his life is doing the same thing. James seems to be indicating here that the desires of other individuals will conflict with ours, thereby producing arguments, struggle, strife, and war. Because few are willing to compromise, let alone relinquish their desires, conflict will arise as a natural course.

If the parties involved are also unwilling to submit to the central authority, conflicting desires will collide. When there is a central authority that establishes principles within which people can interact agreeably, whether that central authority is the family, the culture, or God’s law, there will be unity. When these unifying entities are rejected in favor of the goals of the individual, conflict. will inevitably arise.

Each of us who professes faith in Christ has an obligation to strive for unity—not just binding together with people whose interests are complimentary to our own but with people of like precious faith who love the Lord we love.

We may find our views on politics, on education, on world events to be 180 degrees apart from theirs, but if we mutually love Jesus, we should be able to interact amicably on mutually-agreeable Kingdom goals.

John 8:32 declares, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free,” and the only truth that has the power to achieve for us the freedom to unite with our brethren who may differ from us is the truth that is eternal—the Truth who says of Himself, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” John 14:6.

The reality is that the truth cannot set us free if we don’t submit to it. Christ who is ultimate Truth cannot set us free unless we give our will over to His. We must love Truth, we must embrace Truth, we must walk in Truth or we will deny Truth and the only truth we will know will be a counterfeit truth that springs from our own will.

Only Jesus can cause unity to prevail in divergent individuals and He can achieve unity only as each believer surrenders his will to Christ’s. When believers have done that, nothing can cause them to battle among themselves or with those outside the realm of faith—unless the perfect law of the Holy One is the issue that separates them.