Some people are expert at identifying disagreements and upsets and then probing continually to keep the difficulty at the forefront of everyone’s minds. This is not the honest interest of wanting to arrive at a settled view of a doubtful question in their own minds, but comes from a darker motivation that finds some kind of satisfaction in seeing other people at loggerheads. Yet this is the opposite of what a Christian should be like. When there are disagreements between Christians, fellow believers should do all they can not to make things worse, and everything possible to bring reconciliation and harmony. In the following updated extract, Westminster Assembly member Jeremiah Burroughs offers a series of considerations to help us prioritise peace between Christian and Christian.

Think of how far we can agree

We differ in this way and that way, but what do we agree in? Do we not agree in enough things that we may spend all the days of our lives and all the strength we have in glorifying God together?

Many love to be altogether busied about their brethren’s differences. Their discourse, their pens, and all their ways are about these. But it is not to heal the breaches, but rather to widen them. You do not hear them speak of or get involved with their agreements; their strength is not bent to heighten and strengthen agreement. If at any time they do take notice of their agreements, it only to render their disagreements the more odious, or to strengthen themselves in what they differ from them. They desire to get in men, and to get from them, only what will serve their own interests. This is an evil spirit.

Pliny tells us about the famous painter Apelles, who was drawing the face of King Antiochus, who only had one eye. In order to hide this deformity, Apelles came up with the idea of painting him with his face slightly turned away. From him, says Pliny, came the invention of concealing the defects and blemishes of the face. But the painters of our time do things quite differently. If there is any deformity or defect on any side, they will be sure to paint that side in all its detail, and set it forth fully to the view of all. Indeed, if it may be made to look more ugly and monstrous than it is, then that is what they will use all the skill they have to do.

But, my brethren, this ought not to be! God does not treat us like this. He takes notice of the good of His children, and conceals their evil. There was only one good word in what Sarah said to Abraham, in what was otherwise a speech of unbelief (Gen. 18:12), yet when the Holy Ghost speaks of her afterwards, He conceals all the evil in it, and mentions only the respectful title she gave to her husband, commending her for it (1 Pet. 3:6). This is what we should do, and if we had peaceable hearts, it is what we would do. All the good of our brethren we would amplify to the utmost, and what is evil, so far as we could with a good conscience, we would conceal.

Realise that what we gain by contention will never be worth the cost

A merchant thinks it a bad venture, if when he comes to do his accounts he finds that the cost of his voyage exceeds his income. If you can calmly sit down and look at your accounts truly, and set down in one column what good you got by such and such contentions, and in the other column add up what hurt you have done, what sin has been committed, what evil has got into your spirit, I fear you will have little gain to rejoice in.

“To be freed from the expense that comes in by strife, is not a little gain,” says Ambrose. In strife you will find there is a very great expense of time, of gifts and of abilities. Many men have good gifts given by God, and might have proved shining lights in the church, but by reason of their contentious spirits, they prove nothing but smoking firebrands. It may well be that, even with all the fuss you stir up, you will never get your own way; but even if you do, it will not exceed the cost. What you have spent on it, comes to much more than it is worth. God deliver me from having things my own way at such a dear rate!

Watch out for the work of the devil

When people provoke us, we are ready to flare up against them, looking no further than the people with whom we are displeased. But if you look a little further, perhaps you may see the devil hiding over there, and he may be the chief agent in the business.

Augustine says that when a fowler sets his net to catch birds, he sets it at a distance from the hedge, then he takes stones and throws them at the hedge. This makes the birds fly out, and flutter about. The fowler does not intend to damage the hedge, neither does he plan to hit any birds with his stones, but his eye is on the net on the other side of the hedge, and he drives the birds in there.

So, says Augustine, the devil prepares his net, then he raises up contentions, and causes much trouble in churches and among brethren, and you think all the evil is in the trouble of your present contentions. Oh no! The devil is behind the hedge, and he intends to bring you into some great sin by these upsets. When you are troubled and vexed by such contentions, the devil sees you fit for a temptation. “Now,” he says, “I shall get him to do such and such things, which otherwise I could never have got him to.” When we find contentions stirring, we should consider, “Is there not a temptation in them?”

Remember what we are called to

God has called us to peace (1 Cor. 7:15). The apostle mentions this call to peace in the context of a situation as difficult to preserve peace in as any that can occur in anyone’s life. It was the case of man and wife unequally yoked — one is a believer, the other an infidel. Yet as they are man and wife, the apostle says that the believer must be content to live with the unbeliever, as is becoming in a wife or a husband, unless he or she of themselves chooses to depart. But they should give the unbeliever no reason to depart, but rather by their holy, humble way of life they should seek to convert them.

Unquestionably this is a hard task, but it must be, says the apostle, and the reason is, “for God hath called us to peace.”

There is another case, almost as difficult as this, where patience and quietness of spirit is very much tried, and that is when a servant meets with a harsh, rugged, cruel master, who abuses him very injuriously. If anything would put someone’s spirit into a rage, you would think this would. “No,” says the apostle, “you must have such command over your spirit that you patiently bear this,” and this is the reason he gives, “For hereunto were ye called …” (1 Pet. 2:21–22).

You might object, “I grant that husbands and wives should live at peace, though they suffer one from another, and servants should put up with wrongs from their masters, yet it does not follow that similar patience should be required in us when we are wronged by our equals, or by those to whom we have no such bond of relation.” But yes, the argument from our calling is strong in this case also. “Love as brethren, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railings, but contrariwise, blessing, knowing that ye are thereunto called” (1 Pet. 3:8–9).

Think what account we can give to Jesus Christ for all our divisions

When Christ comes, are you going stand before Him with scratched faces and black eyes? “The Lord make you to increase and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men,” the apostle says, and to what end? “To the end he may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints” (1 Thess. 3:12–13).

It will be a sad thing to be found in our divisions at the coming of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 24:50, the coming of Christ is mentioned as a terror to those who so much as begin to smite their fellow-servants. We may wrangle and stand out one against another in our contentions now, but it will not be so easy to answer Jesus Christ as it is to answer back to one another.

In the name of Jesus Christ I speak to you now, and indeed, as from Him I charge you. Let no reason move you to contend with, differ from or separate from your brethren, but that which you are persuaded in your conscience (after due and serious examination) will stand before — in fact, will be approved of — by Jesus Christ at His coming.

Take to heart our mortality

We only have a little time to live. Will the greater part of it — actually, why should any part of it? — be snarled up with contentions and quarrels? Virgil says that if swarms of bees meet in the air, they will sometimes fight, as if in a set battle, with great violence. But if you throw a little dust on them, they will all go quiet. Sprinkle on your hearts the meditations of death, the thought that within a while this flesh of yours will be turned to dust, and this will quiet you.

Reflect on the life of heaven

There is and will be perfect agreement in heaven. Here, we are like bees, flying up and down from flower to flower all day, but at night all the bees come into the same hive. That is a place where Luther and Zwingli well agree. Considering that from all eternity God has ordained us to live co-heirs in heaven, to join together in praises there, shall we not agree together here on earth?

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