Turning the Pages of Peace

I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord.
(Philippians 4:2 – ESV)

When looking at this verse, and the verses surrounding it before and after, they give us an object lesson – this is what to do with quarrels in the church. Verses one, two, three, and four say “stand firm thus in the Lord”, “agree in the Lord”, “help…me in the gospel”, and “rejoice in the Lord”. Start with the bottom line – we love Christ, we love each other, and we want to further God’s kingdom with the gospel. We must remember, and apparently they forgot, that everything else was less important than that common ground. We may disagree as to how we do these things, but we must start by agreeing that we want these things.

We may not be happy because we are not on the same page with someone, but we can have joy because we are at least in the same book, and all we have to do is turn some pages together, and with the help of others we can be seeing things the same way again. Also remember Philippians 3:15-17, lets make sure we are pressing on to maturity by knowing we are not perfected yet, by forgetting what was behind that we did wrong, by striving to learn more, by following the lead of others whom are our mentors, by doing what we know to do already, and by realizing those whom are mature in this way will be led by the Lord to discover and discern what is right.

These ladies weren’t heretics or apostates they were true believers, “whose names are in the book of life”. Even true believers can have disagreements. We can disagree vigorously without dividing. Do we trust God in the context of community? When we think of joy as coming from this order – Jesus / Others / You – we will be fostering joy in ourselves and in others. We have seen Christ, Paul, Timothy Epaphroditus, now the two ladies, an unnamed man, Clement, and countless others, all part of the process and the progress of joy. Disputes are inevitable, and are often necessary in order to iron our error, but how we handle, or process them is the key to whether we stay of the same mind or we split. The “same mind” (KJV) means toward the same goal, that of unity in verity, fellowship around the truth in Christ not the truth from self.