Live in Peace with Each Other
1 Thessalonians 5v13b
18th February 2022
As we saw last time, the first thing Paul, Silas and Timothy tell us to do in the church age, while we wait for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, the first and most important aspect of church life, is to show healthy respect for our leaders. The second thing is this:
1 Thessalonians 5:13b
Live in peace with each other.
This is not about leaders. This is about all of us.
It's so easy to get frustrated with other Christians. They do tend to see things differently from us. They do tend to have their own priorities. And they're sinners. Some Christians are so much better at spotting other people's sins than their own. Don't be one of them. And for many of us, it's so much easier to accept our own sins, so much easier to forgive ourselves, than to accept other people's sins and forgive them.
Romans 15:7
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to
God.
Through Jesus Christ, God accepts you exactly as you are, with all your foolishness, all your stubbornness, all your sin, all your weakness, all your emotional baggage, all your pain, and all the damage your sin, and the sin perpetrated against you, has done to you. And He's accepted your brother and your sister with all their problems and imperfections. How can we not accept one another?
We all want to be accepted, included, celebrated. And Jesus said:
Luke 6:31
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Since you want the church to show you love and acceptance, show that same love and acceptance to everybody who comes.
You want us to forgive you when you get things wrong. So forgive others when they get things wrong. How can we not forgive each other? Jesus said:
Matthew 6:14-15
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive
your sins.
If we're honest, Christian people do sometimes fall out or healthy relationship with each other. We do sometimes become resentful, even fearful, of each other. We can dig our heels in, and wait for the other person to apologise first. I think that happened between two women in the church at Philippi. Paul wrote:
Philippians 4:2
I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord.
Can we see that since Paul takes time in his letter to say this, and since God inspired Paul to do so, then it's important? And the next thing he wrote was:
Philippians 4:3
Yes, and I ask you, my true companion, help these women...
Please don't let anything stay between you and any other Christian. And if you can do anything to help two Christians come to peace with each other, then please do it.
God forgives and accepts every Christian. He includes them in His family and commits Himself to them for eternity. We should do the same. Let yours be a loving, welcoming, accepting, forgiving church. Let us not criticise what's bad in each other. Let's celebrate what's good in each other. For Jesus's sake.