Some understand Jesus’ claim to be the ‘Prince of Peace’ to mean that he sought to bring an end to all hostilities here on Earth…and failed. A kind of wannabe United Nations delegate. The reality is that he promised something very different. He said, ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’. Maybe we write Jesus off too quickly on the basis of false assumptions.
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
