How can division be harmful? - Divisions - TouchPoints

Deuteronomy 6:5“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.”

Matthew 6:24“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

1 John 5:21Keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.

Those who try to live with a divided heart will suffer significant pain and trouble, as they will be pulled constantly in more than one direction.

John 10:16“I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd.”

John 17:21-23“I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.”

When Christians are divided, their fellowship and witness to the outside world is seriously damaged.

Genesis 16:5Then Sarai said to Abram, “This is all your fault! I put my servant into your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who’s wrong—you or me!”

Proverbs 10:12Hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses.

Proverbs 13:10Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise.

Proverbs 17:19Anyone who loves to quarrel loves sin; anyone who trusts in high walls invites disaster.

Proverbs 22:10Throw out the mocker, and fighting goes, too. Quarrels and insults will disappear.

Proverbs 26:20-21Fire goes out without wood, and quarrels disappear when gossip stops. A quarrelsome person starts fights as easily as hot embers light charcoal or fire lights wood.

Proverbs 30:33As the beating of cream yields butter and striking the nose causes bleeding, so stirring up anger causes quarrels.

1 Corinthians 3:1-9You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world? When one of you says, “I am a follower of Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people of the world? After all, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose. And both will be rewarded for their own hard work. For we are both God’s workers. And you are God’s field. You are God’s building.

James 4:1What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you?

James 4:2You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.

Divisive quarrels are often a symptom of relational problems, such as bitterness, anger, jealousy, pride, immaturity, gossip, and ridicule. Divisive words flow from a divisive mind and heart.

Galatians 5:19-21When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: . . . hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

People who live a lifestyle of picking fights and causing division risk forfeiting their eternal inheritance. The sin of divisiveness can have lasting consequences.