The Christian in Complete Armor - Choice Extracts!

gives is a composition of these two rare drugs, sincerity and love; preserve
these and all will go well.
There may be preaching — but no edifying, without love. You cut off your
trade with Heaven, at the throne of grace; you will be little in prayer to God
— if much in squabbling with your brethren. It is impossible to go from
wrangling to praying, with a free spirit. And if you would be so bold as to
knock at God's door, you are sure to have cold welcome, "Leave your gift
before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and
then come and offer your gift."
As we cut off our trade with Heaven, so with one another; when two
countries fall out, they must needs both pinch by the war. No Christian could
well live without borrowing from his brethren. There is that "which every
joint supplies according to the effectual working in the measure of every
part" (Ephesians 4:16). Contentions and divisions, spoil all fellowship among
believers. Communication flows from communion, and communion is
founded upon union. The church grows under persecution; that sheds the
seed all over the field, and brings the gospel where else it had not been heard
of. But divisions and contentions, like a furious storm, washes the seed out
of the land, with its heart, fatness, and all.
Contentions not only hazard the decay of grace — but growth of sin. "If you
have bitter envying, and strife in your hearts, glory not; . . . for where envying
and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work." Contention is the devil's
forge, in which if he can but give a Christian a heat or two — he will soften
him for his hammer of temptation. Moses himself, when his spirit was a
little hot, "spoke unadvisedly with his lips.”
We are prone to mistake our heat for zeal, whereas commonly in strife
between saints it is a fire-ship sent in by Satan to break their unity and order;
wherein while they stand they are an invincible armada: and Satan knows he
has no other way but this to shatter them. When the Christians' language,
which should be one, begins to be confounded, they are then near scattering.
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