A house Divided

 

A House Divided

“A house divided cannot stand.”
Jesus said it plainly. It is not poetry. It is not merely a metaphor. It is a structural truth.

A divided house collapses. Every time. No exceptions. That principle applies to families, churches, nations, and hearts. Remove unity, and you remove the load-bearing wall.

That is why the household is always under attack.

But let’s stay focused.

The place where division most often enters is not outside Christianity — it is within the handling of Scripture. The same Bible that unites believers is the same Bible that leads denominations to different conclusions. This is not new. It has followed the church from the beginning.

Yet there are truths that every Christian instinctively affirms. These are not negotiable. They are not elastic. They do not bend with culture, personality, or preference.

Scripture has a centre — and it has a horizon.

The centre: non-negotiable clarity

Christ
The cross
The resurrection
Grace
Faith
Final judgment
The authority of Scripture

These are not obscure verses hidden away. They are repeated, reinforced, and unmistakable. They are the spine of the faith. Christian unity lives here. Remove the centre and you do not have Christianity — you have something else wearing its clothing.

But tension enters at the horizon.

The horizon: interpretive tension

Timelines
Prophetic imagery
Symbol vs literal
Sequence of events
Mechanics of spiritual gifts
Details of the future

These require inference. They require humility. They require the admission that faithful believers may see differently without denying Christ.

The danger is not disagreement. The danger is when disagreement becomes identity. When edges become more important than the centre. When fellowship collapses over secondary conclusions, the house begins to fracture.

Once fracture sets in, the deceiver has achieved something. Not the war — Christ has already secured that — but a battle. Division weakens the witness. Pride replaces submission. Certainty replaces charity.

Was this inevitable? Was it permitted for a reason?

One conclusion remains unavoidable:

God does not make mistakes.

The existence of interpretive edges is no accident. It exposes the real test.

The test is not:
“Do we agree on every edge?”

The test is:

Do we submit to Scripture?
Do we guard the centre?

 Do we stay humble at the edges?

Charles Spurgeon addressed this tension directly. He refused unity that diluted truth, yet he warned against tearing apart fellowship over secondary matters. He wrote:

“We shall see eye to eye when we get to heaven;
till then let us walk hand in hand.”

And again:

“If I differ from a brother in some interpretations,
am I therefore to cease to love him? God forbid.”

For Spurgeon, the house's collapse did not begin at interpretive edges — it began when Christ was displaced from the centre.

A divided house collapses when the centre is abandoned. But a house anchored at the centre can survive tension at the edges. Unity is not sameness. Unity is a shared submission to Christ.

A house stands not because every wall agrees — but because its foundation is Christ. - “For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
(1 Corinthians 3:11)

 

Signing off

Tyrone