The New Living Way Prepared by Christ

to anger it, in the covenant with death and understanding with hell. That JESUS might not harm the lust, love, and inclination for evil, and that He might not really attack, judge, condemn, kill, and completely root out sin in its deepest root, so that He does not become a poison to sin and a pestilence to hell; but rather only a lid that covers the same with His merits, and deals quite tenderly with our sins and the works of the devil according to the mildness of the Gospel. But JESUS counters this fleshly orthodoxy of ours, our Satanic doctrines, our unblessed thoughts, which the own-spirit hatches within us. Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace with your sins on earth: No; but discord. v. 51. Rather the sword. Matthew 10:34, Jeremiah 48:10-11. So that the blood of sin might be shed. The two-edged sword of divine judgment, by which sin and all works of the devil are destroyed and separated and parted from spirit, soul, and body: I have come to actually destroy all works of the devil in you and outside of you, to put an end to all sin and wickedness. I have come to set discord or enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15, between the children of GOD and the children of the devil, 1 John 3:8-10, between the children of Hagar, the Ishmaelites or legalistic mockers, who are born of the law according to the flesh, and who walk according to the will of a man, John 1:13, and the children of the Spirit, who are born of GOD, of the Spirit, and who walk in the Spirit and according to the immediate impulse and power of the Spirit. Galatians 4:29. For these can impossibly have peace and fellowship with one another. Sheep and goats must thus be separated and parted from one another. 1 Corinthians 5:6, 14; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18.

§. 4. For from now on, five will be divided in one house, three against two, and two against three. v. 52, 53.

Just begin, whoever you are, father or son, mother or daughter, husband or wife, to confess Jesus in your house before your own with words and deeds, as He clarifies and reveals Himself in your heart daily through His Spirit: Just act before people as you see Jesus acting in you in the Spirit. As He reveals in your inward man a hatred, enmity, and wrath against all pride, avarice, and lusts, yes, against all impure world-love and self-love; and [as He reveals] His righteous mind and judgments against all evil in you; so do not give the members of your outer man to sin for service any longer.