What did Jesus mean by coming to bring a sword in Matthew 10:34-36?

Christ Himself is the test of men's condition. He did not come to send peace on earth, that is, to make men comfortable with one another while still In a state of quilt. Rather His presence is as a sharp, dividing sword, bringing into focus the reality of some and the rebellion of others. By this touchstone the variance between father and son is manifested, and between mother and daughter, etc. So it has proven in history: many households have been divided because Christ is received by some and refused by other members of a family.

There must be a decision as regards Christ. If one loves father or mother, son or daughter more than Him, he is not worthy of Him. He cannot take a secondary place to any natural relationship. For any mere man to require this would be wickedness; but this Man is the eternal God, worthy of unconditional worship, and entitled to the absolute obedience of every creature. It is added also that if one does not take his cross and follow Christ, he is not worthy of Him. For Christ has willingly accepted the cross of the rejection of mankind for our sake. Every disciple of His therefore is to take his own cross, that is, to voluntarily identify himself with the rejected Christ of God, and to follow Him in this path of rejection, not expecting any recognition by the world, but rather reproach. This is of course inseparably connected with a confession of Christ, as in verse 32.

Then He warns them that the result of their testimony may be very painful — households getting into confusion, members of a family at variance one with another. Be not surprised. "Think not," He says, "that I am come to send peace on earth." We know that the Lord can give us peace always by all means: but He is speaking here of the entrance of His testimony, through His disciples, into a world that hates Him. Inevitably, then, the two principles come into collision. It is not that He desires confusion, but it is the natural effect of the knowledge of Christ entering a house where some of its members reject Him.

As it is in the world, so in the house. There are those that believe and those that believe not. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword." Dream not that everything is going to be triumphant. The day is coming when the Lord will cause peace to flow as a river; but such is not the effect of His first coming. It is the badge of war now, because of the opposition which unbelief always creates against the truth. "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." The Lord boldly meets the case. I am come to bring in My principle, and it sets child against parent. Now this becomes one of our severest trials — the effect that the testimony of God has upon families. People speak of households being broken up and kindred disunited. The Lord already uses the same words and strengthens us for it. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not his cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it" (vers. 37-39). He shows that His coming would bring the opposite to a path of ease in this world. Yea, we must make up our minds to suffer trial, rejection and scorn. But then He adds the other side: "He that receiveth you receiveth Me; and he that receiveth Me receiveth Him that sent Me." There would be those that would receive, as well as those that would reject. "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet" (that is, as a prophet), if he knew he was a servant of God, and received him as such, in the face of shame and scorn, he should have the same reward as a prophet himself. "And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man" — other people might call him unrighteous, but he receives him, not as a mere man or friend, but as righteous, and he "shall receive a righteous man's reward." He proves that his own heart is right with God. We show our real state of soul by the opinion we pronounce. Supposing I speak or act unwarrantably against a good man doing his duty, I show that I am not with God in that particular thing. On the other hand, if I have faith to discern what is of God, and to take my part with him in the face of general desertion, happy am I indeed. God alone enables a man to do so. We show where our hearts are by our judgments of and conduct toward others.

The connection of these two scriptures is very interesting. The prophet Micah, in depicting the moral corruption that prevailed in his day (vv. 2-4), declares that all confidence between friends, and even between husband and wife, had utterly vanished, and that in this state of things the most sacred ties of relationship were openly violated, so that a man's enemies were the men of his own house. It is a dark though true picture of the dominance of the power of evil in the prophet's day. In the gospel of Matthew the same state of things is seen, but as a consequence of the presentation of Christ. "Think not," says our blessed Lord, "that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." When Christ is presented to men, He is either received or rejected, and He thus brings, not peace, but a sword; for it draws forth from those who refuse Him all the enmity, all the latent corruption, of the human heart, both against Christ and against His followers. He thus warned His disciples that the time would come when those who killed them would think they were doing God service. In such circumstances sons have betrayed their fathers, daughters their mother, and parents their children, and in this way the Lord's words have often been fulfilled in the history of the Church — that "a man's foes shall be they of his own household." The solemn thing is, that Satan triumphs just as much in the animosity of the heart against Christ and against His people as in the godlessness of moral licentiousness. Truly the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and none can know it.

But men rejected the Prince of peace. "Depart from us was men's cry to God before the flood" (Job 22:17); the cry was the same when the Son came to earth. Since the Son was the revealer of the Father, the rejection of the Son involved the rejection of the Father also. "They have both seen and hated both Me and My Father" (John 15:24). This explains the Saviour's words in Matt. 10:34: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." His mission was peace, but men's refusal of Him has made peace impossible, and they have to suffer the sword instead. When the Lord Jesus thought of the consequences to men, He wept, saying: "if thou hadst known … the things which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes" (Luke 19:42). And so it has become true of men everywhere: "the way of peace have they not known" (Rom. 3:17).

Verse 28 is worthy of special note, for it very definitely teaches that the soul is not subject to death, as is the body. God can destroy both soul and body in hell; but the word for "destroy" is different from the word for "kill," and is one meaning to cause to perish, or to ruin, and has in it no thought of annihilation. The exact words, "the immortality of the soul" do not occur in Scripture, but here are words of our Lord which assert that solemn fact. The words of verse 34 may seem at first sight to clash with such statements as we have in Luke 1:79; Luke 2:14; or Acts 10:36. But there is no real discrepancy. God approached men in Christ with a message of peace, but He was rejected. At this point in Matthew's Gospel His rejection is coming into view, and hence He declares the solemn fact that the immediate effect of His approach is going to be strife and warfare. Peace on earth will be established by Him at His second advent, and this the angels foresaw and celebrated when first He came. Peace is indeed the ultimate thing, but the cross was the immediate thing; and if He was about to take up the cross then His disciples must be prepared for a sword, and for the losing of their lives for His sake. That loss however was going to mean ultimate gain.

124 Verse 49. There is another thing to be noted - the import of our Lord's coming then into the world. Had man been what he ought, peace would have been the result; but man saw no beauty in Christ to desire Him, and the effect was hatred - not peace, but a sword. The nearer the relation, the deeper the grievance. The will of man comes out, and is utterly opposed to God. They would not endure to be told that they were under God's judgment. But there is this peculiarity in the character of division which the entrance of grace makes. He who is converted in a family becomes generally, and at once, the slave of the rest. Nature even is subverted in such cases. How often thus a husband or parent loses his authority! There is a fire kindled before Christ comes again in judgment to kindle it. He was not then come to judge, but they, by their rejection of Him, kindled the fire of judgment.

This rejection of the Messiah accounts for what follows. How could peace be counted on any longer in the world to which it had been presented in the lowly coming of God in Christ into it, when His presence here only drew out the irreconcilable enmity of man's heart against God? Hence it is that in Luke 19 the disciples who greet the Lord on His entry into Jerusalem as her King, can only say "Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest." The peace presented to the earth, in the Saviour (Luke 2) is not to be found upon earth, if He is rejected out of it. And in Luke 12, as well as the parallel passage quoted from Matthew 10, the worst state of things in Israel, as depicted in Micah 7:5, is referred to by the Lord, as the result of His having been among them. The powerful ties of family relationship will not be sufficient to hold together when Christ becomes the object of any in it. A man's foes shall be they of his own household. And this becomes the test of being wholly for Him.

Peace upon earth is postponed until He shall be manifested in glory. Meanwhile the ground of this peace is laid in divine righteousness, as also, for peace in heaven in the richest way, and where we needed it most — by the blood of the Cross. (Col. 1:19-20)

Hence, we come to yet fuller particulars: "the father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."347 The nearest relationships, sex, age, or youth, made no difference. As grace works freely according to the sovereign will of God, so man's hatred is indiscriminate, and in the most unlikely quarters. The Lord is alluding to the prophecy of Micah, who describes in similar terms the worst evil of the last days (Micah 7:6). It is solemn to find, therefore, that, before the days spoken of by the prophet arrive, the evil was itself now come, and that the presence of Divine love in the person of Jesus provokes it. This could not be if men were not thoroughly bad; but Jesus is the Truth, and therefore brings all things to a head.

Finally, they were to be thoroughly imbued with the conviction that the Lord was not come to send peace on the earth; no, it should be division, even in the bosom of families. But Christ was to be more precious than father or mother, and even than a man's own life. He who would save his life at the expense of his testimony to Christ should lose it; he who would lose it for the sake of Christ should gain it. He also who should receive this testimony, in the person of the disciples, received Christ, and, in Christ, Him that sent Him. God, therefore, being thus acknowledged in the person of His witnesses on earth, would bestow, on whoever received the latter, a reward according to the testimony rendered. In thus acknowledging the testimony of the rejected Lord, were it only by a cup of cold water, he who gave it should not lose his reward. In an opposing world, he who believes the testimony of God, and receives (in spite of the world) the man who bears this testimony, really confesses God, as well as His servant. It is all that we can do. The rejection of Christ made Him a test, a touchstone.

(2) But what would be the result of this as to men at large? Peace among men, in the union of heart with heart in the acceptance of it? No; but everywhere division, and among the most intimate relations of life; a man's foes would be those of his own household. "The world would no more endure faith in the Saviour than it did the Saviour Himself, who was faith's object, and whom it confessed. It is well to note how the presence of the Saviour draws out the evil of the human heart. The state described here is in Micah, the description of the most dreadful state of evil conceivable (Micah 7:1-7)." (Synopsis.)