Wisdom War And Peace

Make war or make peace, which one should a Christian do? We start with that tension and end up somewhere surprisingly practical: how Jesus faces temptation, how wisdom actually grows, and why the Bible can call us to fight and reconcile at the same time.

We dig into the difference between knowledge and wisdom using Matthew 4. Knowledge is knowing what’s true, like Jesus answering the devil with “It is written.” Wisdom is knowing how to apply truth at the right time in the right way. We talk through James 1:5 and the simple first step so many of us skip: asking God for wisdom. Then we get real about how God often builds wisdom through time, experience, and even the painful work of unlearning wrong assumptions that have gotten “concrete” in our thinking.

The second listener question goes straight to Matthew 5:9: blessed are the peacemakers, so how can we also be called to make war? We walk through Ephesians 6 to frame spiritual warfare as a battle against sin, the devil, and darkness, not against people. Then we turn to 2 Corinthians 5:18–19 and the ministry of reconciliation, showing what peacemaking looks like in everyday relationships, especially within the church.

If you want Christian wisdom that moves from theory to action, this Q&A will help you sort out what you’re fighting, who you’re forgiving, and how discipleship fits into all of it. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review, where do you need to make peace or make war this week?

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Transcript

War Or Peace Opening Question

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Make war or make peace? Which one should a Christian do? What if I told you the answer is both? Hey, it's Josh, and welcome to Mission Scent QA. And this week we had two great questions come in from our last sermon on May 10th. You can find them all at missionscent.org, but we were teaching through the temptations of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4. And we talked about how Jesus overcomes the devil. He uses three things. Number one, knowledge, number two, wisdom, and number three, choice or making war. We'll get to that last one in a little bit. However, let's look at the questions that came in. And up first was this it says, Hey Josh, today you were talking about wisdom at service. My question to you is this Is wisdom something you were born with, or does wisdom grow with age? How does that work? Some people seem to have wisdom sooner and can get their feet off the ground, and some people, some older people, have wisdom, but they barely get their feet off the ground. I was just wondering what is the difference with all of that? And that's a great question. Because wisdom does seem like this like mysterious thing. Knowledge being the first thing that we saw, knowledge is just simply knowing facts, right? So every temptation Jesus has with the devil, he he starts his answer with this it is written. In other words, it's knowledge. Jesus knows the word. He is the word, right? John 1.1. However, wisdom's different. See, knowledge is knowing something, like a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad. So how do we have those? Well, James 1.5 is very clear. It says, if anyone a lacks wisdom, ask God and he will supply it. In other words, that's the first place I have to go to. I have to pray, God give me wisdom. Now, are you magically gonna wake up and be the wisest person known to man? Solomon was, and that's what he asked God for. But I I primarily see God use two other avenues to do that. The first one is time and experience. See, think about it like this. When you first start kindergarten, we don't hit people with like trigonometry and calculus. We teach them what numbers are. We teach them this is this is one, this is two, this is three. And then every year after that, we build slightly on what we built the following year. It's called scaffolding in education. But what winds up happening is that means by the time we're ready, we can explain to them, okay, here's what a logarithmic function is. That's time and experience. And that's what we all need. We have to learn information, and then we have to have the experience of how to react with that information. That is time and experience. And then the second thing we see is discipleship. This is the one I think we get kind of like tricked up on the most, I guess you could say. Because discipleship is this, it's literally one-on-one. It's sitting with people who are wiser and going, hey, I want to act like you act. I want to, you know, not reply, but I want to respond to things how you respond. I see the way you live, and I want to live that way. That's discipleship. And we're all being discipled, it's just what we're being discipled towards. So I would say, are you born with wisdom? No. No, we're not born with wisdom. We gain wisdom as we go through life. And really to touch on the time and experience thing one more time, even and given another math example. It's funny, you'd almost think I'm a math teacher. Um, I don't believe in homework. Because if you were to learn that one plus one equals three, and then you were to go home and you were to apply that wrong knowledge to a hundred different math problems, did you learn anything? Now most people are probably sitting here going, no, I would argue you did learn something, you just learned the wrong thing. And when we learn the wrong thing like that, it still gets concrete built into our heads. And this is why some of us have to unlearn things to become more wise, because the knowledge we're starting with was not correct to begin with. That kind of just hit me as I was walking through that. So I hope that made sense. It's time and experience, but proper, which is where discipleship comes in, and that's literally walking with someone through everything. So that was the first question. If that didn't make sense, hit me up, let me know. I'd love a chance to answer it again. And then the second question said this Matthew 5 9, which says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. How are we to make war if we are also called to be peacemakers? It's a great question. And I will tell you the Bible calls us to do both in different aspects. Number one, in Ephesians 6, Paul very clearly says that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle against the powers of darkness, the powers of the air, the powers of principalities, the invisible things that are going on. In other words, when we're called to make war, it isn't to make war with a person. We're called to make war against sin, against the devil, against darkness. Now, when it says, blessed are the peacemakers, we're called to make peace. Again, in 2 Corinthians 5, give me a second, let me look it up because I I definitely, definitely want to be sure of what I am saying. I want to make sure I'm not giving out false information. Yep, 2 Corinthians 5 and verses 18 through 19. The Christian calling to share the message that humanity can be reconciled to God, right? That that's what Paul is driving at. And it says this, 2 Corinthians 5. Starting in verse 18, it says, All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, good making God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him who knew no sin sin, so that we may know the righteousness of God. That's what being a peacemaker is. It's sitting here going, you need to be bringing light, you need to be like being there with each other, you need to be walking with, even going back to the wisdom thing, right? This is where discipleship comes in. Like, should me and a brother or sister like in Christ completely fight and never make up? No. Because if God can forgive me, why can I not forgive others? So when we're looking at this making war versus being a peacemaker, we're called to do both. It's just what and who we're called to do what with. So if I'm talking about a brother or sister in Christ, no, be a peacemaker. Your job is reconciliation, just as we have been reconciled to God. That's why, even when Paul's talking about communion, he says, if a brother or sister has sinned against you, leave your gift at the altar, go and make it right with them, then come back and take communion. Because we should be that serious about reconciliation. However, when it comes to our own sin, our own things that we all fight, we all struggle with, yes, we are called in that aspect to make war. We're called with everything we are to battle the devil, to bow it, battle darkness. And that sometimes is going to look more like what we think of when we think of war, right? Because again, I can't sit here and go, I love God, but then I'm gonna make peace with someone who is hurting someone who is made in the same image of that God that I claim to love. So it's there's a lot of nuance. We could go on for hours and hours and hours about that, but I'm not going to. If you have any more questions, I would love to hear them. You can always text in on our text line and go from there. That'll probably get cut out. I might leave it in the video, but I'm not gonna put the text line up on YouTube. Uh, you guys have the comment section. So, but hopefully that answered those two questions. As always, I love answering your questions. If you have any more, I am always here for them. Mission sent, we love you, we thank you, and we can't do this without you.