CHAPTER 7
A SWORD IN THE SOUL
The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
—Luke 2:33–35
This is a Christmas text, a birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke. When Jesus’ parents brought him to the temple to be circumcised on the eighth day, there was an old man present, Simeon, who had been waiting for the Messiah. When the family went by him, he was prompted by the Holy Spirit to perceive Jesus’ true identity. He took the baby in his arms and spoke now-famous words, called the Nunc dimittis, that have been chanted in Christian worship liturgies over the centuries. The Nunc dimittis is usually rendered something like this: “Now, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for my eyes have seen thy salvation.” Simeon is thanking God that he lived just long enough to see the Messiah.
The Nunc dimittis is contained in Luke 2:29–32, but that is not all Simeon said. Luke tells us that, after Mary and Joseph listened in amazement to his initial words, Simeon then looked right at Mary and added:
This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. (Luke 2:34–35)
It’s understandable why this second statement from Simeon is relatively unknown. It has not been put to music; it is not read at Christmas services around the world. But I think it should be, because it is part of what the Bible tells us about the meaning of Christmas, and because we need to hear it. Why? Both the secular and church celebrations of Christmas focus almost entirely on sweetness and light. They are all about how the coming of Christ means peace on earth. And certainly, as we saw in the last chapter, it does. But it’s not that simple. How does a surgeon bring peace to your body if it has a tumor in it? The surgeon spills your blood, cuts you open, because that is your only path to health. How does a therapist help a downcast, depressed person? Often she does it by bringing up the past, getting the patient to confront painful memories and terrible feelings. The surgeon and therapist often have to make you feel worse before you can feel better.
In Matthew 10:34 Jesus goes so far as to say, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” He quickly goes on to show he does not mean that he comes to incite violence. He means rather that his call to allegiance brings conflict—conflicts both among people and within people. Just like any peacemaker who has ever lived, Jesus makes people mad, and he often causes struggle and strife. Yet this is the way his peace comes.
HE CAUSES CONFLICTS AMONG PEOPLE
The first part of Simeon’s prophecy is that Jesus will cause “falling and rising” and be “a sign that will be spoken against.” In other words, people will be polarized, and many will oppose Jesus. This will cause conflicts.
We have explored part of the reason for this reaction from people—the magnitude of his claims of authority. But there is more to it than that. Jesus says in John 3:19–20 that people “love darkness instead of light” and hate the light because it exposes them for what they are. Even at a very basic level you can see this principle worked out. I once knew a white family in a neighborhood that was very welcoming to the first African American family who moved into their area. Their white neighbors were furious with them. For years these neighbors had given any new nonwhite families the cold shoulder. The friendly family made others feel the pressure to be more open and engaging and they didn’t like it, not at all.
I once knew a policeman who, after converting to Christianity, would not take the money that the local pimps quietly passed around his precinct so that the police would not arrest their prostitutes. A couple of other policemen approached him and said, “You’d better watch it. You are making the other guys very nervous. You have to take the money.” He refused, and after getting some anonymous threats, he had to move to another city. See the principle played out? You don’t have to be Jesus Christ to get people furious at being exposed for what they are. Just living an honest, moral life will expose gossip in the office, corruption in government, racism in the neighborhood. The manger at Christmas means that, if you live like Jesus, there won’t be room for you in a lot of inns.
In the early days of Christianity, Roman society was virtually awash with gods, religious cults, and mystery religions. In that culture it was expected that you should have your own private faith and your own gods. Yet when it came time to give public honor to the gods of the particular city or to the divine emperor himself, you had to participate. Roman homes, civic and public agencies, marketplaces, associations of tradespeople, and military units each had their own patron gods and regular public ceremonies dedicated to them. Even most formal dinners included acknowledgment of the local gods. To refuse to participate aroused suspicion, resentment, and anger—and a fear of divine reprisal against the whole community.
It quickly became clear that Christianity was quite different from these other religions. Not only did Christians have no priests, sacrifices, or temples, but they saw sacrificing to any other god as idolatry. The exclusiveness of Christian belief, and their conviction that Jesus was not just a god but the God, put Christians on a collision course with nearly everyone in that religiously pluralistic society. Intolerant Christians appeared to be a threat to the whole social order. Historians explain that early Christians were, as a result, often disinherited, excluded from government jobs, cut out of the best business relationships, and occasionally physically abused and imprisoned.1
In our secular society today, non-Christians do not fear divine reprisal, but increasingly our culture also sees Christians as a threat to the social order. Traditional Christian beliefs are once again seen as dangerously intolerant, and some kinds of restrictions and exclusions may be in our future as well. So the Gospel message brings hostility because it is seen—now as then—as intolerant.
As we have seen, there is a hostility to Christianity that is even more fundamental. Romans 1 tells us that at bottom we know we need God, but we repress the knowledge (Romans 1:18–20). All human beings have a motor of self-justification deep in their hearts. We need to believe we are competent to run our own lives and save ourselves. Anything that prevents this motor from functioning makes us very angry. Nothing is a bigger problem for this whole complex of repression and denial than Jesus himself. Everything about his life says to us, “You are not your own; you are bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19). No one wants to hear that. It is not surprising that they got mad at him. If you identify with Jesus and you don’t hide your connection, some people will get mad at you too.
There is a danger in talking about this, because Christians are flawed human beings, and we often bring censure upon ourselves through hypocrisy and bigotry. We must not try to justify our own flaws and missteps by complaining that we are being persecuted. Sometimes people are simply offended by us, and they have a right to be. But Simeon is saying that there is an offensiveness to Jesus himself, and in every time and place it will find expression, and anyone who identifies with him will be seen as offensive too.
The coming of Jesus into our lives makes us peacemakers, yet it also brings conflict. If you are a committed Christian, then, you will know both the triumphs of peacemaking and the heartbreak of opposition. Christians often feel like the psalmist when he wrote: “I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war” (Psalm 120:7).
HE CAUSES CONFLICTS WITHIN PEOPLE
Simeon does not leave it there. Still looking at Mary, he adds, “A sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35). Certainly it did. We know, for example, that she stood near the cross and watched her son die (John 19:25). Yes, she had known and pondered for years all the testimonies that her son was the Christ, the Messiah. However, like everyone else around him, she had no expectation of an early, terrible death and then a resurrection. It must have seemed to her, as to all Jesus’ disciples, that the cross was the bloody, incomprehensible end to all their hopes and dreams. To that terrible disillusionment Mary could add the unique agony and bottomless grief of outliving your child, watching him die.
Even before that, Jesus’ ministry had created great confusion for Mary. In Mark 3 we are told that Jesus’ “mother and brothers” (verse 31) found his claims and ministry to be, literally, madness. We are told that they went out to bring him home by force, because he was “out of his mind” (verse 21). When they arrived where he was ministering and called him to come out to them, Jesus had to repudiate them. That does not mean he broke his relationship with his mother, for even as he was dying he loved her and made provision for her (John 19:25–27). But when Mary and the rest of his family told him to stop preaching and teaching, he retorted, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” (Mark 3:33, emphasis mine). Then, looking around at the crowd and his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (verses 34–35).
There are few persons presented to us in the New Testament who are more admirable and attractive than Mary. We looked at her wonderful response to the angels and her wise response to the shepherds. Yet here we see even Mary didn’t get it completely right. She was seriously mistaken in what her son was about, what needed to be done, and what her response should be. She tried to stop him, to obstruct the ministry that would mean salvation for the world. This was an enormous mistake, and his rebuke to her must have gone deep.
One more time we see Mary standing before us as a representative of everybody who loves Jesus. If you love Jesus and have him in your life, a sword will pass through your heart as well. There will be inner conflict, sometimes confusion, sometimes great pain. You will get things wrong. You may fight with him. And you may fight with yourself.
Why? As J. C. Ryle, the nineteenth-century Anglican bishop, wrote about Christians: “The child of God has two great marks about him. . . . He may be known by his inward warfare—as well as by his inward peace.”2 When you put your faith in Christ many struggles are ended, or nearly so. The struggle to prove yourself, to find an identity, to have a meaning in life that can handle suffering, to find true satisfaction—all of these fights become resolved. However, a whole new set of struggles are touched off by faith in Christ. That’s why Ryle can say a real Christian is known not only by new peace but also by new conflict. He explains:
There are thousands of men and women who go to churches and chapels every Sunday, and call themselves Christians. Their names are in the baptismal register. They are reckoned Christians while they live. They are married with a Christian marriage-service. They are buried as Christians when they die. But you never see any “fight” about their religion! Of spiritual strife, and exertion, and conflict, and self-denial, and watching, and warring they know literally nothing at all. Such Christianity . . . is not the Christianity of the Bible. It is not the religion which the Lord Jesus founded, and His Apostles preached. True Christianity is “a fight.”3
Ryle’s rhetorical flourishes may be more appropriate for Victorian England than for today, but he is absolutely correct. The new peace Christ brings doesn’t come without new conflict. Let’s consider two ways that is true.
For one thing, God’s peace comes after the inner conflict of repentance. Repentance is like antiseptic. You pour antiseptic onto a wound and it stings, but it heals. That’s how repentance works. It creates terrible inner turmoil, because you have to admit things you don’t want to admit. You have to acknowledge weakness that you don’t want to acknowledge. However, that’s the only way to the new peace of forgiveness, reconciliation, and forgiveness. And it undermines your pride and self-righteousness, a terrible burden for you to bear, as well as for those around you. There’s no way to get into the new peace that repentance brings without going through that pain.
Also, God’s peace comes after the inner conflict entailed by submission. In Romans 6–8 Paul talks about the inner warfare between the Christian’s old self and new self. The old self continues to want you to be your own master, but the new self knows the peace of letting God be God. When two wills cross, of course there will be a fight! However, when we get through every one of those conflicts with God and finally say, “Not my will but thine be done,” we go deeper into his peace.
I know of a Christian woman who, through a terrible accident, lost the use of her limbs. For a number of years she was very bitter and angry. Then one day she said, “God, I don’t have the right to tell you how to run the universe.” After she broke through to that place, she developed a radiance about her. Once you’ve fought that battle and won, nothing can get you down. A trust developed in her toward Christ. No one should ever seek suffering. But if you do go through suffering and put more trust in him, you will find a kind of indelible joy, strength of character, and power that can come to you in no other way. This kind of fight can lead to immense peace.
Jesus said he came to bring a sword. Simeon said so too. Do we see what that means? It means we will get hostility for Jesus’ sake. It means we will have many painful struggles in the Christian life. Christmas, then, teaches us that Christians should not give in to self-pity. Nor should they be shortsighted, because the ultimate results of these conflicts are deeper peace and joy.
The word of Simeon is that Christians should expect and be ready for trouble. They should expect conflict as a way to get to peace. We can see it in Jesus, in how he brought peace through the agony of the cross. We should not be surprised, then, when conflicts come upon us.
How can we get the resolve to face the “sword” of trials and difficulties? Only by seeing how Jesus got the resolve to face the ultimate sword for us. Genesis 3 describes how God exiled humanity from his presence and from the tree of life. When he did that, we are told that “a flaming sword” was put in place to guard the way back to eternal life (Genesis 3:24). That was another way to say that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The entire Old Testament bears witness to this, because every time sin is atoned for in the tabernacle or temple, a substitute animal goes under the knife and dies.
What was Jesus doing, then, when he went to the cross? He was paying the penalty for sin; he was going under the sword. It came down on him. “He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished” (Isaiah 53:8).
Let’s not give in to self-pity or cowardice. The sword that passed through Jesus, the battle that he fought for us, was infinitely greater than anything he asks us to endure. And when he faced his final moment, and the sword was descending, he was utterly alone and forsaken, even by the Father (Matthew 27:46). When we walk through our difficulties, however, we are never alone. He always walks there with us. “I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”4
When Simeon said to Mary, “There’ll be a sword through your soul,” what if Mary had said, “I don’t want a sword in my soul”? What if Jesus had said, “I don’t want a sword in my soul! I don’t want to bring peace that way,” then where would you be? Where would I be? Don’t shrink back. Follow him to peace.