Sometimes popular views of Jesus are totally without foundation. The popular conception is that Jesus is all "love" and no judgement. Nothing could be further from the truth, and a simple reading of the gospels reveals this. Jesus is both love and judgement.
Here Jesus says He came to "bring fire on the earth". Moreover He is eager to do this! He came to bring a separation, there will be a separation between those who belong to God and those who do not. In the present times we are seeing our society become increasingly anti-Christian. We should not despair when we see this happening, for it is not the world's plan that is being fulfilled but God's plan.
However, before the judgement Jesus had to go to the cross. But division will come and this will affect some of the deepest parts of life. Even families will be divided. Now we need to read this carefully. Jesus is not giving a law here! He is not saying every family will be divided, but there will be families that are divided. We should bear this in mind as sometimes we have a simplistic notion that if only we bring our children up properly they are bound to become Christians. This is not so. Every human being is born in sin, and every human being needs to repent and believe, and not everyone will. However, don't go to the other extreme! It is far better to bring our children up well, and this will bear fruit!
Jesus then rebukes the crowd because they had no idea what was going on. They could predict the weather, but did not realise that God was calling them to repentance. We will do all we can to avoid confronting the reality of our sin.
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