The root of all division in the body is religion. And if we know anything about God at all, and His desires, His desire is that there should be NO DIVISION in His people. For He detests division. For does He not say a house divided cannot stand (Mark 3:25)? And is the church not His house? For are we not the temple of the Holy Spirit? And does He not say of His church that we “should all be ONE”, just as the Father and Son are one (John 17:21)?

So, therefore, and especially since there is no error or any falsehood anywhere in the Word, what we CAN take from the fact that there is this division in the house, is that this “stand off” is then “not of God” or because God has created confusion in the house. For God is not a God of confusion. And, as such, His Word cannot have any confusion. For the house of God stands (or falls) on the Word. Rather, it shows that in some way, this division ultimately boils down to man. And in boiling it down even further, this division then does not come down to “A FAITH” issue, but to rather a “A RELIGIOUS” one. For this division in the body of Christ truly IS a war of religion.

And whenever religion and “a religious stand-off” creeps into anything, for we need look no further than to that between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, religion is all “the dead works” or miscarried fruits of man birthed from the incomplete position of “the letter of the law”, rather than a complete view as formed in combination with “the Spirit of the law”. Which makes religion all the “dead man’s bones and uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27) of man’s understanding based on being “wise in his own eyes and clever in his own sight” (Isaiah 5:21) that is every stillborn thing birthed out of an absence of the Holy Spirit.

Which, as with the religious Israelites, whose views were based only on “the letter of the law”, God referred to them as “blind guides” (Matthew 23:16) and “fools” (Matthew 23:17). For God personally detests uneven scales (Proverbs 11:1). Which tells us not only that God detests religion, but that any view of man that is the uneven scale of being based only the letter of the law without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, likewise makes us also the “blind guides” and “fools” who are “wise in their own eyes” (Proverbs 3:7). For does the word of God not say that “the Holy Spirit” will convict us of right from wrong (John 16:8)? Which means, if we need to be convicted of what is truth from error, we need not just the Word, but also the Holy Spirit.

So what we can learn from this is that, in all things, the “whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God” kind of truth is always based on a combination of both “the letter” of the law AND “the spirit” of the law. And since we know that man “knows only in part” (1 Corinthians 13:9), if religion is down to an understanding based on man’s “part knowledge” only, any position of religion is, and ALWAYS will be, an incomplete position. For is all the division that exists within the body today not in some way always down to religion?