Strife

Strife is contention between people — quarreling, rivalry, factionalism, and the hostile speech and suspicion that keep it going — and Scripture treats it as both an inward disposition and an outward practice that damages community. The Hebrew idiom “strife of tongues” in Psalm 31:20 locates it in words, and the psalmist’s request is to be hidden in God’s presence away from it, which assumes strife is a genuine harm rather than a mere irritant. Historically and linguistically, the Hebrew terms rendered “strife” (rîb, mādôn) cover both quarrels and legal disputes, and the Greek terms behind the New Testament’s “strife” and “rivalry” (eris, eritheia) carry the sense of contention and self-seeking ambition.

The New Testament places strife in the same company as serious vice. Romans 13:13 sets “strife and jealousy” among reveling, drunkenness, and sexual sin as conduct belonging to the night rather than the day. Galatians 5:19–21 lists strife among the works of the flesh and warns that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom. James 3:16 goes further, making strife a condition rather than a single act: “where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.” Philippians 2:3 names rivalry as the very thing to do nothing through, setting it against humility that counts others better than oneself.

Much of the New Testament’s concern is strife inside the believing community. First Corinthians 1:10 pleads for all to speak the same thing and to have no divisions, being perfected together in the same mind and judgment. Romans 16:18 warns that those who do not serve the Lord Christ but their own belly deceive innocent hearts by smooth and flattering speech. First Timothy 1:5 sets the goal of the command as “love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith,” which gives a standard against which controversy can be measured; 2 Timothy 2:25 prescribes gentle correction of opponents, and Titus 3:3 grounds that gentleness in remembering that “we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived.”

Traditions read this material differently, and the differences are real. Some communities emphasize the church’s duty to mark and correct the factious, reading firm doctrinal dispute as distinct from sinful strife and 2 Timothy 2:25 as the pattern for how to conduct it. Peace-church traditions, by contrast, read the vice lists as close to absolute and stress peacemaking and nonresistance as marks of the community. Others treat strife chiefly as a corporate and sacramental matter, calling for reconciliation through confessional and communal practice rather than individual correction alone. A related disagreement concerns whether strife is primarily personal sin requiring repentance or a social evil requiring structural remedy; the texts support the first directly and are read by some as bearing on the second.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.