<p>12:51 <i>Do you think that I came to give peace in the earth? I tell you no, but rather division</i>- Peace on earth was a feature of the messianic Kingdom. The Lord is emphasizing that His Kingdom had not yet come. Until then, there would be division between the kingdom people and the others. To be unwillingly caught up in a divided house / family is not, therefore, a sin or a sign of our personal condemnation. There must be schisms amongst us, that they might make manifest who the faithful are, by their attitude to them.</p><p>The Lord surely has in mind what He had commanded in Mt. 10:13, where He uses the same words to describe how the apostles were to let their&nbsp;<i>peace</i>&nbsp;<i>come</i>&nbsp;upon the households they entered- the peace of&nbsp;<i>shalom</i>&nbsp;with God, the salvation of Jesus. But that peace could return to them unclaimed, and the Lord's words here seem to imply that He is warning them that generally, their message of peace will not be accepted.</p><p>&quot;Peace on the earth<i>&quot; </i>is an allusion to the prophecies of peace in the Messianic Kingdom, and to the Angelic proclamation that there would be peace on earth through Christ (Lk. 2:14). The disciples were prone to be influenced by Jewish expectations and hopes for an imminent Messianic Kingdom to be established. The Lord's point is therefore surely that they were not to preach a gospel of immediate peace on earth, but rather one to come in the future; He made the point later that He had come to <i>take</i> peace from the earth (Rev. 6:4), but of course He offered&nbsp;<i>peace with God</i>&nbsp;through forgiveness and reconciliation which He would achieve through His life and death (Col. 1:20).&nbsp;</p>