Sometimes the New Testament gives us brief but significant peeks into the everyday lives of Christians. One such glimpse is into a period of strife between two strong Christian women, Euodia and Syntyche.

Before I tell their story, there is the matter of the discrepancy in our Bible versions with Euodia's name. The King James Version spells the name with an "s" at the end, "Euodias." But that is a masculine name and it has been determined by Bible scholars that the person is not a man but a woman and so is accurately "Euodia."

Euodia and Syntyche were leaders of the church at Phillipi. Phillipi was a Roman colony and chief city of a district of Macedonia in northern Greece. Women in Macedonia were regarded in higher esteem and walked in more equality than almost anywhere else in the ancient world. There is archeological evidence that tells us that one woman erected tombs for both herself and her husband out of their joint earnings. There are monuments in Macedonia for women put there by public organizations. Women here were respected leaders in the church and in society. Another indicator of Euodia and Syntyche's leadership position is the manner in which Paul addresses them. He does not condescend, he does not command, but he "implores" them to reconcile. He comes to them as an equal, as a peacemaker between them.

We do not know what the issue was that was so divisive between them but we can logically surmise that a quarrel between these two women could well have split the church. Paul wouldn't have been so concerned otherwise. He commended these women as two who struggled by his side for the spread of the gospel in a way comparable to Clement and other church leaders. Surely they could mend this difference. If only they could be "of same mind." The word Paul uses concerning likemindedness is phroneo which means to exercise one's mind, to think. He wants them to come to hold the same opinion about the divisive issue, but he is not asking them to give up their own identities in the process. Paul enlists the aid of a man, possibly the carrier of the letter to Philippi, to act as his agent in making peace between the women. Peacemaking and reconciliation among believers is a crucial ministry. While we don't like to admit it, we often quarrel in the family of God and we often need mediators to help us come to likemindedness. We aren't told if this peacemaker was successful. We don't know if Euodia and Syntyche ever came to that understanding. However, there remains this interesting fact: Apart from the apocryphal book of Revelation, this is the only epistle in the New Testament that mentions whose names are written in the Book of Life. Paul wanted to direct the sisters' focus to their destiny together instead of their temporal differences. With our eternal salvation as a backdrop, many divisive issues that threaten our relationships here on earth shrink into insignificance.