Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 10:34

"Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." — Matthew 10:34 (ASV)

Think not that I am come to send peace — Truth appears again in the form of a seeming paradox. Christ is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) and came to be the one great Peacemaker. Yet the foreseen consequences of His work involved strife and division, and such a consequence, freely accepted for the sake of the greater good that lies beyond it, involves, in fact, a purpose.

These words are the natural expression of such a thought, and yet we can hardly fail to connect them with those which, in the earliest dawn of His infancy, revealed to the mother of the Christ that a sword should pass through her own soul also (Luke 2:35).