The word Jerusalem means “a dwelling in peace.” Each gathering of believers should be a kind of miniature Jerusalem. In such case one is met with, “Wisdom that is from above [which] is first pure, then peaceable.” But where there is one who allows the flesh in correcting evil, such is allowing the very thing he is contending against, and he seeks the cleansing of another with soiled hands, as it were. To use the “water of separation,” you must be “a clean person” (Num. 19). Moreover, it does not say, “Wisdom that is from above is only pure,” but “first pure,” clearly implying it has other qualities. It is “peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy.” One mourns that the traits of gentleness and mercy are far too often wanting in those who contend for purity. And yet, God has joined these together, and shall we divorce them? Truth has its companion virtue: “By mercy and truth iniquity is purged.”
F. C. Blount