God’s Means for Law and Order
Part 2
Romans 12:17-13:7 
Answering Objections
By Dave Redick

You probably know that respected Christians line up on both sides of this issue. Some believe as I do and others hold that neither individuals nor governments should ever resist evil – especially where deadly force is involved. They believe that police and military actions are always wrong and the only recourse of the innocent is a direct appeal for God’s intervention. Of course, both positions cannot be right. If pacifism is what the Bible teaches, then what I have shown you is wrong. Likewise, if what I have shown you is right, then pacifism is wrong. Both cannot be true.

Last Sunday in my sermon I made a case from scripture for the presence and use of a police or military force in maintaining peace, justice and order in society.

I showed you that according to Romans 12, we are not free to avenge those who wrong us personally. We considered Paul’s words in 12:19-20, "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." I pointed out that Jesus said similar things about this issue of personal vengeance when He taught that we are to turn the other cheek and not resist evildoers.(1)

Then I showed you that according to Romans 13, God establishes and authorizes civil government to do what He forbids in individuals. Civil government is established and authorized to use deadly force when necessary to restrain and execute vengeance on evildoers. Paul says of the civil government in Romans 13:4, "…for it does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil."

This latter principle from Romans 13 is the New Testament’s justification for the presence and use of a police or military force to promote law and order in a society.

I also showed you last time that the New Testament did not express disapproval of the work of officers in the Roman military. Neither did it tell them that they needed to change their occupation. That makes sense. If God approves of the civil government as a bearer of the sword of justice, He would also approve of those charged to carry out the instructions of that government when they do so righteously.

In today’s message I want to deal with possible objections to this teaching. You probably know that respected Christians line up on both sides of this issue. Some believe as I do and others hold that neither individuals nor governments should ever resist evil – especially where deadly force is involved. They believe that police and military actions are always wrong and the only recourse of the innocent is a direct appeal for God’s intervention.

Of course, both positions cannot be right. If pacifism is what the Bible teaches, then what I have shown you is wrong. Likewise, if what I have shown you is right, then pacifism is wrong. Both cannot be true.

To be fair in my dealing with objections, I went to several websites that present the opposite view to the one I have presented to you and gleaned their arguments. The rest of this message is based on the objections I found.

1. Objection #1: The Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill." It is never right for anyone to take another human life, even when enforcing the law or protecting the innocent. To do so makes the enforcer as guilty as the evildoer. Only God can take human life.

Answer: This is the argument often heard among the protesters who have taken to the streets these days. "Government sanctioned murder," they call it. It certainly has the sound of piety. In a world that increasingly devalues humanity, who could possibly argue with such a high-sounding view of the sanctity of human life?(2) But what does the Bible say?

From the very beginning human life has been protected, but with one caveat: Innocent human life has been protected. We read in Genesis 9:6, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man."

This passage comes in the midst of God’s instructions that authorize killing and eating animals, birds, and fish.(3) While we can freely take the lives of non-human creatures, we cannot freely kill man, who is made in God’s image. Anyone who kills man is supposed to be killed by man! This is the Bible’s first mention of what we call judicial killing or, as we say today, capital punishment. It is the lawful killing of one who unlawfully kills man. Later, in the Ten Commandments, God repeated it. In Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17 we read, "You shall not murder." The word for "murder" is specific. It means to unlawfully take human life. The King James Version’s rendering of "Thou shalt not kill" is not as specific as the original word.

God protects innocent human life. He forbids murder. The punishment for murder is death, carried out by man. Thus we have killing of the innocent forbidden and killing of the guilty commanded. This is inferred in the New Testament in Romans 13:4 where, speaking of the civil government, Paul wrote, "for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil."

So, it is not correct to say that all human life is protected. It is correct to say is that innocent human life is protected.

2. Objection #2: Jesus never joined the military or used violent, deadly force on anyone during His life on earth. We are to be Christ-like. Therefore we should not support the military or those who use deadly force.

Answer: First, let me say that I will be the last one to raise an objection to the notion that we are to be Christlike. I have spent the greater portion of my life trying to be Christlike and encouraging others to do the same. But we need to use a little common sense in our pronouncements.

If it is true that since Jesus never joined the military or appealed for the use of deadly force for the purpose of justice, that we shouldn’t, is it then also true that since Jesus never married, we shouldn’t? Is it then also true that since Jesus never had children, we shouldn’t? Is it then also true that since Jesus never owned a business or held a wage-earning job after age 30 that we shouldn’t?

There were a lot of things Jesus didn’t do while he was on earth that are right and proper for us. So to make an argument from what He didn’t do is a precarious exercise. There is no account that I can think of that describes Jesus coming into the presence of someone who unlawfully threatening the life of an innocent person. If we are to know what He would do in such situations we must find out by inferences from other things He said or did.

Perhaps the better way to consider how Jesus felt about the military would be to consider how He His Apostles dealt with the soldiers and policemen they met. We did that in last week’s message.

While it is true that Jesus never acted violently or called for violence toward another human being while He walked the earth, we need to remember His mission in his first coming. John 12:47 Jesus says, "I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world." Yet before we jump to a conclusion we need to remember the announced mission of His Second Coming which will indeed be judgment. When He returns He will deal violently with evildoers. Does that surprise you? The Lord Jesus doing violence? It shouldn’t. 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8 says, "For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." I’m not saying that we as individuals have the right to do these things because Jesus will someday do them. I’m simply pointing out that if we are going to look at Jesus’ example, we need to look at the whole picture.

3. Objection #3: Jesus and the Apostles taught us to love our neighbors and our enemies. Romans 13:10 says, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor…." Therefore, we have no right to ever use or invoke deadly force on a neighbor. To do so would violate the principle of love.

Answer: I believe and practice this commandment in Romans 13:10. I do no wrong to my neighbors. I hope you believe and practice it, too. But what if my neighbor is a recently released child molester and I have knowledge that he has been hanging around the school playground stalking a new victim. Is it the loving thing to do to keep my mouth shut? After all, if I say something, the police will come with guns and arrest him and put him back in prison. Is keeping quiet the loving thing to do? If so, what about love for the potential child victim? He or she is my neighbor, too. If I keep quiet and allow a child to be molested, am I a loving neighbor? Have I done the right thing?

Let’s apply this objection on a national level. If someone has vowed to destroy our country and has validated his intent by an attack which takes the lives of thousands of innocent people, are we to turn the other cheek or can our civil government use the amount of force necessary to restrain the evildoer and defend us?

Interestingly, the passage I quoted in the objection (Romans 13:10) is just six verses after Paul’s statement that authorizes the civil government to bear the sword. So I can’t imagine that Paul intended to exclude from his definition of love the very thing he just taught.

4. Objection #4: Didn’t Jesus condemn the intentions of James and John when they wanted to call fire down from heaven to destroy a village of Samaritans who refused to lodge the Lord and His disciples in their inns?(4) Didn’t Jesus scold them by saying, "You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them." Does not police action or military action indicate we are of that same spirit?

Answer: Such an attitude could be present in a police or military force. Police organizations and armies have been used for such misguided and wrong purposes. Hitler’s army and his SS troops would be an example of such and I in no way believe a Christian should support or participate in such an army. One who finds himself in the military in such a case should resign his commission immediately, even at the risk of imprisonment. Such a one on the police force should either correct the problem or resign from the force. It would be one of those cases where "we must obey God rather than men."(5)

But Jesus’ rebuke of James and John who wanted to call fire down from heaven on people they didn’t like does not parallel the use of a police or military force mustered in self-defense. James and John were out of line for their vengeful attitude as individuals and Jesus rebuked them. Had Jesus been absent and they were forced to submit their intent to a duly authorized civil government, ideally, their rash words would have been dispassionately weighed and they would have been restrained also. In fact, this is one of the major reasons that individuals are not authorized to take their own vengeance. In the heat of the moment, brash actions can seem justified. When we are forced to submit them to a civil authority for action, there is the potential for less heat and more light. The rebuke of James and John does not preclude the use of a duly authorized police or military force. To use it that way is to misapply it.

5. Objection #5: We owe our supreme, spiritual allegiance to God and His Kingdom – not to any physical nation of this world, for we are not of this world.(6) This precludes our supporting or serving the militaries or our countries.

Answer: Yes, we are citizens in the kingdom of God but that does not mean we can totally ignore our responsibility to the kingdom of man or refuse to participate. In fact, I’ve already shown you in Romans 13:6 that Jesus commands us to pay taxes to man’s kingdom in order to support the government charged to protect us. In Romans 13:1 we are told to submit to the governing authority. That’s the kingdom of man.

I wish it were as simple as withdrawing from the things we find difficult or dangerous. We could retire to farms, wear dark clothing, drive buggies, and refuse to utilize technology or associate with the world in any way.

Yet as I understand Jesus, we are to strive to have an influence on the kingdom of man. In effect, we have a dual citizenship. We are told to be salt and light to our world. We are not to put our light under a bushel basket. Instead we are to put it out where all can see and glorify our God. Our salt is not to be tasteless to the culture around us. Instead it is to have its preserving effect. We cannot withdraw from society.

Yes, there may be times when the world calls us to do things that are unjust. In those cases we must refuse to do what would be sin. But we cannot totally withdraw from the world as this objection suggests.

6. Objection #6: As Christians, the weapons of our warfare are not made of steel, titanium, and high explosives. Our weapons are spiritual. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 says, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh…." We are not to fight flesh and blood people. We are to fight wicked spirits in high places.

Answer: We are in a spiritual battle. The weapons of the spiritual war are not physical weapons. But Paul was talking about advancing the Kingdom of God in 2 Corinthians, not the government’s role in punishing evildoers and protecting the innocent. It is usually a misapplication of Scripture to take instruction on one subject and apply it to a different subject. The weapons of advancing the kingdom of God are spiritual. That means there cannot ever be a religious or "holy war" for the sake of advancing Christ’s kingdom. But in Romans 13 Paul makes it clear that the weapons of the civil government for maintaining order in society are physical. He said, "for it does not bear the sword for nothing." This argument is a misapplication of Scripture.

7. Objection #7: In the Old Testament, in 1 Chronicles 28:3, God would not allow King David to build the temple because he was a man of war and bloodshed. Isn’t this a sure indicator that God does not approve of any war?

Answer: It is true that God would not allow David to build the temple for these stated reasons. The project of building the temple would fall to David’s son, Solomon. But is it right to jump to the conclusion that this indicates God didn’t approve of David leading his troops into battle?

If so, why did God command David to go into battle? Oh, you didn’t know that? Let me give you an example.

If the reason David was forbidden to build the temple was because he was a warrior and therefore, war is wrong, then why did God command him to go into battle? Such a conclusion would transfer the blame to God Himself, which isn’t very sound reasoning.

Why then did God forbid David to build the temple? There are several possibilities that don’t impugn God. One suggestion is that David was forbidden because his work as a warrior was not yet finished. Thus God said, "You shall not build a house for My name because you are a man of war…."The enemies of Israel had not yet been fully conquered. For David to begin construction on such a massive project as the temple would have distracted him from his main calling which was defeating the enemies of Israel.

Another suggestion (and I think this is the most likely explanation) is that David may have engaged in some military maneuvers that God did not approve. There was a period in David’s life, described in 1 Samuel 27, when King Saul had pursued Him so relentlessly that David actually left Israel, went into the land of God’s enemies, the Philistines, and offered his services as a warrior. Of course, if you’re going to join the army of the enemy of your people, you must prove your loyalty. So, for a period of 16 months, David raided villages in the vicinity of Judah, very close to God’s people, then returned to Philistia and deceived the King into believing he had actually attacked Israelite villages. To keep his deceit from becoming known, David killed every man, woman, and child in the villages he raided. He spared no one. It was some of the bloodiest battle in David’s entire life. God did not command such war. David was, in effect, backslidden during this period. This may be the reason God would not allow him to be the one to build the temple.

8. Objection #8: I came across the following hypothetical situation described on the website of a magazine called Youth United. It was written by a Church of God minister who believes there is no place for a military force and that Christians have no place in such a force. I’ll read it, then respond.

That’s a powerful picture! Hypothetically pitting Christian against Christian is compelling, especially when you name the characters in the story "David" and "Jonathan" after that famous biblical friendship summons up a lot of emotion to lovers of the Bible.

But since this is an artfully crafted hypothetical picture, I think we should be free to add our own hypothetical details. That’s only fair, don’t you think?

Suppose in this hypothetical picture, as Jonathan spies David through his "sinister scope," in the background of his sight picture he sees a soldier with a machete hacking a woman and child to pieces. Taking advantage of a second or two before these hypothetical Christians must hypothetically pull their hypothetical triggers, he pans around and sees other soldiers engaged in similar cruel activity. Women are being raped and brutalized. Several have been hanged. Children are crying out for their mothers, only to be cut down where they stand. There is no one to save them.

As you consider this follow-up hypothetical, several questions are in order. First, what is David doing defending such brutality in his country? It seems to me that a Christian in his position, seeing such unlawful and sinful activity would "obey God rather than men" and refuse his government’s call for him to fight. As we peer through Jonathan’s hypothetical scope, what we see is David fighting an unjust war. While in my opinion, war may be justified, no Christian should ever participate in an unjust war.

Second, now that Jonathan sees a bit more of the big picture, what should he do? As an agent of the civil government of His country, empowered to carry out judicial force to protect the innocent, should he turn away? Can he turn away? If he does turn away, what does he become? Would he somehow be more righteous because he saw the pleas of the innocent and refused to act? Is righteousness somehow preserved and promoted because he does not lawfully stand up to that which is unlawful and evil?

What should Jonathan do?

I leave you to consider this moral difficulty because it is the very one we face in resolving this issue of the use of police and military force to restrain evil.

Footnotes: (Use your "Back" button to return to your place) 

1. Matthew 5:39; Luke 6:29
2. One could only hope that these zealots would apply the same standard to the sanctity of unborn human life.
3. Genesis 9:1-5
4. Luke 9:51-56
5. Acts 5:29
6. John 17:14, 16, 18
7. http://youthmagazine.org/yu/article.asp?volume=3&issue=1&article=military

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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