Have You Not Read S2E3 - Just War

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Podcast. Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are Michael Deerum, David Casson, and Andrew Hudson. We are happy to answer another question that came in from one of our listeners. The question reads, and it's a two-parter, are Christians supposed to be involved in earthly wars?

Are Christians to be involved in military combat of any kind? And I think we would like to start by delineating between just war and holy war as two separate categories. Michael,.

Would you like to tackle that real fast? Yes, so when we read, for instance, in the Old Testament that God commissioned Israel to be his instrument of judgment against the nations of Canaan with whom he was patient for hundreds of years, having given them effective and robust witness through the lives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Yet they did not turn from their evil and idolatrous ways. He strove with them and was patient with them for hundreds of years, and then when he brought his people into the land, he used Israel as an instrument of judgment.

And he instructed them that anything that was placed under the ban was to be utterly destroyed. It was holy to the Lord for destruction. So we see that all of Jericho, except for Rahab and her family, was placed under the ban.

All of it was to be burned and destroyed. Achan sinned and did not follow through on that, so his family came under the ban. But that's a classic example. This is holy war because God in his holiness sent his people as his instrument of judgment to destroy these nations and obliterate them.

And then on other occasions he would tell them, okay, with this region or this city you may take spoils, but the rest of these things must be destroyed. And it was all according to the righteous and holy judgment of God.

When people read these stories in the Old Testament, they want to find fault with God for his holiness, when we should be learning lessons about how holy God is and our need for a mediator, for a Savior.

They want to find fault with Israel for being party to this supposed genocide. This is a man-shaped word being imported over onto God. No, God was actually bringing about judgment. It's not genocide.

So a holy war in the Scriptures is different than perhaps holy wars that we have read about in history. Again, they're similar in that they're saying we have a divine right to go take this land or kill these people, but the only case we actually see that in the Scriptures is when God authorizes his servant to bring about his judgment in his way.

Now, God did that with Abram when he went to war with his trained servants against Cheddar Laramore and those who had raided and came into the land of Canaan. And Abram responded properly and he gave tithes of the spoils to the Lord and would take nothing from the King of Sodom.

So we see that was a holy war. We see the holy war in the life of Israel, how God told them to treat the Canaanites, and it was holy in the sense that, you know, they're not going to be falling into idolatry and compromising themselves and so on.

When we see how the Old Covenant is fulfilled by Christ in the New Covenant, and we do not have the end of all holy war, we have the consolidation of all these shadows unto the person and work of Jesus Christ.

And when we see Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Israel, and we see him as Psalm 2 pictures him as God's anointed upon his holy hill, we see that Christ has a rod of iron in his hand and the nations are given to him as an inheritance.

And he smashes the nations that rebel against him with a rod of iron against like clay pots, and therefore the kings and judges of the earth are called and said, you should be very considerate of the authority of the God's anointed God's Son, and you should bow the knee to him and take refuge in him that you may be blessed.

So we also see this image throughout the rest of Scripture how Jesus Christ is the judge of all, and that Jesus brings ultimate judgment against all those nations, all those peoples who would rage and rebel against God.

In this sense, the shadows of holy war have been fulfilled by the substance which is in Christ. Now what does that mean for Christians? Are we involved in holy war? You know, that belongs to the servant, that belongs to Jesus.

Now the question is, what is just war then? What is just war? In this sense, what kind of war would be right in God's sight? What kind of war would be, I mean all war is just terrible, but what kind of war would be justified for Christians to be involved in given the standards of God's character as expressed in God's Word?

And in this sense, there might be some sort of overlap in which Christians defending their homeland against evil oppressors who are coming to take their children and so on, that God may empower them to successfully defend their land and defeat an enemy.

We would not be saying, I am conducting holy war. I would be saying, I'm conducting just war. But it may very well be that God is using the situation in his providence, in his sovereignty, for Christ to bring about holy judgment against this nation.

Okay, so I think it's important to make those distinctions, but I'm already beginning to answer, is it okay for Christians to be involved in military action of any kind? And this is a good question, right?

Because what are some of the passages in the Bible that immediately confront the Christian about getting involved with,.

You know, violent war-like action? Well, the modern pacifist movement, say the Quakers, Amish, they take Matthew 5, 38 -42, which talks about if someone offends you, slaps your cheek, you should, you know, turn the other cheek also.

If someone, you know, takes your cloak, you know, give them your shirt also. I mean, there's, and once you walk a mile, walk, you know, walk to, that there's no place for any kind of violence whatsoever.

And that's, you know, their view, and they take that to an extreme. I think that Romans 12 and 13 talk about who properly bears the sword. So the government bears the sword, and it doesn't bear the sword in vain.

And in that same vein of not avenging yourself, Romans 12, 19 says, Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and that is taken right out of Deuteronomy.

And then into Romans 13, it talks about the authorities and not bearing, and then the authorities bear that sword in vain. So there is a place for proper justice. There is a place for proper physical violence.

It is, you know, in the context of justice, in the context of restoring that peace. So we don't take our own personal vengeance, we leave room for the wrath of God, but there is a place for that. And it is in the God-ordained state.

The role of the state is to punish the guilty and defend the innocent. In that same vein, you have nations protecting their own. They defend their borders, they defend the innocent, they protect against those invasions or people that are coming to hurt them.

And just like a man would protect his family, a government is raised up to protect the nation or the nation-state. So personal vengeance, I think that is really the local context for Matthew 5, and it's still true.

I mean, you don't want to take personal vengeance. Then you get into the historical blood feuds, and that has quite literally lasted centuries. One person makes one offense, you take personal revenge, then the other people have to take that revenge on that revenge, and it just compounds upon each other until you have families fighting each other, villages fighting each other, cities fighting each other, nations fighting each other, and they historically hate one another, and I can't remember what started it.

Probably.

Just a stolen goat. And we see that God put a mark on Cain to stem that kind of violence right away. The violence continues, and the earth was filled with violence, which is what the reason why God sent the flood to fill the earth with water.

And just after the flood, when God declares that the heart of man is fundamentally unchanged despite this, you know, global disaster that the heart of man is still evil from his youth, he then says in Genesis 9, he says, verse 5, "...surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning from the hand of every beast I will require it from the hand of man from the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of man whoever sheds man's blood by man his blood shall be shed for in the image of God he made man and as for you be fruitful multiply and bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.".

So in other words, unless you have some form of civil government enforcing the death penalty, good luck, you know, following the creation mandate. How are you going to be fruitful and prosper? How are you going to exercise dominion in the name of God unless you have a proper in-place civil government where if a man goes out and murders, you know, one, two, three people and he finally gets caught, who puts him to death?

God-fearing people put him to death, right? How has that been done, you know, in the Bible there was a group stoning him. Who knows what the final stone was that actually ended the man's life, but it was the group.

Same thing with the firing squad, so on and so forth. Who knows what actually killed him, but you know, everybody was involved fearing God rather than man bringing this to an end. But what happens when you have a group, a group of people running around killing a whole bunch of people?

What happens if you have, you know, cartels on your border slipping in and out of, you know, your national borders? What do you do? Well, you know, the civil governments need to get involved and they send in, I would hope, God-fearing men with the necessary tools to bring about the execution of those who have been involved in murdering and pillaging and raping and so on and so forth.

All of these crimes worthy of capital punishment. In this case, we're talking about military action. We're talking about something that is larger than, okay, someone murdered somebody, was proved by, you know, two or three witnesses, the evidence is clear, and then the community brings forward this rather orderly death sentence for the one who's been detained.

But that is not fundamentally, principally different in the Bible than a group sent by the civil government who bears the sword as the minister of God sending forth armed agents to go take out evildoers.

Now, there's nothing different between one and the other except for the experience of it, how that actually comes to pass. It's going to be, one's very orderly and the other one has an order, but it's a far more chaotic and there's a lot more going on there, okay?

But the question is, should Christians be involved in any military action of any kind? Well, in that regard, yes. In that regard, if being God-fearing people who, you know, who ascribe to the creation mandate and we want to see, be fruitful, multiply, you know, we want to be living out the, you know, the image of God and so forth, it's fine to be involved in the civil government as a civil magistrate who would order the execution of a murderer.

Is that fine? Yes. As a civil magistrate who would order a group of soldiers to go carry out that execution order, right? What if it's a nation attacking a nation, right? We're just scaling up a principle that is set firmly in the Scriptures.

So there is such a concept of, you know, just war, a good reason for it, this would be the right thing to do, you know, and it comes even back down to self-defense and defending your family. If you're not going to look at it from the from the sphere of the civil government, what about the sphere of family government?

Aren't you going to defend your family? Aren't you going to be involved in military violent action if your family was threatened? I would hope that you would defend your family. Be very Christ-like for you to defend your bride.

Very Christ-like. You know, we see that in the Scriptures. Christ defends his bride. He comes against, takes vengeance against those who assault her. So however we look at it, there is a space for that.

But I think that very often the concerns that, you know, sincere Christians have is just how corrupt and messy and disastrous wars are. It's hard to read our own history and find a really clear-cut case of just war, right?

It's really hard. I think there needs to be liberty of conscience in these issues about how to think about, you know, what if, you know, what do you do if you live, you know, a few decades ago and there's a draft and they're saying you have to go to Vietnam and kill these Vietnamese because the government tells you to, when the whole thing was one of the worst corrupt, scandalous types of things we've ever seen, despite the bravery and the courage and the integrity of many who were involved.

It's a mess. The whole.

Concept of, like, that war could be just, you know, this is a Western idea. There's reasons to go to war, then there's conduct within war that's, it's the difference between the just ad bellum and just in bellow.

There's reasons to go to war and then once you're within it, how do you conduct yourself properly? Right. So, really, I think we're focusing on the reasons to go to war. Calvin actually discussed, you know, some of these things and he cites Luke 3 when John the Baptist is addressing some of the soldiers.

First, he talks about tax collectors. He says, in verse 12, so 3 .12, tax collectors also came to be baptized and said, teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than you are authorized to do.

Soldiers also asked him, and we, what shall we do? And he said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation and be content with your wages. So, the way Calvin took that and Luther and Augustine as well and some others before him was, he didn't tell them to get out of the military.

Exactly. He said, be content with your wages and perform your duties properly. Like, okay, so you can be in the military. There's this whole just war tradition within the Roman community that dates back to Cicero.

You know, Cicero actually predates, you know, Augustine and Aquinas and Luther and Calvin and this whole Western tradition. So, there were reasons to go to war, but what if it's a war of conquest? What if it's a war of you're just gonna go and rape and pillage for resources?

You just, you know, we're gonna go and we're gonna do increase the glory and honor of our state. Well, okay, versus, well, we are being invaded by an opposing force who wants to rape and pillage and take all of our resources.

You know, so there's a defensive war, so there's, yeah, it gets, starts to get, you know, messier. It's usually not good versus evil, black versus white. Yeah. So,.

I mean, the very short order in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus moves from making sure his disciples are armed, telling them not to swing the sword. And, you know, what's the difference? Well, you know, in the one context, Jesus reminds them, remember when I sent you out two by two and I told you don't get a bunch of supplies to prepare yourself, but, you know, trust in the Lord?

Okay, you learned that lesson, you know, but because of the days that are coming, because I'm about to be executed and all of you are gonna be declared outlaws, you're gonna need to be well prepared for living a life where, you know, you're gonna be marked men and you have any swords with you, you know, this is gonna be a natural thing that you're going to need to protect yourselves against bandits along the way on the roads and so on and so forth, especially if you have to sleep outside of towns, if you have to sleep in, you know, exposed areas, you're gonna have to have swords to defend yourself.

That's the, that's the basic idea. But then when Jesus and his disciples are in the Garden of Gethsemane, he's getting arrested, which he told them was the will of God and that was supposed to be. Peter lashes out offensively, right?

None of the disciples are being put to the sword right? He just swings out the sword and starts going hack attack and Jesus says stop, heals the man. Those who live by the sword shall die by it. So what does Jesus do in a very short order in the Gospel of Luke?

He affirms using weapons for defense, he condemns using weapons for attack, right? And I think that's the fundamental germ of just war theory that obviously there's been a lot of doctrinal development of it over the generations, but you go back to the way that Jesus handled it and I think that you have a lot of wisdom right there.

So.

What you're saying is if you're in a financial bind, don't start swinging a sword, right? Like that's not a reason. To become a mercenary? To go to war, right?

Yeah. Now there's a lot of money in that, so you just talk to you guys, you know,.

Blackrock. Yeah, so don't go make a living as a mercenary, right? That's, that's not, Jesus would say that that's not consistent with following him, right? But he is saying there is a consistency in owning weapons for the purpose of defense and following him as well.

And so that's where, I mean, Jesus sets that balance I think just perfectly and Christians have been like all over the.

Place one side or the other. And it should extend to nations too, right? You should not be a mercenary nation going to solve all your financial problems by.

Starting a new war here. Yeah, that would make you an evildoer and some other nation as a minister of God is going to end you. The Bible says that as much as.

It depends upon you, be at peace with all men. You should. You could even make an argument that if somebody is attacking you, you have the option of not retaliating. But when it's, you are given the role of protector of your family, someone attacks your family, you don't get to retreat into pacifism.

That is a violation of your role as a protector and provider. And yet that's.

Worse than an unbeliever. Well, being struck on the right, the one cheek and then turning the other also is not the same thing as someone trying to kill your family, right? And I think that just reading the Bible out loud might help.

Solve some of that. Yeah, very true. Also, it doesn't preclude believers once they're, let's say they, they join up, uh, they've been conscripted, uh, they see unjust things happening in the war and they say, I'm not going to participate in this any longer.

You're not constrained to, to stay under contract to do evil. Don't do evil. You know, if it's not just then depart from evil, you're going to have to give an account for that. So there could be a situation where you're treated like a deserter and shot and killed, but that's better than entering into unjust war and being a mercenary, a warrant.

Warmonger. But imagine, you know, imagine platoon and battalion and regiment numbers of Christians all saying, no, this is an, these are unlawful orders that you're, you know, we're all going to stand down.

It's like, you know, one brother speaks out then another, then another, then another. And like, yeah, no, you know, you're not doing this. We're not doing this. This is unjust by every code of, you know, military conduct.

This is unjust, you know, and so you're going to have to kill us all for disobeying this order. And then you're going to find other people to do the job. What, what a wonderful influence on an army Christians are.

So, uh, I would say, why would we leave this realm of government bereft or devoid of believers of Christians? There, there's no, no reason to give that we shouldn't have believers in this aspect of government.

Do we want unbelievers in this and only unbelievers? No, no, no, we don't. Yeah. We want Roman centurions as.

Christians. We want Christians in Caesar's household. We want Christians as, you know, running the tax offices. We want you to everywhere, everywhere. That's right. Everywhere. But the pagan temples, Justin Martyr said, this goes back to the,.

You know, the doctor, the lesser magistrate. Now you have a, as a Christian in uniform, whether it's a military, whether you're a County Sheriff, whether you are in Congress, if you're in some kind of government service, you have a responsibility to, you know, who is, who is your King.

I'll give an example. You.

Know, you talk about, you know, there's been a lot of concern about corruption and amongst police and are they really doing what's right and just, or are they just trying to keep their job or so on and so forth.

But you think about the, the group of police officers where they called the, the constitutional, there's that special name that they both keepers. Yeah. So we know we're going to follow the constitution more than any other policy, but you know, what's better than that.

If you have a whole bunch of Christian police officers who know that their true master sits at the right hand of God and that how they conduct themselves, they must conduct themselves in the fear of the Lord as they interact with all the citizens as, as peacekeepers, as, as peace officers.

Uh, how much better to have them than, than mere oath keepers to the constitution.

Yeah. Cause at the end of that you have judgment day beyond like the constitution doesn't have a judgment day, right? And our, our politicians prove that all the time. Yes. There's no judgment for them according to the.

Constitution. But, and it, it goes back to the same principle of, um, a Christian masters and Christian slaves in the churches in the first century where the Christian masters were told to treat their Christian slaves and their non Christian slaves even in a certain way, always remembering, I have a master in heaven, I have a master in heaven and I'm a master in heaven.

Well, that changes.

Things. What would you, how would you counsel somebody? Like say we were talking about disobeying obvious direct evil orders. There are these situations that you hear about where these guys are coming back and they're recounting some of the stuff that went on.

Um, and realizing coming to the knowledge of, Hey, maybe what I was doing in this situation, it wasn't, it was evil. Yeah, it was evil. And I, I didn't know it at the time. There are those issues of conscience that are going to come up, especially for men who have been out there.

But when you have a young man looking to join up and he knows of these situations that are going on that seem to be more frequent than they have been in the past, or at least you have more knowledge of them now because of the way that social media or media works.

How would you counsel somebody now in a certain time period? Like say your son wants to join up, how are you going to counsel him with that decision?

Just biblically, even as David has already talked about, there is the why to go to war and then there's the how to conduct the war. There's a why to join up and then there's the how to serve. And I think that that kind of discipleship needs to happen.

Why would you want to join up? You know, because it looks cool. You get to blow stuff up. So let's think a bit more biblically about why you would serve in this way, giving glory to Christ, why you would serve this way.

And then let's talk about how you serve because it doesn't matter if it's in you for the military or you're in the business world. Okay. There's all manner of temptations of doing things a corrupt way, a pagan way rather than a Christlike way.

So there needs to be some discipleship along those regards and to be thinking about these things before they even come up.

I have somebody in our, one of our former churches in Arizona, who is considering joining the military is actively pursuing it. And I have talked to him at length about the different pressures that are going to be on him that will violate his Christian principles.

And I just want him to know, eyes wide open to discuss those things before they happen because you're going to be faced with it. And whether you are in uniform in the department of defense or in uniform in local law enforcement or in uniform in organization X, you will be faced with those choices.

How are you going to handle them? Think through them now. And we as husbands and fathers, and you may be a spiritual father to somebody else, or in my case, I'm mentoring someone. You have to talk through them, talk through these things with them so that they're prepared.

Yeah. And if your daughter comes to you and asks you about it, you say no.

A men. Good. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Not a woman. That's for sure. Well, I think we have wrapped up that discussion for today. So what are we thankful for? Michael?

I'm thankful we're back to the podcast. I'm just, I'm rejoicing that we have this back as part of our routine and just thankful for each one of you men here that give of your time and your talents. And uh, I really enjoy the process and just praise the Lord for it.

I am thankful for, I'm not trying to be flippant, uh, but I'm thankful for my bed. I spent a lot of time in different hotels and I spent time at somebody else's house and there's no, there's nothing like coming home and being in your own bed.

And I slept so well last night. I slept better last night than I have in less than about six, seven nights. And just, I was, I was flipping through this morning. I landed on a Hebrews four and it reminded me that.

So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God and whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from, uh, from his. And of course Christ is our Sabbath rest. But that, um, that physical rest reminds me and says, you know, there's a, there's a rest that that awaits and it's a better than any bed that we've ever.

Had.

Andrew,.

I'm thankful to God for the different giftings of the people of his body that bring them together to further the gospel locally and abroad. It is amazing. I, earlier it was remarked about, you know, being part of this family and it really is.

You get to know people in ways that challenge you to continue to be led by the spirit, to use your talents in ways that edify the body and also bear with others. It's, it's amazing thing. And if you're, if you're not involved with a local body and you're a believer, you're doing it wrong.

Um, you have, you have to get into the body of Christ, be with other believers. And you know, I don't want to call it a movement, but I feel like a long history of the saints prior up until this point that we have a mission to continue, uh, that commission that we've been given.

And this is how it's done. It's done together.

Amen to that. I am thankful for weddings, weddings in the local church and weddings done to honor Christ, specifically Joel and Nicole. We were thankful to attend to work on their wedding with them. And when you're doing photography, you get to go to some of the best and some of the absolute worst forms of weddings you could think of.

And anytime you get to shoot one that is a brother and a sister in Christ, a fellow church member, one where they are specifically trying to honor your Lord, it is so refreshing.

It is so,.

It's so joyous because it's there for the right reasons. And it's an adornment on that, that institution. Um, it's a jewel and you get to go back and look at it and say they, they did it to the honor of their Lord.

And we are very thankful for the invite and the entire ceremony.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with having not read.