A Time For War And a Time For Peace

There is a “time for war and a time for peace.” But what, pray tell, is the time that we now find ourselves in for? By this I mean: is it ever acceptable for a Christian to pick up a weapon with the express intent of killing another human being, and can any justification for violence ever exist—one made, not on common sense or man-made wisdom, but on the righteousness that God has called us too? If there is a justification that can be made, where in Scripture does it exist?

In my opinion, we are in that “time for peace.”

I don’t call myself a pacifist because I don’t believe that I am purely pacifistic. There is, after all, no escaping the reality of God-ordained war in the Old Testament. However, I find a difference between our purpose for war, even the most justified war, and the purpose for which God utilized warfare in the Old Testament.

In America, a majority of warfare seems to be conducted solely with the justification of “defending our freedom,” a concept which I, personally, do not believe to ever be biblically present. In Ancient Israel, in contrast, I believe that the warfare was God’s method of meting out a temporal version of the ultimate justice that he has in mind for the unrepentant. In Psalm 149, a sort of violence is condoned, but it is presented as being for the purpose of “carrying out the sentence written against them.” Likewise, whenever someone was allowed, by God, to meet his chosen nation in warfare, it was to correct them when they had strayed from the principles for righteousness set forth in his law. In Isaiah 30:15, it describes what God required of Israel, but states that they were not willing to submit to Him or repent. Because of their unwillingness, their punishment is described at length. In verse 20, it mentions “bread of privation and waters of oppression,” delivered via Assyria. However, even that warfare-based punishment was only meant for the purpose of purifying, and, of course, Assyria was subsequently punished as well.

I think in the Old Testament you will certainly find clear-cut instances of God himself spelling out, in no uncertain terms, that either the nation of Israel or else a surrounding nation has found itself in “a time for war” on the basis of unrepentantly unrighteous behavior.

In America, when a purely pacifistic individual speaks out against war, one of the most frequent responses that they seem to receive is something along the lines of, “Where has your freedom been secured by to dissent with war, if not through war?” The implication is that any political freedom we can have is a thing meant to be vaunted or valued over any notion of righteousness. You will find lots of mention of freedom in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, but I think that you’ll find those verses have more to do with freedom from sin and the fleshly, sinful-self than freedom of some political variety. You will also find high calls to holiness, and that holiness is something we are to strive towards at any cost.

Or, on the contrary, you will receive a much more humanitarian response that certainly poses what appears to be a plausible concern to voice against any anti-war stance. “What about World War II, then? If someone hadn’t stepped up, what would have happened to the Jews and to the others that suffer under the Nazi regime? What you are saying is that you would have just sat there and done absolutely nothing.”

That is a common mistake, I think, that people make. Pacifism, or whatever quasi-pacifism I personally possess, does not at all equate into “doing nothing.” Doing nothing is certainly not the loving, Christian response, and doing nothing does, essentially, amount to giving a silent seal of approval to whatever atrocity happens to be going on. Doing nothing amounts to enabling. Rather, the proper, Christian response would be to find a solution that secures both justice and mercy for the oppressed and justice and mercy for the oppressor, as called for through verses that demand us to love and do good to our enemies (Matthew 5:44; 1 Peter 3:9) as well as securing that justice for the less fortunate and the oppressed (Jeremiah 22:3; James 1:27.) That is not to say that we do not have a duty to ensure that, whatever mercy and love shown, the oppressed gets off without any sort of punishment, without reaping the consequences for their actions.

With the advent of Jesus, however, I think we have revealed the fullness of God and a hand of mercy and grace extended—if it will be taken. That does not mean that justice and punishment and wrath are completely laid aside in favor of some vague, wish-y wash-y overlooking of unrighteousness and evil. Rather, it means that, for a time, God is opening a way, and that way is Jesus.

Since we are living in a time where the mercy and grace of God are being extended as options, and since warfare displayed in the Old Testament were for the express purposes of God using human ambassadors to mete out punishment and secure justice, I believe that our behavior in turn should reflect the transition in emphases we find with the coming of Jesus. It is not, of course, that God changed His mind or suddenly had a different idea. Rather, He brought into fulfillment what was His intention all along—the undeserved chance that gave everyone the opportunity to receive mercy.

While the expression, “turn the other cheek” might have a different connotation than what we associate with it in today’s literal terms—apparently, it was the custom of the day to backslap an inferior, and, turning the cheek could be seen as a method of asserting equality— and Jesus did certainly command His disciples to take up weapon at one point—although, he subsequently told them the few they had was enough, as though His intention had been merely to warn them of the impending danger—I believe that, while perhaps never explicitly command, the inappropriateness of a Christian participating in a combat position in warfare is an implicit and practical application of His teaching on the Sermon on the Mount to “love enemies” and all that it entails. Other verses in the New Testament (Romans 12:14; 1 Peter 3:9) also contain similar injunctions that if, practically applied, also seem to necessitate that the Christian reject war, at least for the time being.

None of that, however, was necessarily responsible for fully convincing me that, for the time being, a Christian should not practice war. What did it for me was, in part, inspired by the phrase in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

What, I asked myself, is God’s will, and what nature will God’s kingdom possess? In Isaiah 2 a description of the millennial kingdom is given: “Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war.” Likewise, Revelations states that death and pain and all such things that are natural byproducts of war will completely cease when everything is brought to completion.

If the nature of the millennial reign of Christ, and Heaven, are both so naturally opposed to war, and we are to be praying for the will of God and the kingdom of God, it seemed reasonable for me to assume that, as a citizen of that Kingdom, bought by the blood of Christ, it seemed (and seems) that it would only be natural and right for me to eschew war.

There is a time for war and there is a time for peace. The time for the former has passed; the time for the latter has arrived.