The Eudaimonia Blog

In reflecting more deeply on how we might think about the terrible events of war happening in Israel and Palestine currently, I thought I would start first with a reflection on “Christian weapons.” The Apostle Paul writes the following in 2 Corinthians 10 in vv. 3 through 5:

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

What Paul gets at is a fundamental principle regarding the kind of engagement we as followers of Christ are to take on. Our primary and most powerful “weapon” is not a tank or a gun, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Subsequently, we “kill” people with the love of Jesus and proclaim Him through the power and beauty of our lives. Paul understood that he himself had been “killed” by Jesus when he writes some of the most beautiful words in the New Testament in the book of Galatians, in chapter 2, v. 20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

In allowing ourselves to be slayed by the Good News of Jesus, it is the life of self-determination that is killed. The power of the Gospel is founded in that when we allow ourselves to be subdued by King Jesus, we become heirs and citizens of His eternal Kingdom of God, where the promise of a New World without sorrow, suffering and injustice becomes ours.

This is also why in John 18:10 and 11, Jesus rebukes Peter who takes up the “sword” to try and defend Jesus, by cutting off the ear of the Roman soldier Malchus:

“Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?’”

Later on in John 18, Jesus says,

“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

And returning to 2 Corinthians 10, in v. 3, Paul says that “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.” This is why we must understand as followers of Christ, we wage war through the most powerful weapons of all given to us by Jesus and His Spirit, weapons that are ministerial and not worldly, that as we put on the helmet of salvation, we wield in love, the “sword of the Spirit” which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:10). This is a critical principle to understand as we think about political engagement which involves human power and force. While pacifism is not the answer and Christians do have a role to play in politics involvement in government and even the military (see Romans 13), nonetheless, it is important to see that the Gospel of peace and the proclamation of the love of Christ are the primary weapons we are called to wield as Jesus’ Church here on earth.