“He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Genesis 3:24 ESV
Here’s the set-up. At a recent Gospel Coalition debate, UK teaching pastor, Andrew Wilson, likened Christians using guns in self-defense to Peter cutting off the ear of a Roman solider. In other words, says our delicate man of God, a good Christian is a good victim. Fighting back against interpersonal evil – that is, crime – is the work of faithless and violent men.
You may, dear reader, count yours truly among those “faithless and violent” men. I say, when confronted with personal violence, insofar as you have the capacity, resist with superior violence. This is biblical. It’s Mr. Wilson’s opinion that’s contradictory, absurd, and exceedingly unloving. I’ll prove it.
First, you’ll note that we start our study with the above quote from Genesis 3. This is the full context of violence and use of force. If the use of force is intrinsically bad then why would the first use of it be initiated by God? A war angel with a flaming sword comes into human history (and redemptive history) as a result of man’s war against God. Mr. Wilson never mentions sin and, therefore, loses the context of the point – of every point really – because man can’t make sense of life unless he uses God’s whole counsel (His word/law, logically interpreted) as his standard (Proverbs 1:7). In his debate and in an attending blog he wrote, Wilson is never bothers with the foundation of the issue. He proves that man can have knowledge without wisdom, but never wisdom without knowledge. All knowledge that ignores the truth of the cross (man’s sin and the work of Christ for redemption through faith) begs the question. In other words, a man might know a good many things but unless he knows that Jesus Christ saves, and what this means, he’s a fool.
The war angels were stationed at the entrance of Eden. They bore flaming swords. Imagine the scene. Adam and Eve are the first war migrants…driven from the land because of the war they ignorantly started. Let’s remember the context (context is king…and kind). A perfect and life-giving God created man, surrounded him with love and abundance and then man rebelled against Him. They disobeyed and called Him who is Truth and Life itself, a liar and a cheat. By eating from the Tree, they started a catastrophic and suicidal war wherein men and women claim that God is evil because he/she is limited as a creature of God. In this way, sinners say, “I’m not happy because of You…and won’t be happy unless I can call evil good and act as god!”
The consequences of Adam’s sin weren’t immediate execution, but mercy and the promise of Jesus Christ (Genesis 3:15). Mr. Wilson’s appeal to Christ as a pacifist completely ignores this all-important context. In his blog he says:
“…Christians should oppose the use of deadly weapons on principle, because we are committed to the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, the practice of nonviolence. Followers of Jesus should oppose the use of AR-15s or machine guns in self-defence for the same reason that we should oppose land mines, drone strikes, capital punishment and abortion: Christians should never kill people.
That’s a tricky case to make in sixty seconds, but here goes: Jesus never used violence against people, whether to defend himself or to defend the innocent. He teaches his followers to live the same way, not resisting evil, and turning the other cheek (Matt 5; Luke 6). Every time a disciple tries or threatens to use violence in the gospel, even in defence of the innocent, Christ rebukes them (Luke 9, 22; John 19). The apostles regularly present Jesus’s suffering as an example for believers to follow (Rom 12; Phil 2; 1 Pet 2). Disciples are commended for joyfully accepting the plunder of their property (Heb 10). Our struggle is not with worldly enemies or worldly weapons (Eph 6). Christians conquer not by killing but by dying: by the blood of the Lamb, the word of our testimony, and not loving our lives even to death (Rev 12). And every church father before Constantine who addressed the subject—Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Athenagoras—agreed that killing image-bearers of God is always wrong.”
Notice that Wilson’s feel-good theology utterly omits any mention of sin and grace. He references the cross and the gospel but only in the legalistic aspect, which is to say that Christians are Christians because they’re pacifists. Or masochistic. No mention of salvation through faith alone, by grace alone. Faith in Christ saves, not personal suffering. Sin is the great context dropper. Sin steals common sense from us. Wisdom, based on the complete submission of mind and body to God’s word/law (Proverbs 8; Romans 12:1-2) tells us that Wilson’s point is foolishly dangerous.
I’ll call Wilson’s Peter in Gethsemane and raise him Romans 12 and 13. If, as he clearly states, that capital punishment is always wrong, what do we make of the perspicuity of Romans 13 wherein God commands that the civil magistrate use deadly force? Do we forget that this is God’s commandment in the New Testament…to which Wilson seems only to appeal. We could spend hours discussing how our father Abraham and his mighty 318 men of war rescued Lot from slavery. Abraham did it, by the way, with weapons of war, not by dying. Or Samson. Do we forget that after Samson was brought low by his repeated sin, blinded and chained, he repented – there in his abject submission. And what happened? The Lord gave Samson his strength back for one more mighty feat.
He brought the walls down and killed one and all.
Or do we forget that King David, a man after God’s own heart, was certainly no sissified wokester. What was a slingshot except for a deadly projectile?
Ah, but back to Peter in the Garden.
Christ was on His way to pay for the sins of the elect when He was arrested. He was in a Garden. Get it? It’s a tremendous play…God had blocked the entrance to Him, to His presence, to Life, with war angels. He drove Adam and Eve east of paradise. Man has since then been trying to “fix” the physical problems that arise from this expulsion. For example, what is socialism except for the attempt to reverse sin’s curse upon work? Socialists would try and cut off the ear of the Roman to get to an economic paradise of their own making. They would try and storm past the cherubim. All man’s wisdom and governments outside of Christ are the attempt to get back to Eden while keeping sin!
And that’s the context of Christ telling Peter to put his sword away.
It has nothing to do with self-defense and everything to do with the gospel. Jesus Christ alone, the God-man, is worthy of paying the sin debt. He wore the crown of thorns (the symbol of the curse upon our labor), He bore our stripes, He died the death we deserve.
And to prove that God accepted His sacrifice on our behalf, He rose again! And so now we have peace with God through faith (Romans 5:1). No sword could have done this. For those outside of Christ, that sword stills waves menacingly. This is the heart and soul of the gospel of Jesus Christ and why, for example, pacifist atheists or Buddhists aren’t saved. So what if they won’t raise a hand in violence? What does that do for their sin? How will they answer God on that Day? Wilson’s theology is flawed because it neglects the full impact of the cross and sin. All heresies die on Calvary.
Thus, Wilson’s points about dying for the gospel are valid insofar as we keep the context. If the government has enslaved us and tries to force us to denounce Christ or else die, then happily we feed the lions with our flesh. Gleefully. What a pleasure. Rome, you see, was a tyrannical dictatorship that early on forced Christians to worship Caesar. There was no Bill of Rights, no James Madison, no Thomas Jefferson, no Reformation or Great Awakening. Mr. Wilson is a poor theologian, a terrible historian and an awful humanitarian. If the government overpowers me and forces me to the lions, the gas chamber, or the firing squad, then cheerfully in faith I go. To vacuously promote the conditions that would make this happen is masochism, not Christianity. Sometimes we are called to suffer but we aren’t to go looking for it ourselves.
To understand what a dreadful humanity Wilson’s theology supports we have to follow his logic. The results are ghastly.
A Christian woman, Wilson tells us, would have to consent to sexual slavery rather than defend herself, right? God forbid! Look at your daughters, Christian. Look! Would you tell them that fighting back – with their hands, with a knife, with a Glock – is the actual evil and not the rape? If you do please repent because you have fallen into a pit of moral monstrosity that’s beyond appalling. You’ve arrived at Romans 1:32 with a smug smile of pacifist sanctimony on your face. We cannot, dear reader, advance the gospel by force but we can defend the lives and purity of our daughters with violence. The entirety of Romans 12-13 proves it. Furthermore, when soldiers were converted, they were never told to leave their station. The woman caught in adultery (John 8) was told to go and sin no more, yet no such admonition was told to soldiers. If Wilson’s sickly and emasculated theology is correct, self-defense and adultery are equal sins.
Ah, but this would mean that pacifism is what saves and not Christ. Get it? That’s the dangerous allure of such wobble-minded foolishness. American’s 2nd Amendment is the work of minds that were raised in the philosophical soil of the Reformation. The Bill of Rights is a self-defense system…against not mere government but the sin principle of government’s not surrendered to Christ (Psalm 2). Christians should be always the greatest realists. Sin causes conflict, murder, slavery, rape and chaos. Ever since Cain killed Abel man has been trying, by hook or crook, to get back to Eden without righteousness. The cross is about the righteousness of faith, not pacifism.
In all, to the good reader, and to Mr. Wilson, God’s servant must not be quarrelsome but able to teach. Teach what? The supremacy of Christ and the realities of sin in this world. The love of Christ compels us to tell all men that they’re dying and will die and that salvation by faith alone is the only way to the New Jerusalem. Blessed are the peacemakers who tell the world about the truth of God’s righteousness and man’s sin. Letting yourself be raped or murdered or enslaved will not save you. Christ died for righteousness, which we have through faith alone, not by works. There’s no altar of pacifism. Man is not made perfect by suffering. He’s given the perfection of Christ through faith! There is no “altar” of pacifism. That’s the twisting of the gospel of Christ and a false gospel from hell.
Self-defense is a reality in a fallen world. Violence can be used only in the protection of life and when so used, it’s morally good. It doesn’t solve the problem of sin but it protects from one of the great consequences of it. Mr. Wilson and his ilk would have you lay down your arms and in the name of doing so, they will have you surrender the truth about sin and righteousness.
Americans with an AR-15 or a Glock for self-defense are realists, not evil. Wilson is correct…human life is absolutely precious. It’s so precious that it needs protection from evil. To love our neighbor is to have a logically consistent understanding of Scripture and history too. Thus, I tell my neighbor – all of them…all my countrymen – you’re free in the Lord and no one is God over you. You were born in America, thank God, with a 2nd Amendment, not Rome, nor Nazi Germany, nor modern Iran. Be free, stay free…serve the Lord. And understanding the world and sin, stay armed for self-defense for it is your right just as it was Abraham’s and David’s too. Be a man. Be free. Pacifism is a Christian heresy that downplays the reality of sin, the supremacy of Christ, and leads to a calling of good evil and evil good.
Recent Comments