Did Jesus Condone Soldiering?

One piece of biblical evidence frequently cited to justify violence is Jesus’s and his followers’ encounters with soldiers. The argument goes like this: because they interacted with soldiers in a friendly, sometimes even complimentary manner without condemning their occupation or instructing them to quit the military, they implicitly condoned soldiering, war, or militarism. Here are the three primary passages cited in connection to this claim:

John the Baptist’s Encounter

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

“Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” (Luke 3:10-14)

Jesus’s Encounter

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

Jesus said to him, “Shall I come and heal him?”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that moment. (Matt. 8:5-13)1

Luke’s Encounter

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. (Acts 10:1-2)

For numerous reasons, these passages do not justify any Christian use of, or participation in, violence. To begin with, none of them say anything positive about soldiering. Neither John nor Jesus nor Luke complimented the soldiers’ profession or professional behavior in any way, shape, or form. Instead, Jesus praised the centurion’s faith and Luke his devotion to God, his fear of God, his charity, and his habitual prayer to God. In doing so, they both praised wholly nonviolent attributes, ones that have nothing to do with soldiering.

In fact, neither Jesus nor Luke said anything, good or bad, about the centurions’ profession or professional conduct. Both merely identified the person as a soldier and stopped there. They didn’t turn his profession into a topic of discussion or use the encounter as an opportunity to debate the ethical merits of serving as a member of an occupying military force.

John the Baptist, on the other hand, praised nothing about the soldiers but condemned two of their professional practices, both of which were violent. He instructed them to not extort money and to not dispense false accusations. Note that he didn’t tell them to use violence for good, to extort money to give to the poor. So yes, maybe John didn’t condemn all violence or tell them to leave the military when he had the chance, but he did condemn two specific violent behaviors, ones that might have made it practically impossible for them to continue being soldiers had they followed his advice. And maybe it did. Maybe they obeyed him and doing so caused them to quit. The Bible doesn’t say.

Also bear in mind that John’s encounter with the soldiers occurred prior to Jesus’s public ministry, so the full extent of Jesus’s nonviolent message had not yet been revealed. John knew almost nothing of Christian ethics. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t issue a more blanket condemnation of all violence. Or maybe he didn’t do so because the two soldiers he was talking to were of the less violent type. Maybe they carried weapons but performed more of a police function, only ever using force to restrain local lawbreakers. The passage doesn’t tell us much about them. If anything, the nature of John’s comments suggests they may have been more like modern-day police officers than modern-day soldiers. Typically police officers, not soldiers, accuse people of crimes. Typically police officers, not soldiers, enforce taxes and therefore have the opportunity to extort.

It’s also worth noting that a few English translations interpret John’s words in this passage as a condemnation of all violence. For example, the King James Bible, Webster’s Bible Translation, and the English Revised Version all translate John as saying, “Do violence to no man.” Similarly, Young’s Literal Translation says “Do violence to no one.”

Of course, Jesus, John, and Luke all wanted the soldiers they encountered to cease all of their sinning in every area of their lives, but condemning their shortcomings wasn’t the point of the interactions. Jesus and Luke condemned nothing, and John only condemned two behaviors because the soldiers asked him to. Surely Jesus and Luke didn’t intend for their lack of condemnation to imply that the soldiers were sinless or to be read as endorsing everything the soldiers did. Surely John wasn’t providing a comprehensive list of everything the soldiers needed to change to achieve perfect righteousness. It is well known that part of an ancient Roman soldier’s normal duties included taking part in various pagan ceremonies and other idolatrous practices, but Jesus, John, and Luke never condemned the soldiers for that.2 Surely their silence as to all the other sinful behaviors the soldiers regularly engaged in, whether personal or professional, wasn’t an endorsement of those behaviors. So why do we think it was an endorsement of violence?

Likewise, Jesus interacted with many other sinners in a similar manner, but we don’t interpret those encounters as endorsing their lifestyles, behaviors, or professions. For example, when a known sinner washed Jesus’s feet with her hair, the Pharisees rebuked her while Jesus welcomed her and complimented her faith, all without condemning her.3 Jesus interacted with a Samaritan woman who had been divorced five times and was living with a man who was not her husband, but he didn’t condemn her for those things.4 Jesus told the temple priests that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matt. 21:31). Jesus invited a violent zealot named Simon to be one of his twelve disciples, a member of his inner circle and one of the few who would represent him to the wider world after his death, but there’s no evidence Jesus first made it known what he thought about Simon’s profession. And as far as we know, Jesus never even condemned the soldiers who crucified him.5 “In fact, with the exception of the Jewish leaders of his day,” notes Boyd, “Jesus never pointed out the things that he did not condone in other people’s lives.”6

So should we conclude that Jesus endorsed sexual promiscuity, serial divorce, tax exploitation, prostitution, violent religious zealotry, and the crucifixion of innocent people? Obviously not. If Luke had identified Cornelius as a member of a well-known band of thieves instead of as a centurion in the Italian Regiment, no one would suggest he had endorsed organized crime. But if we applied the same method of interpretation as those who believe the soldier encounters endorse violence, we would have to.

Put yourself in Jesus’s sandals for a moment. Have you ever been friendly to and complimentary of a known sinner without condemning their well-known sin? Ever spoken an encouraging word to someone you knew had just been caught committing adultery or someone who was engaged in a publicly visible struggle with another sin? By not condemning their known sin, did you intend to endorse it?7

Jesus’s welcoming, encouraging, and loving posture toward all types of sinners was not an endorsement of any sinner’s immoral behavior or profession. Instead, it was a demonstration of how to love others, even enemies. Roman soldiers were, after all, a prominent adversary of the Jewish people.

By praising the soldiers’ positive attributes and not condemning their negative ones (unless asked to do so), Jesus, John, and Luke were also practicing effective evangelism. Remember, they were welcoming and encouraging potential converts, not engaging veteran believers in nuanced ethical discussions. The two call for different approaches. Searching and seeking must be fostered with compliments, not discouraged with rebukes. Wise evangelism finds common ground, praises it, and establishes a loving relationship before it broaches the subject of condemnable conduct. It meets people where they are and focuses on the fundamentals, like faith, which lay the foundation for behavioral change. Condemning someone first only turns them off, makes them defensive, and further alienates them.

Jesus’s approach to evangelism was a key difference between him and the Pharisees. While the Pharisees unhesitatingly condemned strangers for their sinful lifestyles, Jesus went out of his way not to. The Pharisees rejected people until they cleaned up their act, but Jesus welcomed them as they were, broken and imperfect. Jesus didn’t reserve his love for those who appeared to have their act together. That’s why the tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners were drawn to him and why he spent so much time with them. On more than one occasion, the Pharisees condemned Jesus for how frequently and non-judgmentally he interacted with such sinners, even going so far as accusing him of gluttony and drunkenness.8

Simply put, we should view Jesus’s refusal to condemn the soldiers’ profession as good evangelism, not as endorsing violence. He refrained from condemning it not because he approved of it but because he knew condemnation would have been counterproductive at that stage in the soldier’s faith journey.

This whole situation is ironic. We all recognize that the Pharisees were wrong to accuse Jesus of endorsing things like prostitution, drunkenness, gluttony, and exploitative taxation just because he welcomed, encouraged, and mingled with such people without condemning their sinful behaviors and lifestyles. But those who interpret Jesus, John, and Luke as endorsing violence, soldiering, or militarism because they praised the faith of a soldier without condemning his sinful behavior or lifestyle are making the same mistake. Like the Pharisees, they are erroneously associating Jesus and his disciples with the sinful behaviors of the fallen, broken, searching individuals they embraced and nurtured.

Indeed, one purpose of these soldier encounters was to condemn the Pharisaical way of viewing the world and do what Jesus did on so many occasions: turn commonly accepted power dynamics and prejudices upside down. Jesus was proclaiming that the gospel doesn’t discriminate, that it welcomes all, that no one is unredeemable, and that it can reach and change even the unlikeliest types of people—even soldiers. Jesus had made that same point regarding tax collectors and prostitutes when he told the religious leaders in the temple that such people were entering the kingdom of God ahead of them.9 Now he was making the point with another despised group: Roman occupiers.

Notice whom Jesus was directly addressing when he praised the centurion’s faith. It wasn’t the centurion—it was the crowd of Israelites following him. He turned to them and said, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” Then he informed the crowd that many of the people they think are not a part of God’s kingdom, are, and many who think they are, aren’t. Jesus was juxtaposing the faith of “outsiders” against the faith of the self-proclaimed “insiders.” He was putting the self-righteous Israelites in their place and condemning their prejudices. He was breaking down the antiquated religious barriers between Jews and Gentiles. In other words, he identified the centurion as a soldier to establish him as a despised outsider, not to praise soldiering or endorse violence.

One more quick observation. This one is about correct argumentation: To conclude that Jesus’s silence about the soldier’s profession was an endorsement of violence is to make an argument from silence. It is to deduce a conclusion from what isn’t said, to interpret his silence as something more than mere silence, as a message.

Arguments from silence are risky business. More often than not, they are fallacious. So often, in fact, there’s an official logical fallacy called the Argument from Silence Fallacy.

To be legitimate, an argument from silence must be supported by overwhelming contextual evidence. The surrounding circumstances must strongly suggest that the silence is saying something. For example, when a politician who is known for his transparent honesty, no matter the cost, and for aggressively denying all false accusations, is unexpectedly asked during a press conference whether he’s had an affair and he responds by frowning, shamefully lowering his head, and somberly walking off stage without saying a word, it’s reasonable to conclude that his silence communicated an affirmative answer. Even then, however, such an interpretation is rebuttable if additional context can provide a better explanation for his silence. Maybe he hadn’t even heard the question because he was preoccupied with reading a text on his phone that was sitting on the podium, a distracting text informing him his child had just been involved in a serious car wreck.

Without overwhelming contextual evidence, an argument from silence can justify anything, as Andy Alexis-Baker explains:

Since Jesus did not rebuke Pilate for being a governor of an occupying force, he must have sanctioned the Roman occupation and their right to exploit weaker nations, and by extension all colonial and military expansions. Since he did not ask Zacchaeus to leave his job as a tax collector, he must have approved of Roman tax collection and their right to drain resources from an area to the wealthy elite in Rome. Since Jesus did not admonish Pilate for murdering some Galileans in the midst of their sacrifices (Luke 13:3), he sanctioned police brutality and severe repressive measures. Since Jesus did not tell the judges at his own trial that they were wrong for their irregular court proceedings, he sanctions kangaroo courts and dictatorships today. Since Jesus did not reprove the centurion for owning slaves, he therefore condones slavery, even today. These arguments from silence can make Jesus to be the advocate of whatever we want.… The point is that we have to base our analysis of this text on what Jesus says to the centurion, on the entire narrative that Matthew weaves, and even more broadly, on the picture that the New Testament paints of Jesus in regard to nonviolence.10

In our situation, there’s no contextual evidence to support an endorsement of soldiering, violence, or militarism. Nothing else Jesus, John, or Luke said or did in the immediate context or throughout the rest of the New Testament suggests that they were endorsing or ever had endorsed such things.

On the contrary, when we look at the broader context, as I did at length in my book Jesus the Pacifist: A Concise Guide to His Radical Nonviolence, the evidence suggests a contradictory conclusion: Jesus and his disciples not only didn’t endorse violence, but they actually condemned it. For that matter, if there’s a valid argument from silence to be made here, it’s that Jesus’s silence regarding the soldier’s profession was a condemnation of it, not an endorsement. Jesus entered the encounter with an antiviolence reputation. Had he wanted to amend his reputation into something less than complete antiviolence, this was the perfect opportunity. That he chose not to compliment the soldier’s profession in an otherwise friendly and complimentary encounter implies that he didn’t approve of it. That he didn’t seize this easy opportunity to qualify his total pacifism is further evidence of his total pacifism.

Here’s another way to look at the self-defeating nature of an argument from silence in this situation. No one argues that Jesus’s, John’s, or Luke’s silence endorsed all types of soldiering, violence, and war. Even those who suggest they generally endorsed soldiering as a profession don’t claim they endorsed all types of soldiering, like participation in genocidal conquest. So here’s the problem: the only way to know where to draw the line between the types of soldiering their silence endorsed and the types it didn’t endorse is to bring context into our analysis. And when we look at the context in this situation, we are forced to conclude that their silence wasn’t an endorsement at all.

Lasserre made this same point from a slightly different angle. Given that the centurion was a soldier in an occupying force, he asked how someone can justify maintaining a defensive army if they conclude that Jesus’s silence endorsed the centurion’s profession:

Those who make so much play with these four “silences,” and deduce therefrom that the profession of arms is legitimate, do not seem so keen to deduce that the military occupation of a foreign country is legitimate (seeing that these soldiers had come to Palestine as troops of the occupation). If it is legitimate, why do we need a (defensive) army? The justification of military service is destroyed at its roots. And if not, why do they refuse this second deduction, having accepted the first?11

Unfortunately, even some of the most prominent theologians to ever live (e.g., Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther) fell victim to the Argument from Silence Fallacy in their interpretations of these soldier encounters. Nonetheless, the encounters do not justify violence. Jesus didn’t endorse everything he didn’t condemn. He endorsed only what he said he endorsed: faith. Concluding otherwise is a classic case of reading too much of our own fallen agenda into a situation where it doesn’t belong.

There are a dozen lessons to be learned from the soldier encounters, but the compatibility of soldiering and violence with the way of Jesus is not one of them.

Footnotes:

1. See also Luke 7:1-10.

2. Similarly, it is also well known that the Romans used tax revenue to fund much injustice (like the gladiator games in which Christians were slaughtered and the operation of blatantly idolatrous, cultic temples), but instead of telling the tax collectors to stop collecting taxes, John only instructed them to not collect more than was required, so should we conclude that he endorsed such injustices?

3. Luke 7:36-50.

4. John 4:7-26.

5. Matt. 27:26-35.

6. Gregory A. Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross, Volumes 1 & 2 (Fortress Press, 2017), 13244, Kindle.

7. It might help to place these encounters in a more relatable, less emotionally charged context. Pretend you’ve got a pacifistic friend named Frank. One day you are walking through the mall with Frank and you run into Barry, a friend of yours who is a soldier wearing his uniform. You engage in a minute of small chat and then introduce him to Frank. They also chat for a bit, during which Barry reveals he just celebrated twenty years of marriage with his first and only wife. Frank congratulates Barry and then turns to you and says, “Boy, I wish more of my friends were as committed to their wives as Barry is to his. Most of them have already been divorced two or three times.” Did Frank endorse Barry’s profession or the use of violence? Was Frank’s refusal to go out of his way to condemn the profession of a guy he’d just met an implicit approval of it?

8. Luke 5:29-31; 7:33-34; 15:1-4; 19:1-10; Mark 2:15-17; Matt. 9:10-13; 11:18-19.

9. Matt. 21:31-32.

10. Andy Alexis-Baker, A Faith Not Worth Fighting For: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Nonviolence (The Peaceable Kingdom Series), ed. Tripp York and Justin Bronson Barringer (Cascade Books, 2012), 3658, Kindle.

11. Jean Lasserre, War and the Gospel, trans. Oliver Coburn (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1998), 54.

This article is an excerpt from Jesus the Pacifist: A Concise Guide to His Radical Nonviolence.

Why Did Jesus Say He Came to Bring Not Peace But a Sword?

In Matthew 10:34, Jesus said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Non-pacifists often cite this statement to justify the use of violence, but for numerous reasons, it doesn’t. To see why, we simply need to review its biblical context—immediate, intermediate, and broad.

The immediate context below indicates that Jesus was speaking figuratively about the division he and his message would cause, rather than literally about a sword.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. (Matt. 10:34-39)

Luke’s account makes the figurative nature of the metaphor even clearer by using the word division instead of sword: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three” (Luke 12:51-52).

The Bible frequently uses a sword to symbolize the Word of God (i.e., truth), often in the context of conflict and division. When encouraging the Ephesians to “put on the full armor of God” so they can “stand against the devil’s schemes,” Paul told them that “the sword of the Spirit … is the word of God” (Eph. 6:10, 17). The author of Hebrews declares that “the word of God” is “sharper than any double-edged sword,” and that “it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow” (Heb. 4:12). The book of Revelation depicts a “sharp, double-edged sword” actually “coming out of [Jesus’s] mouth,” which implies that it represents words or truth (Rev. 1:16). Revelation likewise portrays Jesus threatening to fight the unrepentant “with the sword of [his] mouth” (Rev. 2:16). Why shouldn’t we interpret the sword in Matthew 10:34 as another reference to the Word of God, a declaration that Jesus came to bring and wield the truth?1

Experience confirms that the gospel message can be divisive. Loving your enemies, for example, often angers your allies. It’s often interpreted as an act of disloyalty and can divide those who are united primarily by their common opposition to someone or something. If you doubt this, express love for your nation’s enemies and observe how most of your fellow countrymen react. The same goes for family bonds: ask a Christian convert born into a family of Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists what impact their conversion had on those relationships.

The intermediate context reveals that Jesus made this statement in the middle of preparing his disciples to take his message into the wider world. He was warning them about the personal sacrifices they would have to make to fulfill their mission. Just a few verses earlier, he had told them he was sending them “out like sheep among wolves” (v. 16), instructed them not to fear “those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (v. 28), and warned them they would be hated and violently persecuted (vv. 17, 22).2 Now he was telling them that discipleship could also cost them their families, and maybe even their lives.

Therefore, as Richard Hays observes, “If we are to think at all of any literal sword … we will immediately see that the disciples of Jesus are to be its victims rather than its wielders.”3 David W. Bercot explains: “Sheep don’t carry swords, and they don’t slay wolves. Rather, it’s the wolves that do the slaying. Jesus was telling His apostles that they needed to be ready to die for Him.”4

Jesus prioritized the gospel message above everything else, even familial and social peace. He declared the embodiment of God’s kingdom, not relational harmony or social stability, to be the highest ideal. He proclaimed that he came to bear witness to the truth, not to absolve all conflict by whatever means necessary. Jesus was and is concerned with establishing true peace on earth through reconciliation, not with imposing the shallow, fleeting peace that results from violent control. This is why Paul writes, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Rom. 12:18). Sometimes peace isn’t desirable—for instance, when it requires denying the gospel or collaborating with injustice.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t encouraging division. He was only pointing out that pledging supreme allegiance to his kingdom would occasionally produce it. Jim Forest summarizes:

The “sword” referred to here is not a deadly weapon but a symbol of the fractures that often occur within families and between friends when one chooses to live a life shaped by the Gospel. Jesus is … saying that the way of life he proposes will at times be a cause of discord that may even cut into the closest relationships.5

Everything else Jesus says and does (the broad context of this quote) also reveals he isn’t speaking about a literal sword. Nothing in the Bible indicates Jesus ever even touched a sword during his life, let alone came for the purpose of using one. As Hays notes, Jesus’s statement about bringing a sword must be interpreted “within the story of a Messiah who refuses the defense of the sword and dies at the hands of a pagan state that bears the power of the sword. The whole New Testament comes rightly into focus only within this story.”6

Jesus used similar figurative hyperbole on many other occasions to stress the radical commitment he requires of his followers: “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away…. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away” (Matt. 5:29-30).7 “And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9). “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24). “[Jesus] said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But he replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:59-60).8

Jesus’s statement about hating our family and life may be the most instructive: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27). Jesus didn’t want us to literally abhor our families or lives. He wasn’t overturning the Fifth Commandment to honor our parents, which he and Paul both affirmed elsewhere.9 Instead, he was speaking about priorities, about total commitment and the cost of discipleship. He used the verb hate not to encourage hostility but to warn against developing idolatrous loyalties.

Accordingly, just as Jesus’s instruction to hate our families and lives was a hyperbolic and figurative demand for total allegiance, so was his declaration that he came to bring not peace but a sword. He didn’t bring a literal sword of violence. He brought a figurative sword of prioritization.

Lastly, even if we interpret Jesus’s sword statement literally, it still doesn’t justify our use of violence. If we are going to ignore all context and be literal, let’s be literal. Jesus was talking about his use of the sword, not ours. He said he came to earth to bring a sword, not teach us to use one. In fact, he didn’t even say he came to use a sword. He said he came to bring one. Furthermore, he came to bring only a sword, not knives, guns, nunchucks, or bombs. He said sword, not weapons. And he came to bring a sword for the purpose of dividing families—nothing else.

Consequently, the only way we can get from “Jesus came to bring a sword to divide families” to “Christians may use various types of violent weapons to do things other than divide families” is to ignore the literal interpretation and the actual context of his statement and instead just make something up. As usual, I like how Hays puts it: “To read this verse as a warrant for the use of violence by Christians is to commit an act of extraordinary hermeneutical violence against the text.”10 Or as Greg Boyd writes, “The use of this passage to justify violence rather reflects the extreme exegetical lengths to which people will go to give divine authority to their own violent agendas.”11 Indeed. It’s almost like concluding that Psalm 14:1 asserts, “There is no God,” although the entire sentence reads “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

Regardless of whether we interpret the passage literally or figuratively, it doesn’t justify our use of violence. To interpret it literally is to justify Jesus’s possession of a sword, not our own use of one. To interpret it non-literally is to invoke its context, which reveals that Jesus wasn’t even talking about violence. He was speaking figuratively about the division that proclaiming the truth and prioritizing allegiance to him inevitably cause, even within families. Had he intended to provide a justification for violence, he would have done so much more clearly, particularly in light of the contradictory immediate, intermediate, and broader contexts of his statement.

Footnotes:

1. David W. Bercot also points out that in ancient times, “a sword served two purposes,” one being “the use we normally think of … in warfare, where the sword was used for killing” and the other being “a tool for cutting or dividing.” See The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down (Scroll Publishing Company, 2003), 1325, Kindle.

2. See also Matt. 24:9; John 15:20; Luke 21:12, 16-17; and Mark 13:13.

3. Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation; A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (HarperOne, 2013), 9315, Kindle.

4. David W. Bercot, The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down (Scroll Publishing Company, 2003), 1325, Kindle.

5. Jim Forest, Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment (Orbis Books, 2014), 2452, Kindle.

6. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 9451.

7. See also Matt. 18:9-9 and Mark 9:43-47.

8. For Matthew’s account, see Matt. 8:21-22. For a different but similar encounter, see Luke 9:61-62.

9. Exod. 20:12; Matt. 15:1-6; 19:1-19; Mark 10:17-19; Luke 18:18-20; Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20.

10. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, 9318.

11. Gregory A. Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross, Volumes 1 & 2 (Fortress Press, 2017), 13150, Kindle.

This article is an excerpt from Jesus the Pacifist: A Concise Guide to His Radical Nonviolence.

Did Jesus Tell His Disciples to Buy Swords?

Luke 22:36 is one of the verses that many non-pacifists cite to justify violence. In it, Jesus told his disciples, “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” As usual, and despite initial appearances, the context refutes a pro-violence interpretation. Here’s the statement in its immediate context:

Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied. (Luke 22:35-38)

Two reasonable interpretations arise from this passage, neither of which condone any violence.

Interpretation #1. It’s hard to argue with Jesus’s own explicit explanation of why he told his disciples to buy a sword: to fulfill a prophecy. Take another look at what he said immediately after telling his disciples to buy a sword: “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors;’ and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 53 wherein the prophet predicts that the Messiah will be a suffering servant who, having done no wrong and committed no violence, will nonetheless be “numbered with transgressors” and consequently bear unjust punishment. Because the Romans only crucified potential threats to the empire, Jesus needed to give them a reason to arrest and crucify him. He needed to appear to be part of a band of sword-wielding outlaws, a member of a group of violent revolutionaries. So he asked the disciples to play the part of criminals by brandishing swords, which they did. In essence, he was saying to them, “I know I’ve previously asked you to trust me and not carry any equipment (referring to Matthew 10:9) and that worked out well for you, but now the time has come when equipment is necessary, so trust me again and go grab a sword. As prophesied, I’ve got to be accused of being a criminal and that needs to happen soon.”

Therefore, according to Jesus’s own words, he was literally instructing his disciples to go buy swords, but only for the limited, immediate purpose of fulfilling a specific prophecy, not to actually use or keep them.

Two other important pieces of context suggest such an interpretation. First, after the disciples produced two swords, Jesus said, “That’s enough!” This begs the question: Enough for what? The only way two swords is enough is if Jesus only intended for them to be used to fulfill the prophecy. Two is enough to be accused of being a criminal gang, but it’s not enough to equip each of the twelve disciples for their impending journeys.

Second, after the prophecy had been fulfilled, Jesus immediately condemned the use of the sword and reiterated that he had just fulfilled a prophecy. While Jesus was being arrested, one of his disciples drew his sword and cut off a man’s ear.1 Luke’s gospel says Jesus reacted by exclaiming “No more of this!” and healing the man’s ear (Luke 22:50-51). Matthew’s gospel gives a slightly more detailed account of Jesus’s reaction:

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:52-54)

The nonviolence implications couldn’t be any clearer. Jesus told his disciples to go buy swords to help him fulfill a prophecy, and then just a few hours later after the prophecy is fulfilled, he (1) instructed them to put their swords away, (2) rectified Peter’s use of the sword by healing the man’s ear, (3) proclaimed that if he wanted to use violence to advance his kingdom on earth he would call down a few legions of angels from heaven, (4) condemned the use of swords in general, and (5) explained that using the swords to prevent his arrest thwarted the whole reason he wanted them to carry swords in the first place: to cause his arrest. These are not the actions of a king who wants his followers to advance his kingdom through violence.

This interpretation seems to rectify Jesus’s two contradictory sword instructions quite nicely. To fulfill the prophecy, he needed them to possess swords, so he ordered them to buy some. After the prophecy was fulfilled, he needed them to return to nonviolent business as usual so he ordered them to put their swords away, forever.

Interpretation #2. There’s another reasonable, although I believe slightly less plausible, explanation for Jesus’s instruction to go buy swords: mission preparation. When Jesus sent the disciples on their first mission, a local and temporary mission to spread the gospel among their fellow Jews, he instructed them not to take any money or luggage with them but to rely on the hospitality of their families, friends, and fellow countrymen.2 But now Jesus was preparing them for a much different, more permanent, and largely foreign mission: taking the gospel to the Gentiles. So the material nature of their mission had changed. Whereas before they could expect others to take care of them, now they should expect to take care of themselves. Hence Jesus’s new instructions: “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”

Even if Jesus was dispensing advice on how to prepare for their new mission, that doesn’t mean he was necessarily giving literal advice. There are many reasons to believe that at least the sword instruction wasn’t meant to be taken literally. If Jesus literally wanted them to each carry a sword, why did he tell them two swords was enough for twelve people, most of whom were going to different places? Why did Jesus not specify how he wanted them to use the sword, particularly because he had never before issued any instructions on using swords? Why just hours later when Jesus was being arrested did he condemn sword use? Why does the Bible not record the disciples ever carrying or using swords while missionaries to the gentiles? Did the disciples blatantly disobey Jesus, or did they understand he meant something else? Given those blatant contradictions, Jesus likely wasn’t giving the disciples literal advice on how to pack for their upcoming travel.

Instead, Jesus was issuing a figurative warning. He was saying, “You completed the first mission in relative comfort and safety, but now you are about to embark on a new mission that will be uncomfortable and dangerous, so brace yourself. Before, you could expect much welcoming and hospitality, but now you must expect rejection and persecution.” The purse and bag represented the material hardship they would face (e.g., hunger, thirst, a lack of shelter, etc.) and the sword symbolized the conflict they would encounter. Such a warning would prove prophetic because the biblical account of the disciples’ second mission is full of such struggles.3

If Jesus was prepping the disciples for their upcoming mission, he was saying “go buy a sword” in the same figurative sense he had said “I come to bring a sword, not peace.”

Interpretation #3. There’s actually a third reasonable interpretation option: a hybrid of the first two. Maybe Jesus’s instructions were part travel advice and part prophecy fulfillment. Perhaps he was giving them advice on what equipment to take on their new mission. Then, needing to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy, the directive pivoted from packing instructions (take a purse and a bag) to prophecy fulfillment instructions (go get a sword right now), both of which he meant to be taken literally but for different purposes. Or maybe the sword served a dual purpose as both a figurative warning and prophecy prop.

As you can see, even if we interpret Jesus’s instruction to go buy a sword literally, there are more reasonable and less reasonable literal interpretations. The most reasonable is that he wanted them to purchase a sword solely to fulfill a prophecy. Any literal interpretation that goes beyond that narrow scope ignores all levels of context and reads things into the passage that aren’t there.

Plus, if we are going to be strictly literal, Jesus was speaking only to his disciples, not a crowd, and he told them to buy a sword, not use one. Thus, to conclude that this instruction to his inner circle to buy a sword really means that his followers today can use swords is a logical stretch, to say the least. It veers away from a literal interpretation into a nonliteral one while ignoring the contextual evidence that must necessarily inform any nonliteral analysis. If we can’t muster the strength to resist what Bradley Jersak calls the “sloppy propensity to literalize metaphors,” we should at least literalize them correctly.4

Furthermore, the fact that Jesus had to instruct his disciples to buy swords speaks to his nonviolence. It implies that his followers, whom he was about to send out into the world, didn’t already own swords (why order someone to buy something he already owns?), which in turn suggests Jesus didn’t literally want them using swords. If he had, surely he wouldn’t have waited until the end of their time together to instruct them on the moral use of violence.

For all of these reasons, Luke 22:36 does not support the Christian use of violence today. Whatever Jesus meant to communicate by instructing his disciples to buy swords, he did not intend for them, or for us, to use them. Tragically, a passage that should be seen as condemning violence has become just one more reminder of how far fallen humans will go to justify their violence.

Footnotes:

1. Luke 22:50; Matt. 26:51.

2. Matt. 10:5-14; Mark 6:7-13; Luke 10:1-12.

3. For example, see 1 Cor. 4:9-13 and 2 Cor. 6:3-10.

4. Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel (CWR Press, 2015), 2556, Kindle.

This article is an excerpt from Jesus the Pacifist: A Concise Guide to His Radical Nonviolence.