Many in the Body of Jesus, The King, are unconvinced by our Master's clear call to complete non-violence. His personal example and that of His Apostles also doesn't seem to sway them to pacifism. Nor does the consistent, recurrent testimony of New Covenant Scripture.
It's like many of us don't even see the truth when we read our Bibles because it's not taught from most pulpits.
You'll find "Jesus' Key Peace-Making Commands of Total Non-Violence" as they apply to individual Jesus Followers in Matthew 5:38-48. There He makes no exceptions and allows for no ambiguity by us or our preachers. (Attached to the linked Scripture are some of my further comments on what our Master says. They're in e-Sticky Notes on various verses in the passage.)Many Christians don't seem to believe that Jesus meant what He said and said what He meant in these and other similar passages when He commands that our attitude as individual Followers of His must be to "Wage Peace ...Not War".
However, all of Jesus' early Followers took our Saviour at His word! They were not yet captured by the demonic denial that grips many modern Christians like a vice. Many today don't even know that they're caught by the Great Schemer as it says in 2 Corinthians 2:5-11. Let alone how to resist getting caught in the first place as explained in Ephesians 6:10-19 where Holy Spirit describes "A Jesus' Following Warrior's Armour".
So that you'll not think this only my opinion, you'll find below a small sample of quotations from the early Body of The King during its first 400 years. These quotes are by leaders who learned directly from Jesus' Ambassador, John, and/or hearers of theirs.
You'll see in their actual quotes that early Jesus Followers no longer believed or acted upon Old Covenant laws like many Christians today do. Early Jesus Followers understood and were taught that Jesus abrogated, fulfilled, and replaced everything that God had inspired about violence before He sent Yeshua, their King and ours.
The non-violent position proclaimed by these first leaders of the early Body, who followed immediately after the Apostles, held both international and universal sway among Jesus' early Followers. Active pacifism, Jesus' Third Way between passivism and violence, was a Follower's only lifestyle until the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hippo emasculated Jesus's words. Augustine did so with his unBiblical "Just War Doctrine" in the early Fifth Century.
Augustine promulgated his perverse Doctrine, which denies the example of the Cross, so that the Emperor could attract Jesus Followers as soldiers. The Fifth Century populous group of our Lord's Followers were sorely needed in the army to protect the state Catholic Church's lands and wealth.
So What's A Jesus Follower To Do?
"What am I to do", you rightly ask, "if personal violence is out in order to protect myself or those I love ...regardless of circumstances?"
"Plus are you really telling me that, in deference to Jesus' commands and God's Kingdom, I also cannot serve my country as a gun-carrying soldier, police person, guard, etc. or as a life and death-legislating politician?" Firstly, every Jesus Follower who follows Jesus' pacifist lifestyle can claim the sure promise that "Our Heavenly Father Provides A Way Through Every Trial".
Also we know that Father provides for our National Governments to protect us from foreign states, international terrorism, as well as from our local enemies ...just like the Jesus Followers quoted below trusted He would.
What Post-Apostle Leaders Told Those Who Wanted To Follow Jesus
Justin Martyr (100-165)
“We who formerly used to murder one another do not only now refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willingly die confessing Christ. We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons,— our swords into plow-shares, and our spears into implements of tillage, — and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father Himself through Him who was crucified.”
Tatian (120-180)
“I do not wish to be a king; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command… Die to the world, repudiating the madness that is in it.”
Irenaeus (130-200)
“But if the law of liberty, that is, the word of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem) throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, that these [nations] did form the swords and war-lances into plow-shares, and changed them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, [that is], into instruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are now unaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek, then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them.”
Athenagoras (133-190)
“We have rejected such spectacles as the Coliseum. How then, when we do not even look on killing lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death?”
“We, a numerous band of men as we are, have learned from His teaching and His laws that evil ought not to be requited with evil, that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that we should rather shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with that of another.”
Clement of Alexandria (150-215)
"An enemy must be aided, so that he may not continue as an enemy. For by help, good feeling is compacted and enmity dissolved."
"We do not train our women like Amazons to manliness in war, for we wish even the men to be peaceable."
“Above all, Christians are not allowed to correct with violence the delinquencies of sins.”
Tertullian (160-220)
But now inquiry is made about this point, whether a believer may turn himself unto military service, and whether the military may be admitted unto the faith, even the rank and file, or each inferior grade, for who it is not required to take part in sacrifices or capital punishments. There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters—God and Caesar. . . .But how will a Christian war, nay, how will he serve even in peace without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed, still the Lord afterword in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier."
"Christ plainly teaches a new kind of long-suffering, when He actually prohibits reprisals that the Creator permitted in requiring 'an eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth.'"
Hippolytus (170-235)
“A soldier of the civil authority must be taught not to kill men and to refuse to do so if he is commanded, and to refuse to take an oath; if he is unwilling to comply, he must be rejected. If a catechumen or a believer seeks to become a soldier, they must be rejected, for they have despised God.”
Origen (182-254)
“And to those who inquire of us whence we come, or who is our founder, we reply that we are come, agreeably to the counsels of Jesus, to ‘cut down our hostile and insolent “wordy” swords into plow-shares, and to convert into pruning-hooks the spears formerly employed in war.’ For we no longer take up ‘sword against nation,’ nor do we ‘learn war any more,’ having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader, instead of those whom our fathers followed.”In Conclusion
You've noted that all the above writers taught Jesus' exclusive pacifism 200 years before the Catholic, Augustine, lead the Body of Christ down a road to carnage and violence with his "Just War Doctrine". This Doctrine, not Scripture, fertilizes Jesus Followers' "flesh" and non-Followers' human nature.
Also, despite Protestants' cries of no tradition and "Sola Scriptura", from the Reformation to now most Protestant Pastors/Teachers have continued to preach that foul Doctrine's unBiblical perversity.
If you'd like to review further quotes, there's a more extensive list plus more early Jesus Follower's writings, here.
Please leave a comment below about what you think and how you feel about what I share above.
With my compliments and permission to reproduce, without change or profiteering, including the following:
© Copyright 2013 Gary F. Patton, PattonAssociates.ca, People Development Coaches
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