Must We Live? Guns Vs. the Mind of Christ

Sharing is caring!

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Philippians 2:5-8 (NKJV)

“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” Romans 8:36 (NIV)

“The unique calling of the church is to live in such reliance on heavenly protection and heavenly reward that the world will ask about our hope (1 Peter 3:15), not about the ingenuity of our armed defenses. …Our weapons are not material, but spiritual (2 Corinthians 10:4). …The overwhelming focus and thrust of the New Testament is that Christians are sent into the world – religious and nonreligious – ‘as lambs in the midst of wolves’ (Luke 10:3). …Exhorting the lambs to carry concealed weapons with which to shoot the wolves does not advance the countercultural, self-sacrificing, soul-saving cause of Christ.” John Piper, “Should Christians be Encouraged to Arm Themselves,” Desiring God, December 22, 2015

Scripture can be a pesky thing sometimes, can’t it? We design a perfectly rational solution to a problem and then someone comes along and says, “Oh, by the way, the Bible says…”

Biblically annoy us is what John Piper does in his excellent article on Christians and guns. (I have quoted from it above.) If you are interested in thinking through what a biblical perspective is on the use of force, then you need to read the entire piece.

The only two issues I have with the article is that I don’t think Piper does a very good job of explaining Luke 22:35-38, where Jesus encourages his disciples to go buy swords. I dealt with that issue in my last post.

The other problem I see is that Piper doesn’t make a clear distinction between defending ourselves from random acts of violence as opposed to defending ourselves from being persecuted as Christians. Indiscriminate violence as opposed to persecution are two different things. A random act of violence, like a home invasion, is a crime against society in general and a Christian may just happen to be a victim of it. In this situation, it is proper for a Christian to defend him or her self, even with a gun if necessary.

Persecution, on the other hand, is where we suffer violence because we are Christians (1 Peter 4:16). It is in these situations that scripture tells us, again and again, that we are to stand down, even if it means death. To the question, “Must we live?” here, the answer is “No.”

This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.

For the past sixteen years New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry

Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.

_______________________________________________________________

Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

_______________________________________________________________