Did Jesus say anything about guns?

At a Glance

What I said: Nothing about guns, which did not exist. A great deal about swords and about striking back. When one of my friends used a sword to defend me, I told him to put it away, and I healed the man he cut (Matthew 26:52; Luke 22:51).

What the rest of the Bible says: The law of Moses excused killing a thief who broke in at night, but not after sunrise (Exodus 22:2–3). The prophets looked for a day when swords would be beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4).

When today’s view appeared: The idea that a Christian may fight in a just war goes back to Augustine around 400. The idea that he may kill to defend himself was given its classic form much later, by Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s. The idea, held by some, that carrying a gun is part of being a faithful Christian is much newer, and mostly American.

The short answer: I never once told my followers to arm themselves against an attacker, and the one time they did, I stopped them. A faith that trusts a gun to keep it safe is trusting the thing I told Peter to put away.

Start with the night they came for me.

It was dark, in a garden outside Jerusalem. A crowd came out with swords and clubs (Mark 14:48), sent by the chief priests, to take me before anyone could object. My friends had been afraid of this for days. Some of them had come armed.

When the crowd seized me, one of my friends drew his sword and swung it. John’s gospel says it was Peter. He struck a servant of the high priest, a man named Malchus, and cut off his right ear (John 18:10).

If there was ever a time for a follower of mine to use a weapon in self-defense, that was it. I was innocent. The men in front of us were armed. They were about to hand me to Rome, to be tortured to death.

Here is what I said: Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword (Matthew 26:52).

And Luke remembers what I did next. Jesus answered, “Let me at least do this”—and he touched his ear, and healed him (Luke 22:51).

The last thing I did with my hands before they were tied was to heal a wound that my own side had caused, on a man who had come to arrest me.

What I taught before that night

That night was not a change of mind. It was what I had been teaching all along.

You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also (Matthew 5:38–39).

The law of an eye for an eye was itself a limit. It meant: no more than an eye. I went further. Do not answer violence with violence at all.

I did not mean, let evil win. A slap on the right cheek, given with the back of the right hand, was an insult from a superior to an inferior: a master to a slave, a soldier to a peasant. Read that way, turning the other cheek did not run away and did not hit back. It stood there and refused to be made small.¹ My people knew how to resist Rome without picking up a sword. That was the hardest kind of courage, and I asked for it.

And then the part people skip: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you (Matthew 5:44).

You cannot pray for a man and keep your finger on the trigger waiting for him.

When two of my closest friends wanted to call down fire on a village that would not welcome us, he turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:55). When the soldiers nailed me to the wood, I prayed, Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).

That is the whole record. I never once told anyone to kill, wound or threaten another person to protect themselves, or even to protect me.

What the rest of your Bible says

I grew up on the law of Moses, and it was honest about violence. It did not pretend people would never be attacked.

If the thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt of bloodshed for him. If the sun has risen on him, he is guilty of bloodshed (Exodus 22:2–3).

That is the first self-defense law in your Bible, and look how narrow it is. In the dark, when you cannot see who is in your house or what he means to do, you are not guilty if you kill him. In daylight, when you can see he is only a thief, you are guilty. A man’s life was worth more than what he came to steal.

The commandment behind all of this is You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13), not Thou shalt not kill. The law made room for the terrified householder in the dark. I went further than the law, all the way to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44), and on my last night I told my friend to put his sword away.

When the exiles came home and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, surrounded by enemies, everyone with one of his hands did the work, and with the other held his weapon (Nehemiah 4:17). Your Bible remembers that too.

But the prophets looked past all of it to the day God was bringing: They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Isaiah 2:4). That is the direction my Father’s kingdom runs. Not more weapons, better made. Fewer, and then none.

What my followers did with it

For almost three hundred years, the leading teachers of my church took me at my word.

Justin, a teacher in Rome around 150, wrote that Christians who used to kill one another now refrain from making war upon our enemies, and pointed to Isaiah’s swords and plowshares as already coming true among them.² Tertullian, in North Africa around 200, wrote that when I disarmed Peter, I unbelted every soldier.³ A book of church rules from the early 200s said a soldier who became a Christian must refuse to kill, even when ordered.⁴

Not every Christian agreed. There were Christian soldiers by the late 100s, and the teachers argued about them.⁵ But the leading voices of the early church said plainly that a follower of mine should not kill.

Then the emperors became Christian, and Christians had to decide what they owed an army that was now their own. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, around the year 400, worked out the idea that a war fought by a lawful ruler, for a just cause, could be right. But even Augustine was troubled by killing in private self-defense. In one of his early books he asked how a man who kills an attacker to save his own life can be free of sin, since he is clinging to things he can lose against his will.⁶

Nearly nine hundred years later, Thomas Aquinas gave the answer most churches still use. Killing in self-defense can be lawful, he wrote, if you intend only to save your life, use no more force than you need, and the attacker’s death is a result you accept but do not aim for.⁷

That is a long, careful road away from put your sword back into its place. But it is still a road of reluctance. None of those men thought carrying a weapon was a sign of faith.

What is new

What is new is the idea, among some of my followers, that a good Christian should be armed.

In the United States, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than any other religious group to own a gun. A Pew Research Center study in 2017 found that 41 percent of them owned one, compared with 30 percent of all American adults.⁸ Most of them would not call owning a gun a part of their faith. But there are churches with armed volunteers in the pews, sermons on the Second Amendment, and, in a few places, prayers over rifles.

The Second Amendment is a law of the American republic, ratified in 1791. Your Supreme Court said in 2008 that it protects a person’s right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.⁹ Whatever you think of that, it is a law of a nation, like the Roman custom that let a soldier force you to carry his load (Matthew 5:41). It is not a teaching of mine.

And look at what the guns are doing. In 2023, 46,728 people in the United States died by guns. More than half of them, 27,300, were people who used a gun to take their own lives.¹⁰ A gun kept in the house for protection raises the danger to the people who live there. Studies find that it roughly triples the risk that someone in the home will die by suicide, and nearly doubles the risk that someone there will be killed. And the person most at risk is often the one who bought it.¹¹

I told my friends that all those who take the sword will die by the sword. I was not making a threat. I was describing what happens.

What You’ll Hear Back

“You told your disciples to buy swords.”

I did say it, on the same night. Whoever has none, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. For I tell you that this which is written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘He was counted with transgressors’ (Luke 22:36–37). My friends answered, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And I said, That is enough (Luke 22:38).

Read it in its place. I said it so that a scripture would be fulfilled: I would be counted with transgressors, arrested like an outlaw with armed men around me. Two swords for twelve men is not an army, or even a defense. And a few hours later, when one of them used his sword, I told him to put it away and healed the man he had cut. If I had meant arm yourselves, that was the moment to say so. I said the opposite.

“You said you came to bring a sword, not peace.”

I didn’t come to send peace, but a sword (Matthew 10:34). Read the next verses: a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. Luke tells the same saying with a different word: Do you think that I have come to give peace in the earth? I tell you, no, but rather division (Luke 12:51). The sword I meant was the division that following me would cause inside families. I was not handing anyone a weapon.

“What about protecting my family?”

I will not stand over a parent who throws himself between his child and a man with a knife and call him a sinner. The law of Moses made room for the terrified in the dark, and Aquinas made room for the one who has no other way. Those are hard cases, and they are real.

But a hard case is not a way of life. Keeping a loaded weapon in a drawer, carrying one to the store, training to shoot, sitting in church with a pistol under your jacket waiting for a man to come through the door: that is not a hard case. That is a decision about what you trust. And the numbers say the person most likely to be hurt by it is you, or someone you love.

“What about the armed man who stopped a church shooting?”

In December 2019, a gunman opened fire during a service at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, and killed two men before an armed volunteer shot and killed him.¹² The people in that room are alive because someone stopped him. I do not doubt it, and I grieve for the two who died.

I also know that my friends were standing in a garden with an armed crowd, and that I chose to be taken rather than have blood shed for me. I am not asking you to follow a rule. I am asking you to notice whom you are trusting. Every armed man in a church is an answer to a question: what will keep us safe? My answer to that question was never a sword.

“Romans says the government bears the sword.”

It does: the ruler doesn’t bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:4). Whatever that letter meant, it gave the sword to the ruler, not to you. It is the opposite of an argument for every believer arming himself.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Matthew 26:47–56, Luke 22:47–51 and John 18:1–11.

You will find: three tellings of the one night my followers used a weapon to defend me, and what I did about it.

Then read Matthew 5:38–48 and Luke 22:35–38, and decide for yourself what That is enough means.

The Short Version

• I said nothing about guns. I said a great deal about swords and striking back.
• When my friend drew a sword to defend me, I told him put it away and healed the man he cut.
• I taught turn the other cheek, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
• The law of Moses excused killing a thief in the dark, not in daylight, and the prophets looked to swords into plowshares.
• For nearly three hundred years the leading voices of my church said a follower of mine should not kill. The idea that a faithful Christian should be armed is new.
• In 2023, more than half of America’s 46,728 gun deaths were suicides.
• The commandment says You shall not murder, not Thou shalt not kill. I went further than the law: love your enemies, and put the sword away.