What did Jesus say about war?

At a Glance

What I said: Blessed are the peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). And to the governor who was about to kill me: If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight (John 18:36). They did not fight.

What the rest of the Bible says: Both things. The book of Joshua tells of whole cities destroyed at God’s command. The prophets looked for a day when nations would beat their swords into plowshares (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3).

When today’s view appeared: For nearly three hundred years the leading teachers of my church said a Christian should not kill, even as a soldier. The Christian idea of a just war began with Ambrose and Augustine, in the late 300s and early 400s. Holy war, with fighting counted in place of penance for sins, took its full form with the First Crusade in 1095.

The short answer: I never blessed a war. I wept over a city that would not learn the things which belong to your peace (Luke 19:42), and I died rather than let my friends fight for me.

I grew up under an army.

Around the time I was born, Rome put down a revolt after Herod’s death. Its army burned the city of Sepphoris, a few miles from Nazareth, and crucified two thousand rebels near Jerusalem.¹ Soldiers were everywhere I went. A Roman soldier had the right to make a Jew carry his load (Matthew 5:41). Taxes went to pay for the legions.

My people had every reason to fight. Many of them wanted to, and some of them did. One of my own twelve was called Simon, who was called the Zealot (Luke 6:15), and the crowd that chose to free Barabbas instead of me chose a man who had been jailed with insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder (Mark 15:7).

I did not join them. And I did not tell them to.

What I taught

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God (Matthew 5:9).

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, 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 5:43–44).

My hearers knew who the enemy was. It was the man with the spear on the road, and the empire that sent him. I told them to love him. Not to like him, not to agree with him, not to serve his cause. To do him good, and to pray for him.

When I came over the hill and saw Jerusalem for the last time, I wept. If you, even you, had known today the things which belong to your peace! But now, they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come on you, when your enemies will throw up a barricade against you (Luke 19:42–43). I could see where the road of the sword would end. Forty years later, it did. Rome burned the city and the Temple in the year 70, after a war my people started and could not win.²

On my last night, when the crowd came with swords and clubs, one of my friends drew a sword. I told him to put it away, and I healed the man he had cut (Matthew 26:52; Luke 22:51). Or do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? (Matthew 26:53). I had an army, if I had wanted one. I would not use it.

And before Pilate, the man who held the power to kill me: My Kingdom is not of this world. If my Kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight (John 18:36).

That does not mean my kingdom has nothing to do with this world. I taught you to pray for it to come on earth. It means my kingdom does not come the way the kingdoms of this world come. They come with soldiers. Mine does not.

What the rest of your Bible says

Your Bible does not hide the wars. It tells of them in detail.

When Joshua’s army took Jericho, They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, both young and old, and ox, sheep, and donkey, with the edge of the sword (Joshua 6:21). The law said of the cities of Canaan, you shall save alive nothing that breathes (Deuteronomy 20:16). Those are among the hardest pages in your Bible, and people have used them to justify killing for thousands of years.

But your Bible also argues with itself. Later prophets, who had lived through wars of their own, looked for a different day. 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). Micah added: they will sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and no one will make them afraid (Micah 4:4).

I grew up on both. I chose the second.

You will hear Thou shalt not kill quoted against war. That is not what the commandment says. It says You shall not murder (Exodus 20:13), and the same law sent armies into battle. The commandment does not forbid war. I went further than the commandment. You have heard that it was said to the ancient ones, ‘You shall not murder’ … But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment (Matthew 5:21–22). And I told you to love your enemies. The law stopped at murder. I did not.

What my followers did with it

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

Justin, in Rome around 150, wrote that Christians who used to kill one another now refused to make war on their enemies. Tertullian wrote that when I disarmed Peter, I unbelted every soldier. Origen, answering a pagan critic who said Christians were bad citizens because they would not fight, said that Christians fight for the emperor by praying for him, not by killing.³

There were Christian soldiers by the late 100s, and some died as martyrs for refusing to sacrifice to the gods. The teachers argued about them. But the leading voices of the church said a follower of mine should not shed blood. Historians still argue how far ordinary Christians agreed, and how much of the objection was to killing and how much to the army’s pagan oaths and sacrifices.⁴

Then, in 312, a Roman emperor named Constantine painted my sign on his soldiers’ shields and won a civil war.⁵ By the end of that century Christianity was the religion of the empire, and Christians had to decide what they owed an army that was now their own. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, and Augustine, bishop of Hippo, drew on the Roman writer Cicero and worked out what came to be called the just war. A war could be right, Augustine taught, if a lawful ruler fought it for a just cause, to restore peace, and without cruelty or the love of revenge.⁶

I will give that teaching its due. It was meant to put limits on war, and at its best it has. It still asks hard questions of every war: is the cause just, is it the last resort, are the innocent spared? Most wars fail those questions.

But it is a long way from love your enemies.

Nearly seven hundred years after Augustine, the road went further. In 1095, at Clermont in France, Pope Urban II called on the knights of Europe to march to Jerusalem, and the council promised that the journey would count in place of all penance for their sins.⁷ When the crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they killed a great part of the city’s Muslims and Jews.⁸ That was not a just war, fought reluctantly to restore peace. It was a holy war, and the killing itself was treated as service to God.

What came after

Some of my followers never accepted any of it.

In 1527, a group of the people later called Anabaptists met at Schleitheim, in Switzerland, and wrote that the sword is outside the perfection of Christ.⁹ The Mennonites, the Amish and the Hutterites come from the same movement. In January 1661, the Quakers told the king of England: All bloody principles and practices we, as to our own particulars, do utterly deny, with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever.¹⁰ Thousands of them were jailed in those years for their faith. In the world wars of the last century, many of their sons went to prison or to work camps, or served unarmed, rather than fight.

Most churches went the other way. In the First World War, German soldiers wore Gott mit uns, God with us, on their belt buckles, and English and French and German pastors all prayed for victory over one another.¹¹

In March 2003, as the United States was about to invade Iraq, the Pew Research Center found that 77 percent of white evangelical Protestants favored the war, more than any other religious group it measured.¹²

I am not telling you that every soldier is a sinner. Most soldiers, then and now, are poor young men, sent by someone else. I am telling you that I never once called anyone to fight, and that every time the church has carried my sign into a war, it has carried it somewhere I did not go.

What You’ll Hear Back

“Jesus praised a centurion, and never told him to leave the army.”

That is true. A Roman officer came to me for his sick servant, and said he was a man under authority, who told soldiers Go and they went. When Jesus heard it, he marveled … “I haven’t found so great a faith, not even in Israel” (Matthew 8:10). I healed his servant.

I praised his faith, not his trade. I also ate with tax collectors, who worked for the same empire, and I did not tell all of them to quit either, though one of them promised half of what he owned to the poor once he met me (Luke 19:8). I met people where they stood, and I did not turn anyone away. That is not the same as blessing the legion.

“John the Baptist told soldiers to be content with their wages.”

He did: Extort from no one by violence, neither accuse anyone wrongfully. Be content with your wages (Luke 3:14). That was John, not me, and it was good advice to men who were robbing the people they were sent to guard. It tells a soldier to stop being cruel. It does not tell anyone to become a soldier.

“Without armies, evil wins. What about Hitler?”

That is the hardest question, and good people have answered it different ways. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who had once been close to pacifism, joined the resistance circle that plotted to kill Hitler, and was hanged in 1945.¹³ I will not tell you he was wrong to be torn.

But notice what the question does. It takes the worst war in history, one of the very few most people agree had to be fought, and uses it to bless all the others. Most wars are not that war. Most of them are fought for land, for oil, for pride, or for fear, and both sides pray to the same God. The question I asked is not is there ever a war that must be fought? It is what does it mean to love your enemy? Start there.

“The Old Testament God commanded wars.”

Your Bible says so, and I will not pretend it does not. But I did not quote those pages. When I read from the scroll in Nazareth, I chose Isaiah’s words about good news for the poor and freedom for the captives (Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1). And when two of my closest friends wanted to call down fire on a village that would not welcome us, I turned and rebuked them (Luke 9:55). I knew those old stories. I did not repeat them.

“My kingdom is not of this world, so Jesus had nothing to say about politics.”

Read the rest of the sentence: then my servants would fight. I was telling Pilate why my followers were not fighting. That is a political statement. A kingdom that will not use soldiers is a challenge to every kingdom that does.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Matthew 5:38–48.

You will find: what I told an occupied people to do about their enemies.

Then read Luke 19:41–44 and John 18:33–38, and ask what kind of kingdom does not fight for its king.

The Short Version

• I lived under a foreign army, and I never told my people to fight it.
• I said blessed are the peacemakers and love your enemies, and I wept over a city that chose the sword.
• When my friends had the chance to fight for me, I told them to put the sword away.
• Your Bible has both holy wars and swords into plowshares. I chose the second.
• The leading teachers of my church said a Christian should not kill for almost three hundred years. Just war came with the Christian emperors. Holy war came with the Crusades.
• The commandment says You shall not murder, not Thou shalt not kill, and the same law sent armies to war. I went further than the commandment: love your enemies.