1. There is no doubt that our Lord commands His followers not to resist evil by force. “Resist not him that is evil; but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him take thy cloke also. . . . I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust” (Mat_5:39-45).
2. In all this Christ is primarily dealing with the relation of His followers to the hostile world, and their relation to that world as they carry on His work must be the same as His own has been. It is not that our Lord, like Marcion in later days, believed that the Heavenly Father was incapable of wrath; He believed the very contrary. Our Lord, as saying after saying of His proves, believed that the wrath of God against sin was a great reality, to be poured out upon the finally impenitent in very awful ways. But it was not His task in His earthly life to manifest this. He came in His earthly life not to condemn the world, but to save the world, to minister to it, to die for it and to rise again. And to this end in His earthly life He practised to the uttermost the non-resistance which He enjoins upon His followers. Till His “hour” came, He always withdrew before the world’s hostility; when it came, He yielded Himself up to the worst that His enemies could do. He remonstrated, He denounced evil, He warned of its future consequences, but He never resisted it. Nor was it any part of His earthly mission to right the wrongs of others. “Man,” He said, when He was asked to do this, “who made me a judge or a divider over you?” (Luk_12:14) Though He had twelve legions of angels at His command He never called upon them to put a stop by force to the oppression and cruelty which He saw around Him. Though the Jews expected the Messiah to do all this, though one day He will do it, in His earthly life He refused to do it. The appeal of love must be urged to the uttermost before the time can come for the exercise of judgment, and it is by the Cross, by suffering to the uttermost in making the appeal, that the way must lie to the throne of judgment.
“Is there no way,” asks Andrew Fuller, “to bring home a wandering sheep but by worrying him to death?” Owen’s greater Anglican contemporary writes to the same effect in his Liberty of Prophesying. “Any zeal,” he observes, “is proper for religion, but the zeal of the sword and the zeal of anger,” since no secure basis for a reasonable religion can be won “if the sword turns preacher, and dictates propositions by empire instead of arguments, and engraves them in men’s hearts with a poniard.” One wonders if the Puritan was thinking of the anecdote which narrates how Michelangelo, who was engaged in designing a statue of Julius asked that eminently meek and saintly representative of Christ if he would care to hold a volume in his hand. “What volume?” cried the indignant Pope; “a sword! I know nothing of letters, not I.” [Note: J. Moffatt, The Golden Book of John Owen, 99.]
3. It is as His followers, in our conduct towards one another and towards the world, especially in our efforts to extend His Kingdom in the world, that we are not to resist evil. But as the representatives of the Lord to the world we have nothing to do with the establishment of justice either by police action, or by military action, or in any way at all except by following the Lamb. If indeed members of our own body, in spite of all remonstrance, act with injustice towards their brethren, we must expel them from our society, so that they sink back into the ranks of the world from which the Lord has rescued them, but we are not as Christians charged in any way with the present administration or establishment of justice in the life of the world. And so our Lord teaches us: “Put up again thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Or thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Mat_26:52-54). For the Church, individually or corporately, to take the sword is an act of consummate folly; with the world’s weapons the world will always prove the stronger. For the Church to take the sword is an expression of distrust in God; He could save us without it, if He so willed. But He does not so will; to suppose that He does is to set aside the whole witness of “the Scriptures,” to declare that their anticipations of the Cross for the Lord and for ourselves are without meaning. Retributive justice is right and necessary in its own place, and in its own time; even in our patience we are to remember that it lies in reserve; but its place is not the Church of God, and its time is not yet. We cannot, in our attitude towards the world, set forth at one and the same time the patience of God and the severity of God, and though we may witness to both, we have now as Christians, like the Lord in His earthly life, to manifest the former only. “Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath” of God: “for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom_12:19-21).
Mackay has been accused of interfering in African politics, and advocating armed intervention in the interests of religion; but there is no justification for this charge. The force he advocated was the kind of pressure which you can bring to bear upon a man when he sees it more to his interest to be gentle than to be cruel, to be just rather than unjust. He held it to be the duty of our Consuls on the coast to use all the means within their power to secure the personal safety of traders and missionaries, and of the home Government by legislation, backed, if necessary, by force, to prevent such trading as directly hindered the work of Christianity and civilization. [Note: Mackay of Uganda, 342.]
4. But the pacifist not only objects to the employment of force by Christians in the fulfilment of their mission to the world; he objects to its employment by the world itself for those moral purposes which the world rightly recognizes. For this he finds no justification in our Lord’s teaching. The fact is not merely that our Lord expects the kingdoms of the world to continue until He returns to establish the Kingdom of God, but that He recognizes that they have a function to perform, lower indeed than the function of the Church, but God-given, and necessary in its own place. Our Lord in His earthly life had very little to do with the kingdoms of the world, and did not, except in His eschatological teaching, frequently allude to them. But His attitude towards them is shown clearly enough by both word and example. He sees in the authority of the earthly State a God-given authority, and He approves of the State’s employment of force in the exercise of it.
Our Lord not only says that we are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; He Himself shows the utmost respect to the judicial authority of the State when He comes into contact with it. How does He act when He is brought before Pilate? He respects the judicial position of the Roman magistrate, and gives him full opportunity of arriving at the truth. “Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning me?” (Joh_18:34). No Messianic rising has taken place to alarm Pilate; he is allowing himself to be made the tool of others. Very carefully our Lord explains the true character of His claim to rule. “My kingdom is not from this world; if my kingdom were from this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence” (Joh_18:36). His kingdom, that is to say, has a heavenly origin, and will come into existence by heavenly power; it does not break the Emperor’s peace, or come into conflict with those principles of public order which Pilate is bound to maintain. If the Lord is a King, it is because He is first a Prophet. He has come into the world to “bear witness unto the truth,” (Joh_18:37) and it is only those whose hearts respond to the truth, who “hear his voice,” and bow to His authority. It is only at a later stage, when Pilate in his superstitious fears asks a question which has nothing to do with his judicial duties, that our Lord refuses him an answer. But even then His respect for Pilate’s authority is perfectly clear. “Thou wouldst have no authority against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath greater sin” (Joh_19:11). Pilate’s judicial authority, that is to say, is a God-given authority; the greatness of the sin of Caiaphas lies precisely in this, that he is endeavouring to exploit a Divine institution for his own evil purpose. Now what does our Lord do here except recognize clearly the authority of the State to employ force in the exercise of justice?
St. Paul is quite aware of the duties of Christians as Christians; they are not to resist him that is evil. But the very next subject of which he speaks is their duty to the State, and his language is even clearer than the Lord’s. “Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldst thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same; for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain; for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. . . . For this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God’s service, attending continually upon this very thing” (Rom_13:1-6). It is in entire accordance with this view that he claims the privileges of his Roman citizenship, and appeals to Caesar when his life is in danger. [Note: G. K. A. Bell, The War and the Kingdom of God, 38.]
