Published: August 3, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Romans - Part 75 | Scripture: Romans 12:17-21
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12. We finish out that chapter this morning. Moving into a very uh practical segment of Paul's letter to the Romans and one that is just as pertinent today as it
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was 2,000 years ago. This morning we're going to be looking at Romans 12 17- 21. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.
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Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge,
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beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord." But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and
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if he is thirsty, give him a drink. In so doing, you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Let
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us pray. Father, we ask that your spirit would be with us as we look to your word, that he would open the eyes of our
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minds, the eyes of faith, that we might understand what your apostle is speaking to us in this letter. That we might be able to apply this to our lives. that we
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might bring glory and honor to you through Jesus Christ and that we would indeed leave room for the wrath of God and not for our own. We ask then that you guide us into all truth and keep us
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from error. Lead us in the path of the good and deliver us from evil. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
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I've been asked to make this a twominut sermon instead of three. So I'll cut out all the jokes. US involvement in what was then known as the Great War, which we now know as
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World War I, was rather late. We came in toward the end and kind of helped mop up. But prior to that war, there had been no major western conflicts except
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the US Civil War. And it's interesting that during the Civil War, many European nations sent observers to travel with both the Union and the Confederate armies. And they learned a new art of
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killing, a new strategy of annihilation. And they remarked on the amazing ability of both sides to mow down the other with
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no respect to human life. And they carried those lessons home with them. And they prepared themselves. Each nation, Germany, France, Russia, Great
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Britain, prepared themselves to do the same. And in 1914, of course, they did. 1917, we finally got into the game. However, we had forgotten all the
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lessons. We had disbanded our army. We had uh moth bowled most of our navy and we were not prepared for a war. And so, we had to enact a law of conscription,
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which we now know as the draft, which we don't currently have. And in order to gather up enough men to send over to Europe and to help clean up the mess, we had to draft a number of people. But in
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the meantime, this being the United States, this being a democracy, we had actually also passed legislation that allowed for something called conscientious objection.
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conscientious objection. Those whose religion forbad them from participating in acts of violence against other human beings, aka
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war. One of the most famous conscientious objectors of that war was a man by the name of Alvin York. Most of us know him, if we know him at all. Most of us older people know of him historically as
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Sergeant York. He was a farm boy from Tennessee, not highly educated, but he was drafted and he claimed right as a
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conscientious objector, but his conscience was troubled. Now his congregation, the church of Christ in that area of the Appalachin Mountains was indeed pacifist,
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but he was also a patriot. He was also someone who wanted to obey his government. And so he struggled mightily with the idea of killing as being
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acceptable to a Christian. In the end, he convinced himself with the help of his pastor and spending time in scripture, he convinced himself that it was okay.
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was okay. And he did then join the army as an infantryman and ended up being one of the most decorated soldiers in World War I. He single-handedly took out a German
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machine gun nest and then captured 132 Germans by himself. For that he won the Congressional Medal of Honor and the French Craw Deg Gare, the Cross of War.
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And maybe even more spectacular as an award, he was portrayed in film by Gary Cooper. It's a good movie. I don't know how historical it is, but it's a good movie.
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Conscientious objection, though, is is something that is very, very modern. It was not there in Paul's day and it was not there in the Middle Ages or the Reformation or or even in 1914 in
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Europe. It was pretty much an American thing. The idea that your faith, your religion could actually trump the government's call on your life.
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And it kind of points something out and that is the relationship between Christianity and violence is a reality that many believers have
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struggled with for 2,000 years. When is it okay to kill? We have the commandment, thou shalt not murder. When
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Jesus echoes that commandment, he changes the word murder to the more common word, kill. Thou shalt not kill.
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And and this is on the heels of what he says when he says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God." So what is the relationship between
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Christianity and violence? Between a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ, a child of the of the king and the wars and the violence of the world in which
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we all live and have always lived. And that is really what Paul is addressing here. But within the church, there seems to be two extremes
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historically. On the one hand, there is a Christian militarism. On the other hand, there is Christian
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pacifism. The Anabaptists, for example, during the time of the reformation were were ardently pacifists. ardently pacifists. They refused to even defend themselves
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and would not participate in the wars of the civil magistrates. And for this, they were themselves persecuted and and often killed. Quakers.
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I'm not sure I would number that sect within Christianity, honestly. But nonetheless, they're very famous um I guess quasi Christian organization or
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group that in the time of our revolution were also ardently pacifists and they would not support either going to war against the mother country or
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participating in it. Once that war ensued, they didn't have much trouble making a profit off of it, but they wouldn't actually fight it. And so pacifism is
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something that we have in our history as Christians, but also as we have in our history as Americans. It's it's part of our culture as well as the culture of Christianity in general. I want to pose
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some questions for for our consideration. And please understand that we're entering into a very difficult passage for American Christians. Romans 13, for example, uh
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kind of gets under our skin at times because we are a democracy and we have a certain form of government that allows for a degree of participation that is
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unknown in most of the world even today, but certainly throughout the history of the world and certainly in Paul's day was entirely unknown. So I'm going to offer thoughts, not conclusions.
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Food for thought, consideration. This is the word of God. These are things that are are realities living as Christians in this world. And so they are things
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that we are called upon to wrestle with and our consciences to deal with. Alvin York wrestled with his conscience and he came to a certain decision. Others
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wrestled with the same issue and came to a different decision. One of which we'll we'll talk about a little bit later. But four questions to consider. Is it ever okay for a believer to take
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the life of another human being? Should Christian pacifism dictate a country's penal code? that you
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know that deals directly with the issue of capital punishment which again is a very controversial issue within nations whose current form of government and
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society has been impacted if not formed by Christian teaching. Now I say that very long and drawn out because they're not Christian nations. The short form
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that everybody wants to use, you know, they're a Christian nation. That doesn't exist. We're not a Christian nation. Great Britain is not a Christian nation. Germany is not a Christian nation. But
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their current form of society, heritage, government came through a period of the spread of the Christian gospel and the Protestant Reformation and has it has
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impacted the way they think and some of those countries have outlawed capital punishment and some of our states have done the same. So, can should Christian
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pacifism dictate the country's penal code? Third, can Christians rightly pursue careers in industries of
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violence? Now, I I introduced that question for this reason. this reason. We in the 21st century in the United States have an all volunteer military.
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Now unless that changes, which it could by act of Congress, none of us will face the challenge that presented itself to Alvin York who did
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not volunteer to serve but was constrained and agreed by a government conscription. We don't have that. And so the question sometimes the the the
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questions of application of scripture do change. I hope you realize that we do not live under a Roman imperial system. And so we
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live in a republican system. And yet, does that render the word of God null and void? Certainly not. But it does present a different challenge for us living in the 21st century in applying
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God's word by the grace and guidance of his spirit to the world in which we live. And so therefore, I ask the question, can Christians rightly pursue careers in industries of violence? But
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with that question, an immediate caveat. I think many of you who've paid attention to the social conventions of the past generation will agree that the definition of violence
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has changed. has changed. I grew up in a in an Italian culture. my mother's family and just the northeast
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which has a much more ethnically diverse society than the south did at that time and and as a second generation Italian
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jokes were common. We'd get them all the time. We'd laugh at them and we'd throw them back at the pocks and polish me. We laughed at ourselves. They are now considered acts of
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violence, hate crimes, and you can't say things anymore. So, the definition of violence has changed. And so, when I talk about violence, I want to I want to kind of limit it to the context of this
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passage in Romans. And that is physical violence against other human beings. Not not verbal insult, not even ethnic jokes, none of that, but physical
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violence against other human beings. Can we participate in any industry that contributes to that? Finally, four, what does it mean to be peacemakers in a
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violent world? violent world? One of the impacts of dispensationalism has been to take the biatitudes from Matthew 5
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Matthew 5 and to remove them from the life of the church and to force them into the future to the millennial kingdom of Christ's
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return. Therefore, the blessed are the peacemakers. We are taught implicitly. We are taught that doesn't really apply to us. It applies to the Jewish
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millennial kingdom. That's the ethics of the kingdom I mentioned last week. I don't buy that and I don't think Paul bought it. These
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are the ethics of the kingdom of God which has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ. And so that beatitude blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God that still
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stands. And so I think the fourth question is the most important really the governing one of all of this. How can we live as peacemakers in a violent world? And and I make that point because one of the
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ways the church has tried to kind of uh square the circle is to change the world that we live in through government acts,
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through empires, through kings. we're going to change the world through a League of Nations or United Nations and we're all going to just get along.
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Never worked. It's never worked and it will never work until the new earth when there will be no violence but only righteousness. We live in a world that is violent.
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There were more deaths associated with con military conflict in the 20th century than all previous centuries combined.
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The last 150 years have been the bloodiest in human history. There's no reason to think that we don't live in a violent world. Though, praise
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God, we don't see it every day. But, you know, many in the world today still see it every day. We don't have military tanks rolling down our streets,
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but you see them in Israel, some places in Europe, and certainly in Iran. You see them in the world. The the violence of the world is much closer to
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many than it is to us. We're somewhat insulated and isolated, but we live
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of the relationship between Christianity and violence has been Christian But I want to mention that a remarkable fact of Christian history and and really if you've done any reading in Christian
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history, I think you'll agree this is an undeniable reality undeniable reality that the view of pacifism in any form, Anabaptist, Quaker, Church of Christ,
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what whatever form it may be, has always been a fractional minority of the church at large. at large. those within the church who assued
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violence to any degree, whether it's like the Anabaptist, I won't even defend myself or others who say, well, I'll defend myself in my home, but I won't take up
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arms against my enemies in offensive war. And to those who say I I will I will if the war is declared by my government. You know there's various degrees of this pacifism in every single
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generation of the church that represented a minority view and a very very small minority view. And in many cases like with the Anabaptist and with
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the Quakers at least in Great Britain those who held that view were persecuted and often killed. We we seem to have an aversion in the
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church to the idea of peace, of nonwar, maybe I should put it that way, of nonwar. And that really I I struggle with that. And I I think we
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should struggle with that. I think it should bother us to read history and realize we we are a very very violent people, the human race.
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And as a church there has been very little voice in protest. So let's look at some of the of what the scripture says and the history of the church. For example, um believers in the
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earliest days of the church who were from the Roman legions. Now we we know even from the time of John the Baptist that the fact that these soldiers were
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coming to a knowledge of Israel's God bothered them and they asked John, "Okay, now what do we do now?" Now there are those over the course of
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history who would say, "Oh, you need to resign your commission or you need to stop being a soldier." Um, frankly, that wasn't an option to them. They they were not there voluntarily
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and John did not tell them that. And these again I'm offering you just biblical points of thought and and reference which which will not necessarily form a firm answer because
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I'm not sure there is one. I think we're going to get ourselves into Romans 14 where Paul says, "Let everyone be convinced in his own mind." Okay. But John's response to the Roman
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legionnaires who were coming for baptism, he he said, "Do not take money from others by force or accuse anyone falsely and be content with your wages."
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Now I if you hear this from a Jewish perspective, first of all, there were very few Jews in that day who would not take the opportunity to tell a Roman
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soldier to lay down his sword and spear. John didn't do that. Secondly, the three things that are issue here are actually three
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commandments, six, 8, and nine. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. John
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puts eight and nine over six. Food for thought, allowing them to continue in their occupation, forbidding them from breaking the eighth
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and the ninth commandment on account of the power that they wield as soldiers. as soldiers. During the reformation era, the Anabaptists refused to fight as
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soldiers. They refused to defend themselves with anything other than the word of God and their own testimony. They also refused to participate in the
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manufacturer of swords or spear spears or halberts or any other weapons of warfare. One was at his trial. Um he was
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challenged by the prosecutor who said, "You know that a farm implement can kill someone." To which the Anabaptist answered, "Yes, but it was not made to
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do so. do so. We will not make anything whose purpose is to kill." Now, he sadly was martyed.
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One such Anabaptist, Jacob Hutter. You may have heard of the Hutterites, uh, a cloister community of Anabaptists. It still exists today in what are known as Bruderhos, brother homes.
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That an Anabaptist believer would sooner sooner than strike our enemy with the hand, much less the spear or sword or hellbert, as the world does, we would
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die and surrender life. And as I already mentioned, during the American Revolution, Quakers, especially in Philadelphia, opposed violence and they were against breaking with the
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British government. British government. But such concerns, such views have always again been a minority view and are often persecuted by the government
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and by the church itself. So what do we do? Well,
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a very brief history of the church's relationship with relationship with physical, human, and governmental violence. Now, during the earliest years of the of the church's history, of course,
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Christians were persecuted first by Jews and then by the Roman Empire until the early 4th century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity a legal religion. And then later later in that
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century the emperor Theodocious made Christianity the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire or the Roman Empire. At that point and onward,
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an unholy alliance developed between the ruling powers, the magistrate and the bishops of the Christian church to the point that after the Roman Empire
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fell and centuries later around AD 800, a man was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope. That man was Charles the Great
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or Charlemagne. You've heard remember from your history books. This was hopefully at the time the fulfillment of a doctrine that the church had promagated called the two swords. One is
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the sword of the spirit from Ephesians. The other is the sword of the magistrate from Romans 13. This was the uh thesis of Pope Galatius.
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And he said there are these two swords and it is the responsibility of the civil sword to act on behalf of the spiritual sword.
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spiritual sword. So that from that time on the church itself did not exercise violent discipline or retribution against heretics. They would hand them over to
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the civil magistrate who would do the dirty deed. But a union had come together between church and state by which the church relied on the state to
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execute violence against the enemies of the church and of the state. And those members of the church who were not
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priests, who were not ordained were not only allowed, but they were expected to assist the government in this endeavor. And that was history. And I'm not saying
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that it was entirely incorrect. We will get to that, Lord willing, when we get into chapter 13. But this doctrine of the two swords came about in through the middle ages, it really kind of logically
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led to the crusades where not only were professing Christians allowed to participate in violence against others, violence
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against Jews, violence against Muslims, violence against other Christians in the Eastern Orthodox Church, they were encouraged by the promise of eternal
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reward that that if they were to die during the crusade, they would be granted full remission of sin and and they would have an indulgence that was
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plinary, which meant that when they died, which they had already done, obviously, they would go to heaven. They would not spend time in purgatory. Those who survived the crusades would
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have various degrees of indulgences granted to them. Time off. It's like get out of jail free cards. This was what kind of led to the reformation. But even during the reformation when in Germany
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the peasants who who logically followed the teachings of Martin Luther and and began to demand their just basic civil rights, Luther himself called them schwarmerers,
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which is kind of a German name for the little bugs that you step on. And he called upon the princes of Germany to wipe them out, to use the sword to
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eradicate. That doesn't sound good to me when I read that in the histories of Luther and in his doc do documents like whoa what's going on now coming up into the modern
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era American Revolution and and I know this is where I will probably step on toes and I hope that I can do this in a way that is that is not uh overly offensive but
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offensive but the American Revolution was largely fermented from the American pulpit. There are many books, compilations of sermons preached during the years
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leading up to the American Revolution. There's actually a a very well-known pastor who is a signatory on the Declaration of Independence. The idea of separation of church and
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state didn't mean then what we think it means now. Well, many think it means now. And so many within the church of the colonial era advocated the the right
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of men to rebel. And that that right actually was promagated by the by the English philosopher John Lockach as opposed to the Jewish philosopher Paul.
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But that right of rebellion was used in the churches to encourage civil disobedience and eventually the taking up of arms against what was at
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that time the legitimate government of the American colonies. Now, at this point, I want to give the caveat that I'm really glad it happened.
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Hey, I'm really glad that some things have happened over the course. I'm really glad Nazi Germany was defeated. I'm glad that Kaiser Germany, he Germany
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was defeated. And I'm glad that the United States is not still or they wouldn't be the United States. I'm glad that South Carolina is not still a colony of the British crown.
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But that does not remove history happens and our and our study of it is important to know what decisions were made by our brethren at
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that time and to compare what they decided and what they did with what we read in scripture so that when those circumstances present themselves to us,
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we obey God rather than man. And we can't simply take the reality of historical events as being guidance for the future. Decisions made by the past
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providentially by God do not govern and direct decisions made in the future. Only God's word does. And as we get into it, we may find that
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God's word was not so much in defense of what happened at that time. So what we have in the church then is is this extreme views, this diametrically
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opposed Christian militarism on the one hand and Christian pacifism on the other. And I think Paul's view here is far more nuanced. He says in verse
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17, I'm sorry, 18, I think a key key verse in this whole conundrum of the relationship of Christianity to
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violence, he says, "If possible, in as much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."
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See, that's not forbidding. the participation of a Christian in acts of war. of war. It is not forbidding a Christian
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defending either himself or his home and family or his land and people because many of these things are not
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subject to our ability to avoid. So he he gives us he he he's like John the Baptist. He doesn't tell the legionnaire, you need to lay down your
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sword. He actually says to the Corinthians, in whatever state you came to the Lord, stay in it. If you were a slave, and we can imply if you were a soldier, what whatever you were, even if you were married to an unbeliever, he
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says you stay in that situation. So there's no clear-cut pacifist answer here that there's nothing that Paul says that say we must abore all violence as
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being uncchristian as the Anabaptists did. Rather, we should be more in the situation of Alvin York that when the circumstances is beyond our control and
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we are obligated either by our obedience to the government set above us or an imminent threat to ourselves or to our own family, own family, it is now no longer possible to be at
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peace with all men. Now I know that's an implication of what Paul says but I think it's a logical and reasonable one that there are when living as peacemakers in this world
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there are times at which it is impossible to maintain the peace and violence is required but I hope you agree
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that that should be something that every regenerate human being should recoil from as from death itself.
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Has ever a war occurred that bettered the human condition? No. War is glorious only for those who wage it, not for those who fight it. And that
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frankly is the uniform and consistent testimony of all soldiers throughout the ages and for every country. Only the generals and the admirals and the kings
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are glorified in war, not the soldier. And in every war, the primary sufferer is the non-combatant whose crops are either b uh burned or
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stolen, whose livestock is killed or stolen, whose homes are either occupied or raised to the ground by one force or
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War is the epitome of the fallen condition of mankind. Violence against violence is not the natural human sense as the evolutionary teaches. No, it isn't. And yet, what was
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the first sin recorded in scripture? Murder. And that has been the characteristic of human nature all the way since up to our own day. How can we embrace that?
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How can we say in as Christians that's wonderful? Yes, we live in the most powerful nation in human history. We have we have more
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different ways and we we can now kill people without even sending people to do it. We do it remotely now.
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And on the one hand, I would rather live in a country that is strong than a country that is weak. But how can we rejoice in any of it as it is just the absolute epitome of human fallenness?
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Do we really don't think that there will be swords and spears and halberts in the new earth, do we? And so it all comes down, I think what Paul is saying here is really it all
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comes down to our hearts. We we cannot exercise revenge for ourselves. We cannot fight back when we
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are maligned or even attacked for our faith in Jesus Christ. I think the Anabaptists were correct at that point. that point. But I also think and again these are my
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opinions. I don't know that there's a chapter and verse I can go to except this verse 18 in Romans 12 and then again to Romans 14. Let every man be convinced in his own mind.
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It comes down to our conscience. In World War II, there was a parallel to Alvin York. His name was Desmond Doss. He was also a conscientious objector. So
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much so that he refused he did go to war as a medic. And he refused to carry a sidearm or any military hardware. And
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for that he was bludgeoned by his platoon mates. He was mocked as a But he turned out to be one of the greatest heroes, one of the most
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selfless and courageous men in the American armies of World War II. He also won the Congressional Medal of Honor for acts of bravery on Haxel Ridge when as a medic he risked his life time and time
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again to carry his companions to safety. So he also got the Congressional Medal of Honor. He didn't quite make it in the
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film portrayal. He was portrayed by Andrew Garfield, you know, aka Spider-Man, but Gary Cooper wasn't available anymore. available anymore. I mean, these are these are men who
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faced what I'm talking about, and they responded in a way differently, but according to their conscience. And the similarities is neither of them sought out violence.
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out violence. Neither of them volunteered. Neither of them sought their own revenge. And both of them proved to be very brave in battle and under fire. And so this is not an act of cowardice. It's
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an act of conscience. It's an act of heart attitude. I just think it is inconceivable, and I do believe I'm using that word in the
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right way, that a child of the Prince of Peace could in any way participate willingly or desire or in
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any way exalt in violence, though at times it will be beyond our control to do so. And when it is beyond
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our control to do so, we must do so as unto the Lord. So that a just as a a shopkeeper or as a janitor or as a any type of of of
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laborer, we are to be the really the best there is. Alvin York and Desmond Doss and and men like that show us that we can be the
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best soldier. We can be the best medic. And we're also, when the peace comes, the first to lay down our arms, to put away our guns, to put away
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violence as being enimical to our philosophy, for our to our belief.
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How do we sum this up? Again, as I said, I don't offer conclusions, but I do want to say that the history of war is a history of misery and it mostly
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affects the non-combatants. I do a lot of reading in history and a lot of that history is involved in war, different wars, wars from ancient Rome,
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ancient Greece, Pelpeneisian war through the 19th century, American, the American Revolution of the 18th century, World War I, World War II, Vietnam. That's kind of where I stop.
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Nothing good. Destroys economies, displaces tens and hundreds of thousands of people. Nothing good comes out of war. And I think the more we know about
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war and the more we know about the new creation in Jesus Christ, the greater the distance will be in our own hearts
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between ourselves and all acts of violence. It is fundamental fundamentally contradictory to bear arms for the Prince of Peace.
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We are children of the king. We have civic duty as we'll see in Romans 13. We are to continue to be citizens of whatever government and society God has providentially placed us
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in. That is our duty. Daniel did so in Babylon. We must do so in 21st century America. We are called to do that as unto the Lord. And in doing that, we are
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obeying the Lord rather than men. That duty remains and we should execute it as unto the Lord with honor and dignity and bravery. But our citizenship is from heaven.
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Our king is Jesus Christ and we must rather obey God than men. Let us pray.
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Father, we ask humbly that you would give us wisdom, each one of us, in an area of of ethics with which the church and believers have struggled for
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millennia. We pray that in a time of peace, we would not be wararm mongers, but rather we would be peacemakers, peace maintainers. And yet we know that the ultimate peace that any man can have and
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every man needs is peace with you through Jesus Christ. And so, Father, I pray that that our attitude toward our relationship in a
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violent world would never displace our role as peacemakers. That we are indwelt by the spirit of the
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Prince of Peace himself. May we also be peacemakers. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
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As we consider the ultimate price paid, the ultimate act of violence, we could say, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgatha. As we partake of the
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Lord's supper together, I think we should consider our role as Christ ones