A Vertical Look at the Cause of War (Pt II)

Biblically, ever since mankind was divided into nations, there have always been kings, rulers, presidents. The sadness lay in the fact that from the beginning of national life, there has been a consistent record of devastating wars involving both Jews and Gentiles. Greed, pride, covetousness, ambition have resulted in terrible and horrific wars and prisoners-of-wars leaving a legacy of great anguish and sorrows for multitudes of innocent people.

War is not only a consequence of sin, but also an expression of sin itself. The government of this country cannot ease our mental stress because we realize that even after Presidents Bush and Obama, after all the peace negotiations; the situation in this world is still grave. In response to his claim to the Christian faith, a journalist poses an interesting question: Obama and War: What Would Jesus Do?

What is the Christian Response?

But God has willed that there should be states and governments. He has willed the powers that be: “there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” (Romans 13:1).

As history has proven time and time again, God, according to His own ordained schedule, will halt man’s foolishness; cruel, godless rulers and governments are crushed by His mighty power. All rulers are dependent upon His sovereignty. “So the Lord said to Solomon, "Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.” 1 Kings 11:11.

We recall the incident where David, although a great king, was severely punished for trusting that deliverance from his enemies was dependent upon a large battalion (in the Old Testament the primary reason for taking a census was to know the size of a nation’s army and its ability to win wars against other people). God never said He would support big battalions. Regardless of how hard the world seeks to convince us otherwise, national security is not dependent upon strong armed forces, or even the possessor of the most lethal of weapons. No ruler is immune from defeat or disaster because of what he has, whether small or large or deadly. National prosperity and peace are ordained by God. “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.” Isaiah 31:1.

You probably remember that King Hezekiah received the promise of deliverance from the overwhelming forces of Assyria because he recognized his utter helplessness to do anything apart from God. “O Lord, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.” (2 Kings 19:15). In the end, God did it ALL. Hezekiah did not raise a finger in his defense. The Assyrian army of a hundred and eighty-five thousand men were killed by one little angel. (2 Kings 19:34-35). A firm, unshakable faith in God, and the recognition of Him in every phase of national life, is the strongest and most impregnable defense any nation can have. As King of nations, ruling the world by His power and providence, and overruling all the affairs of the children of men to His own glory; God does according to His will among the people of the earth.

The Bible is replete with stories of long wars between the one God and the many, a movement from polytheism to monotheism, from the God of Israel to the God of the universe. The conflict, of course, was between those who would limit and attempt to monopolize God and those who would liberate Him as universal God. That battle continues.

Twenty-first century man has inherited many of those old tribal notions of deity. Once tribes, we are now great nations with superficial boundaries, each convinced of its own inherent superiority. And despite the insights of centuries that God is one God, a universal God, we keep regressing back into the primitive mentality of a local God, that He belongs to our nation, our class, our people and that His concern for others beyond our boundaries is at best nominal.

All of this is provincial nonsense and we know it because we know that “God so loved the world…” As Joshua makes clear in 5:13-15, the issue at hand is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side.

One of the most incredible contradictions possible for us to conceive is to think of the universal God occupying some corner of our planet with an American flag (or any flag for that matter) in His hand, limiting His love to our land, withholding it from another; creating some people to be masters in the earth and ordaining others to be the servants. What kind of God would He be who wanted Aryans to be the superior people, the Jews to be forced out of existence and people of color to slave under the heat of the burning sun? Without a doubt, this is one of the reasons Jesus had to get away and leave the Pharisees; standing as they were in the temple, looking through a racial knothole, thanking God that He was local and would take their side against their enemies.

Martin Niemöller, was an anti-Communist who initially supported Hitler’s rise to power. But when Hitler insisted on the supremacy of the state over religion, Niemöller became disillusioned and later stated: “It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of His enemies!” This is true. The love of God is not confined to the limits of man’s finite mind. He loves those who love Him and He loves those who fight against Him. He loves the saved and the lost and loves those who even as I write this hub, are writing messages of hate and books to prove there is no God.

And so again, we are left with the truth of mankind for without sinful man, there would be no wars.

As believers, we can preach the Sermon on the Mount until we are blue in the face to people who are dead in trespasses and sins and we will not affect a difference. Sinners cannot practice it because they do not want to. They are “enemies and aliens in their minds.” They are controlled by their “lusts.” There is only one hope for man in sin, declared Paul, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.” Men must be regenerated; they must be given a new nature and made alive in Christ before they can even begin to comprehend the Christian message, let alone put it into practice.

The Gospel message beloved, which is the Christian message to an unbelieving world, is not concerned with international peace conferences or with political and international relationships or industrial disputes or in preaching against physical warfare. To do so is simply to waste precious time. What is needed is that we start with God’s fundamental principle, the doctrine of man in sin, in his deadness, in his hopelessness, in his utter weakness, in his complete helplessness.

The Church, body of Christ, has only one gospel message to an unbelieving world and it is captured in this one verse: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” The Christian faith has no message to the world apart from that. But Holy Writ also makes it clear that while this is our message to unbelief, God nevertheless has done something about this sin and evil world by putting controls on it; He has set limits and restricted its power.

The Christian message to unbelieving individuals is that he or she can be delivered out of this present evil world; that there is an escape from condemnation that is coming upon this world. This is the message of the Apostle Paul. It is a message to individuals. It is not an appeal for people to reform themselves and do this and not do that . Rather, it is a message which says that as a result of what God has done in Christ Jesus, His Son, our Lord and Savior, we who were in the very time warp of that sinful condemned world can be delivered out of it. For Christ, “who gave himself for our sins,” Paul says to the Galatians, “rescues us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,” (Galatians 1:4).

As Christians, we fully realize that we are all citizens of this country and world and we are all involved in what happens to it. If we go to war, we are all involved. We do not escape because we are Christians but share in its fate. What is different for Christians is that while remaining physical citizens of this world, we have become spiritual citizens of another kingdom, a kingdom offered to us by Christ, a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom not made by hands, eternal in the heavens.

This doctrine works itself out in practice when we put our hope, not on anything in this world but in the Kingdom of God. We know that we are pilgrims here, strangers in a strange land, sojourners. We know that man is a creature who is ruled by lusts and that lust always produces war and that we may be confronted with it at any time and when we are, we are not surprised or fearful. We understand and have no illusions about living in such a world for we are connected with a Power that enables us to endure whatever comes to us in this world and be victorious over it. Let the world do its worst, we are sustained by “the victory that overcame the world, even our faith.”

Yes, there is the world and there are wars, but we get a promise from the Lord:

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Isaiah 2:4. All glory to God!!

Acknowledgements

Herman A. Hoyt, “Nonresistance,” in War: Four Christian Views, Robert G. Clouse, ed.

Johann Christoph Arnold, Seeking Peace