War (8-8-12)

Exodus 20:13 - "You shall not murder."

I know I've started the last few times with this same commandment, but it's a really good platform for talking about some somewhat controversial issues in our world, and so I'd like to use this verse one more time as a platform from which to talk about the subject of war. Does God consider warfare to be murder? What does the Bible teach about this subject?  
In Romans chapter 13 the apostle Paul is writing concerning human governments and our responsibility to be subject to them. He says in verses 3-4 - "For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil." I just want to key in on this idea in verse four of the government bearing the sword. In the immediate context Paul is talking about the right of our human governments, in this case the Roman government, to use the sword against anyone who will not obey the law. But in thinking about this Roman sword, we can look back over history and see that that same Roman sword was used, not only in discipline against it's own citizens, but also in other nations in acts of war. And so the question comes to mind, does God ever sanction the sword by a nation against another nation? This may seem like a tricky question, but if I asked it to a group of Jewish Scribes 2100 years ago they would say "duh!", or something to that effect. Of course God sanctions the sword by one nation against another. That's what the books of Joshua and Judges are all about. Throughout the Old Testament God is telling His people to go through the land and destroy it's inhabitants. And yet we come to the New Testament and it's all about love and peace. What happened? It's almost as if God took a 400 year nap between the Old Testament and the New Testament, woke up, felt a lot better and decided to stop killing everybody. Did God change His mind about war? I see Christians driving around with bumper stickers that say "When God said love your enemies, He probably meant don't kill them." There are denominations of Christians that are absolutely opposed to war based on verses like Matthew 5:44 where the Lord Jesus says - "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." and Romans 12:17-19 which says - "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. 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, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “ Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord." And these Scriptures are great, and I believe them with all my heart. But I have to say that if any nation on earth began living by these New Testament principles and put away every kind of weapon and stopped defending and protecting themselves with force, they would be a sitting duck for all the other nations.
So how do we reconcile these two things. God commanded His people in the Old Testament to go to war and wipe out their enemies by force, and He tells His people in the New Testament to love their enemies and never to pay back evil for evil. What are we to make of this?

To answer this we need to look all the way back at Genesis chapter 12. This is when God first calls Abraham, the man through whom God was going to make a people for Himself, a people known as the nation of Israel. When the Lord God called Abraham He said this to him in Genesis 12:1-3 - "Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." God said to Abraham "I will make you a great nation." Gods chosen people in the Old Testament was the nation of Israel. Israel is a nation among nations. Contrast this with what the Lord Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 28:19 - "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations." The church is not a nation among nations, but rather an international organization. This distinction is very important, and there are a lot of people who will misread and misinterpret the Bible because they don't recognize it.
God told Abraham "I will make you a great nation." He told His disciples to "make disciples of all nations." The New Testament is Gods instructions to the church, His body. We, the church, are not building a nation. Christ is building an international organization, and the New Testament is Gods instructions to that international organization. The Old Testament, by and large, is God's instructions to a nation living among nations. And if a nation is going to survive and even thrive it is going to be characterized by war. In the Old Testament, Gods instructions to a nation, He lays out very plainly the rules of warfare. This is what Deuteronomy 20 is all about. In this chapter God makes the point that there must be just conduct in war. And so I say again, the Old Testament, by and large, is Gods instructions to Israel, a nation among nations.

The New Testament however is Gods instructions to an international organization, the church. And, unlike a nation among nations, an international organization, the church, does not need war in order to survive and thrive. O sure, there is warfare, but it's a different kind of warfare. Spiritual warfare. This is what Paul says about our warfare in 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 - "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses." The fighting of the church is not like the fighting of nations. The way that we are going to advance, the way that we thrive and strive is by our words. That's the warfare of the church. We're sent out into every nation to preach the truth, defend the truth, be ready to give an answer. The weapons of this international organization are evangelism, discipleship and apologetics. By our words we are destroying fortresses. Not like the walls of Jericho, but we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
That being the case, the Old Testament speaks of literal warfare. The New Testament is speaking of spiritual warfare. But even in New Testament times literal warfare is still necessary, because we are still living in nations among other nations. So the warfare in the Old Testament is not abolished. Nations still function the same as they always have. So when good, well meaning people try to abolish every form of warfare they are taking a good, biblical principle and applying it in a wrong way. They say that God doesn't like killing and that we as a nation should put away all our weapons and just be at peace with the rest of the world. Turn the other cheek and not retaliate or take our own revenge when somebody comes and knocks our buildings down. But you'll notice that no nation is trying that, and there's a good reason for it. As I've mentioned, as soon as a nations stops defending and protecting itself by force they become a sitting duck. Nations still have to defend and protect by force. Sure, war is not ideal. It wasn't ideal in the book of Joshua either, but it was necessary. There is a responsibility for us, the international church, to live in our nations by the principles that God sets up in the New Testament, but we cannot apply these principles to the  nations in which we live.

God doesn't delight in war. We're told in Ezekiel 33:11 - "Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live.'" The Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He takes no pleasure in nations killing one another and wars breaking out across the globe all throughout human history, but war is a necessary thing. We recognize that war is a necessary thing. We cannot like war, or delight in it. War is a grievous thing. We are satisfied with a just result but we must not delight in the war itself because the Lord does not.
All the way up to the end of time there will be war. We read in Daniel 9:26 - "even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined." and Jesus said in Matthew 24:6 - "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." God has declared that there will be wars til the end, but along with that information He gives us this instruction - "See that you are not troubled." The Lord is in control, and He is using these wars throughout history to accomplish His ultimate purpose.

Having then seen all these things, is it wrong for a Christian to serve in the armed services? Is it wrong for a member of Gods international organization to fight in the army of their nation among nations? God never calls the church to disengage from our individual nations. God never tells us not to be actively involved in the warfare of our nations. I recognize that this is an argument from silence, and that just because God doesn't say not to do something it doesn't automatically make it right. But I think it's interesting to note that in Matthew 8 when the Lord Jesus was going to heal the servant of a leader in the Roman army, He says to the crowd - "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!" And in Acts chapter 10 when salvation was opened to the Gentiles, the first convert was a Roman centurion by the name of Cornelius. In Luke chapter 3 when soldiers asked John the baptist what they needed to do, he didn't say anything to them about getting out of the army. These are just some interesting passages to note. It doesn't seem that God has any problem with a person serving in their nations military. We began by looking at Romans chapter 13 and this is what we read in verse 7 - "Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tax is due." Paul instructs them to pay their taxes to the Roman government. These taxes went directly to funding the Roman war machine, the military power of the world in that day, the Roman army. By paying their taxes they were supporting the Roman army. If the command is given in Gods word to pay taxes, thereby supporting the nations military, then I don't think you can say that God is opposed to someone supporting their country by fighting in it's military.

The bottom line is, the Lord loves life. He is the giver of life, He hates war, killing and death, but He knows that these things are necessary in a fallen world. And He makes a definite distinction between war and murder.