Don’t Hesitate to Slice

It’s a very old truth, cited in ancient sources: Evil will call your bluff and try to wear down the righteous. Righteous men seek to be merciful, and evil seeks to exploit this.

There is a very real difference between being stupid and being evil. Sooner or later, stupid will surrender. Evil never does. We learned this in our last Bible lesson about Jezebel and Elijah. Jezebel was demonic evil, not just some stupid misguided bitch. Elijah expected her to surrender after God’s victory on Mount Carmel, but God was not surprised when she didn’t. It’s odd how Elijah understood the necessity of bloodshed on the priests of Baal and Asherah, but didn’t understand how the thing that made them worthy of execution was rooted in Jezebel’s lust for power.

So the resolution of Elijah’s retreat to Mount Horeb was God promising to end the terror of Jezebel’s power using other fallen humans as His weapon. He was preparing to raise up a ruler over Damascus who would eventually destroy the Omride Dynasty. He was also preparing a usurper for the throne of Israel. He was also preparing a successor prophet who would be more determined than Elijah, someone ready to take the sword even more than Elijah had been.

Why do you suppose God condemned Israel at Bochim (Judges 2)? It’s one thing when fools rush to shed innocent blood, but it’s another when the righteous hesitate to execute justice on evil. The key is not to get lost in debates about what mercy requires; it was a mercy on the rest of Creation to remove the unspeakable evil of the Canaanites. If you can’t tell the difference between stupid and evil, you deserve the loss of all shalom. And if your convictions don’t give you the power to execute justice, pray that God will raise up someone who can.

The question is not mercy, but discernment. If you do not see how Christ on the Cross represents the same God who called for genocide in Palestine, then you don’t know God at all. If you don’t see how the Cross condemns genuine evil on this earth, you cannot see at all. This was part of the Covenant of Noah, as well: Mankind serving God must be willing to execute divine justice in capital punishment. Stop assuming a genuine follower of Christ cannot bear the sword. Don’t assume the mission of Elisha would disqualify him as a follower of Christ, any more than David’s mission of conquest was somehow un-Christlike.

Jesus used a whip where the Covenant required it. That was what the context demanded for divine justice. The question rests on the context of the covenant and the threat. Neither David nor Elisha nor Joshua were defending mere human comfort. It was a matter of defending shalom. It was keeping peace with God. This is the same God who will destroy the whole world when He sends His Son back.

You cannot make peace with demons. Christ said that the majority of this world belonged to Hell before they even died. God’s wrath fell on Jesus as a proxy for all, but only the penitent can claim that sacrifice on their behalf. We are told to expect that anyone can become penitent, because God refuses to tell us who is or isn’t Elect. But everyone’s life on this earth is forfeit from birth, so this isn’t about saving your human existence. It’s about promoting the glory of the Lord, so during that lag time before the presumed potential of repentance of any random human, the issue is whether their evil crosses that line of no return. Human life is not sacred. God has said the covenant elders must be ready to defend shalom God gave them to the death, and that means sometimes to someone else’s death.

We know that we must turn the Flaming Sword of the Spirit on ourselves before we can use it on the domain He places in our hands. Our lives become forfeit to divine glory, and this is grants us the authority to hold a domain on God’s behalf. When some other person enters that domain, they are subject to that Flaming Sword. You must oppose evil no matter whom Satan has chosen to bear it. We hope it slices the evil out of their lives. If that person is unable to disconnect from that evil, they die with it.

Jesus said that if your hand belongs to evil, cut it off. He said if your eye is wedded to evil, poke it out. That implied that if your life belongs to evil, you deserve to die. How much of you belongs to the Devil?

If the Lord puts a sword in your hand, literal or metaphorical, be not slow to use it. Be quick to use it on your own sins, so that you can justify holding it in the first place. But when you are called to lead, it means you exercise dominion over sin in others who enter that domain. Divine justice cuts off sin, and sadly that means it sometimes cuts off people. Don’t be slow to defend the Lord’s sovereignty in your life.