When you kneel at the foot of the Cross, your life becomes forfeit. You probably aren’t thinking along those lines at the time, but the vast majority of Christian suffering is people objecting to God’s choices for them. A whole lot of confusion would evaporate if, as part of welcoming new converts, we explained that their lives were going to end that day. Galatians 2:20 clears up a lot of things.
This life, your life and mine as humans, is trash. It’s not worth anything at all, and it’s a wonder the Lord accepts it as a fit offering. Then again, it is what He demands. If we fuss and fume about how human governments are doing bad things to us, then we are still standing at the foot of the Cross, refusing to kneel and make that offer. Only when you get past that point can you begin to actually serve the Lord.
Death is not a tragedy. Death is release. The only question is when your death, or anyone else’s, meets the purpose of God on this earth. He gets to decide. The injustice of murder is not that life was taken from someone, but that it wasn’t taken on God’s terms.
Trying to inject legalism into that consideration is just as evil as murder itself. It’s personal; everything in Creation is personal. God plays favorites. People who prostrate themselves to His service are held to a higher standard, and yet they are also granted higher privileges.
It is the same high duty and submission to carry my own Cross as it is to take up war against certain kinds of human evil. If my life is trash, so is everyone else’s life. I didn’t decide this in the first place; it’s something God has revealed over and over again. The final revelation was in His Son. This life is not precious except as a sacrifice. It may be useful to certain authorities, up to and including God, but it’s not inherently precious.
The Bible makes heroes of men who were violent at the right moment for the right reason. It didn’t matter if the violence was assassination, terror or genocide. The act of violence was not a sin in itself. The idea that the government can send you out to slaughter, but that you cannot decide before the Lord to slaughter without a government permit, is a lie from Hell. That’s because not a single human government standing today is approved by God.
However, every government is permitted by God on rather complicated grounds. We know it has a lot to do with Satan and his allies among the various spiritual powers, principalities and authorities. We know that Jesus avoided getting involved in fighting government, including His own evil national government, at least in terms that would have changed the government. Rather, He rebelled in altogether different terms that included denouncing it publicly and demonstrating clearly that it was evil.
We are in a different context. The path of action is not the same. Jesus’ government sought specifically to crush the gospel message. Our government does not. His government was being disowned by God; ours already is. On and on — it’s a different situation. One thing that hasn’t changed is that Jesus chose not to act through any human organization, because human organization is part of the problem. While in theory there could be a righteous government, the history of Israel proved it would not be long or often, even under the strongest and most indulgent patronage from God. Israel was the proof that a human government cannot do God’s work consistently.
Paul said flatly that human governments do not get carte blanche. All you really owe them is to love your covenant family as family, and sinners as sinners in need of redemption. All the claims of human government must be filtered through that priority. In the end, Paul defied his own government on certain things. He played one human government off against another to get himself into position to witness in places he struggled to visit on his own.
Do you understand that his desire to visit Spain was to fulfill prophesies that the gospel message must go to all the ends of the earth? While the mention of Tarshish was largely symbolic, in Paul’s mind that signified the end of the known world for the Old Testament prophets, and best he knew, that was Spain. Yet, today you would hard pressed to find any human that had not at least herd some version of the message of Christ. It’s a different world today.
Depending on the context, your response to some provocation of human evil could range between carrying our cross or nuking some place. Nothing is off the table. For the time being, the US government is not allowed to treat me like a terrorist, despite having me on some list regarding me as one. It’s quite unlikely I would, but it’s certainly not a sin in itself. This is the kind of thing that can’t be summarized as a matter of principle, but as a matter of conviction.
It’s just a tool in the toolbox.
