Your God is a Warrior

The argument goes something like this:

“Those who want to hold onto a primitive vision of a violent and retributive God often cite the white horse rider passage from Revelation. They will say something like this: “Jesus came the first time as a lamb, but he’s coming back the second time as a lion.” (Despite the fact that no lion is ever seen in Revelation — the lion is the Lamb!) By this they mean the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels is going to mutate into what they fantasize is the hyper-violent Jesus of Revelation.

“Sadly, the proponents of this flawed interpretation seem to prefer their imagined violent Jesus of the future over the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels. At a basic level they essentially see the Bible like this: After a long trajectory away from the divine violence of the Old Testament culminating in Jesus renouncing violence and calling his followers to love their enemies, the Bible in its final pages abandons a vision of peace and nonviolence as ultimately unworkable and closes with the most vicious portrayal of divine violence in all of Scripture.

“In this reading of Revelation, the way of peace and love which Jesus preached during his life and endorsed in his death, is rejected for the worn-out way of war and violence. When we literalize the militant images of Revelation we arrive at this conclusion: In the end even Jesus gives up on love and resorts to violence. Tragically, those who refuse to embrace the way of peace taught by Jesus use the symbolic war of Revelation 19 to silence the Sermon on the Mount.”

So, in essence, because Jesus taught His followers to turn the other cheek, forgive and pray for their enemies, and be willing to suffer for their faith, the notion of “violent” and “retributive” ultimate justice from God is, by definition, unbiblical, as it runs counter to the loving, forgiving ministry of Christ.

God cannot be a warrior because war is evil.

“Yahweh is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise Him, my father’s God, and I will exalt Him. Yahweh is a man of war; Yahweh is His name.” – Exodus 15:2-3

So, if war and violence are in and of themselves gross evils, how is it that the Bible names Yahweh God as, “a man of war?”

Might it be that war and violence, while only existent because of humanity’s rebellious fall from perfection and the terminally deadly infection of sin that resulted from it, are courses of action whose moral value can only be determined by who or what they are directed toward?

Is violence wrong if it is used in defense of the innocent? Is war evil if it is waged on behalf of the supreme good of all existence (not to mention by Him)?

No, it is evident instead that only either a misunderstanding of the purpose of Christ’s commands towards personal peacemaking, love and forgiveness or an invalid pacifistic presupposition hoisted upon the Bible will lead a person to the conclusion that God and war must be mutually exclusive.

A few observations:

1. God is love. This is absolutely true, according to I John 4:8. But the implications of this statement stretch far beyond what seems to be so many people’s initial cursory reading and understanding of it. God is love, which means that He gets to define what love really, truly looks like and how it operates - not us. It seems wildly evident from the Scriptures that our own human notions of what love must be are inherently flawed and must be reformed by Scripture to be valid.

2. God is love, but that is not all that God is. He is also just (Galatians 6:7, Isaiah 30:18, II Thessalonians 1:6), and this perfect combination of justice and love is a big part of what comprises His holiness: His God-ness, His absolute and total perfection, His unique separateness, His glory. God’s holiness is a purity of goodness so profound and so powerful that it would literally destroy any person who saw Him (Exodus 33:20), and His justice and wrath against evil is as much a part of that holiness as His love. We must take the entire character of God into account at all times and let Him determine the definitions of things like love and goodness.

Paul exhorts us to, “Note the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness,” in Romans 11:22. When it comes to the issues of God’s love and wrath, mercy and judgement, forgiveness and vengeance, the Bible is crystal clear: it is both/and, not either/or, depending on how a person responds to the Gospel of Christ.

3. The glory of God is the highest purpose of God Himself. One of the most fundamental paradigm shifts the Bible presents us with is the truth that God loves Himself more than anything or anyone else – and that He is right, good, just, and holy for doing so. For Him to do anything else would be unjust and unholy. Therefore, the glory of God is the purpose and meaning of all existence and any truly Christian understanding of love must have that at the very core of its definition.

4. God is allowed to do things that we are not. I would hope this might be self-evident, but it bears repeating: God’s holiness, position as sovereign ruler of the universe, and identity as progenitor of all existence mean that He can set moral boundaries and give specific commands to His creation that He is not required to conform to Himself. In fact, it only makes sense that it would be this way: a perfectly holy, loving, and just God would of course be able to perform actions that sinful, broken, imperfect creatures could never handle. A father commanding his 3-year-old son not to touch the table saw or drink a beer is not an unjust hypocrite for doing those things himself.

5. God is the author of all life and the executor of all death. “See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39) (Read the next three verses for some even more enlightening context.)

6. God didn’t start the conflict – we did. Paul, writing to believers in Rome made the statement that, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” (Romans 5:10, emphasis mine). The unregenerate and sinfully rebellious people of this world are actively opposed to the God who both created them and lays claim to their allegiance as their rightful king. Humanity started a war against God and God will simply be the one who brings it to an end. The events of Revelation 19 are nothing more than the justified quenching of a completely evil and unjust rebellion.

7. God’s holiness – His love and justice – demand that sin be accounted for, either at the cross of Christ or in judgment.  “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) Those are our two options: death or eternal life. The life is found through the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ on our behalf and His propitious death on a cross (I Thessalonians 1:10, II Corinthians 5:21). If we reject that, the only other option available to us is death – and that death comes through the righteous judgment of God Himself (Colossians 3:6, Ephesians 5:6, Romans 2:2-10).

The desire to make the God of the Bible a pacifist may be a potent one. There are plenty of people who are completely uncomfortable with violence and abjectly horrified by war. It is easy to see how such people might struggle to unite the idea of a loving God with one that says He will ultimately destroy His enemies with incredible violence.

But we must let the Bible do the talking. We must let our own definitions of things like love and justice be provided to us by the One who perfectly embodies both of them. We must be willing to overcome our own private objections if those objections are directly refuted by the Bible.

The only other option is to do (figurative) violence to the text of the Scriptures in order to make it say what we want it to say. To insist that we know what love means more than the God who wrote those Scriptures is to put an awful lot of weight on our own human preconceptions. And to redefine God in such a way so as to make Him unwilling to ever deploy violence for the vindication of His glory is not only to demonstrate a misunderstanding of God’s love, but also of the nature and depth and seriousness of sin and evil. Deliberate and repeated insults, slights, and defilement of the glory of an absolutely holy, perfect, and good God absolutely justify a decisive, fierce, and violent response.

The conclusion is simple: the God of the Bible is a warrior who fights for His own glory as well as the salvation of the people redeemed in the name of that glory. The enemies of God are opposed to that which is ultimately good, loving, pure, and true. Only the work of Christ on the cross can rectify that atrocity. And for those who insist on their own ways over-and-above those of their God, they will meet Him not as the Prodigal Son did, running with arms outstretched, celebrating the return of a beloved family member. Instead, they will meet Him as a combatant in a fight they haven’t the slightest hope of winning.

The Lord God is God of war. His wrath against sin is coming.

It will not be withstood. It will not be resisted.

It will be just. It will be good.

To say anything else is to oppose the Bible.

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“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
– Revelation 22:12-13

Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” – Revelation 6:15-17

“I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.” – Luke 19:26-27

Yahweh will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. – Exodus 14:14

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” – Romans 12:19