Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We are continuing our discussion on rebuttals to non violence, and how our position deals with that. This episode is going to focus on one of the most common objections to Christian nonviolence. The basic objection is that Christ's life was lived in a specific way in order to fulfill His messianic role, and it doesn't really apply to us today. How Jesus acted and some of the things he said were really just for him because he had to be our Messiah.

Now whether or not you actually would say this outright, I find that it happens to be something that most of us really believe. We just don't really acknowledge it. And this was actually one of the things that had kept me from Christian nonviolence, as well as a lot of other teachings of Christ, because it's this view that he's a messianic figure that allows me to take some of the things he says as metaphor or as things that don't really apply to me, particularly Matthew 5 through 7, Sermon on the Mount types of stuff. You know, those hard teachings where, well, that's something that the Messiah can say and do, but that's not really what He means for me in the real world where that just wouldn't work out. So, in order to address this, I am largely going to use John Howard Yoder's book as a framework, his his famous book, The Politics of Jesus.

I will link a resource in the description, but I will also link you a resource to my summary of of Yoder's book, if you find a synopsis of of it easier than picking up a whole book and reading it. But either way, even if you choose to read my summary first, I highly recommend Yoder's full work. Extremely quotable and insightful, and just very helpful at uncovering a lot of those presuppositions we talked about in the first episode. Before I begin with Yoder's rebuttal, I do want to read Philippians 2, because I think that's something that we refer to pretty frequently throughout the episodes, and it's gonna be very important here, and I'll refer back to it over and over. So let me just read Philippians 2, the the first portion.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have his mind among yours. This mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.

Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father. So Philippians 2 is going to be particularly important because Paul is essentially telling believers that you need to act a particular way towards others, and you need to have a particular mindset that is others focused. And, the reason that we should do this is because our savior did the same thing. And, the particular things that that Philippians shows us is that Jesus gave up His sovereign control of things and submitted to the Father's will, and, He he didn't he wasn't concerned with being pragmatic, but he submitted even to a foolish death, even to a suffering death.

He came to earth, he left heaven and came to earth for us, and he did it, in the humblest of circumstances. And He was always focused on God, and He was focused on others. And in this regard, we are to be like Christ, and we are to take our encouragement to be others focused by the example of Christ. And that's the backbone of the example that Christ, that Paul gives here. Christ is our example for how to live.

So the main thing Yoder seems to hone in on is this idea of, Christ not grasping at His divinity or or equality with God. And that's not to say that Christ lost His divinity or was not always God, but it's to say that that Christ laid down His right to choose to be sovereign and control everything. And Yoder shows us this in the temptation of Christ. And this is where Yoder really begins his, expounding in the book, The Politics of Jesus. So Yedder starts with Satan's temptation in the desert, and Satan tempts Jesus with three things.

Tempts Him to turn stones into bread, tempts Him to jump from the temple, and he tempts him to bow to Satan so that Satan would give him control of the nations. Now, in my mind, all of these things had been sort of arbitrary, except for maybe the bread. Right? The bread is kind of like, well, Jesus is hungry. But Yoder really goes to show that turning all of the stones in the desert, which that's what Satan sat Satan kind of says.

He's he's talking about a multitude of stones being turned to bread. He's not just saying, hey, make a loaf of bread for yourself. It's this idea of turning this barren wasteland into into bread. And, Yoder points out that that this is the economic temptation, Jesus. It's the temptation to control the masses through feeding their bellies.

And, when I first heard that, I was like, well, that's that's kind of weird. But, what's really interesting is that you see, the I think in John in particular, you see one of the very first things that happens after the, the temptation in the desert is eventually when Jesus comes to some crowds and He feeds them, all of a sudden, what do they wanna do? They want to crown Him king. And what's Christ's response? He escapes by boat.

He runs from them so they they can't crown him king, because he had fed them. He had satiated them, and they said, yeah, we want more of that. Give us what you just gave us. Keep doing that. The second temptation from Satan is to jump off of the the temple and have some angels save him, though to kind of show this miraculous sign.

Now, Yoder goes in and and talks about what this might specifically mean, doing it at a particular location and, in a particular way. But, certainly, there is there is something different about this temptation, because Jesus was willing to do a lot of signs and miracles for people. So, you know, if He's willing to heal and raise people from the dead and all that stuff, what's jumping from from the top of the temple? Like, that's what it's gonna take to have people believe if you're raising people from the dead. Why not just do that?

The Yoder talks about how this is a a specific temptation and an example of, it's not just a miracle that Christ would do, like raising somebody from the dead, but it's a miracle associated with a particular power, a particular institution. That institution would be the religious institution. So whereas the bread was a means to control people and garner power economically through people's desires, through their their physical needs. The temple temptation was proclaiming Jesus as king? Well, it's when proclaiming Jesus as King?

Well, it's when He He comes into Jerusalem and they proclaim Hosanna. And so, you've got this multitude of people as He goes into the temple, and He sets up shop in the temple and starts teaching. And what's particularly interesting is that Jesus kind of does the same thing that He does with the with the economic temptation. When, when people wanted to crown Him as king, He ran away. He escaped by boat.

Well, what does Jesus do when He sets up shop in the temple after everybody is proclaimed him king? That's when he has the discussion about the temple and how wonderful and magnificent it is, and Jesus says, yeah, it's gonna get destroyed. Right? And there's not gonna be one stone left on top of another. And so He ticks some people off.

He's like, no. I'm not here to set up shop permanently. This this institution, it's not the power. That's not where power lies. And so, with Satan, he denies the temptation of bread, turning the stones into bread.

He denies the temptation to jump from the temple. And then we see that played out literally where twice, through those those very means, people want to crown Jesus king and Jesus refuses. 3rd way, the third temptation, is for, Jesus to bow to Satan, and Satan will give the nations into the control of Jesus. Now this one is is clearly a an attempt to get Jesus to grasp at power. And once again, Jesus refuses.

And in the gospels, we see this play out as the last temptation that Christ faces, and probably the the most difficult temptation. This is Garden of Gethsemane, sweating blood. He's about to confront the Jewish powers and and the Roman powers, and so he goes before Pilate, and, and he just kind of refuses to answer a lot, and he says, my kingdom's not of this world. I, if if it were, my people would fight. And in Luke specifically, it tells us that Jesus, you know, could have called legions of angels, but He refused.

And what did they do? But they put a a plaque above His His cross that said, King of the Jews. So, as a recap, you've got this economic temptation, and Jesus makes lots of bread. People wanna crown him king. It's Satan's first temptation played out, and Jesus escapes by boat.

You We got the 2nd temptation to jump from the temple. Jesus doesn't give in to Satan, but then we see this play out as Jesus, sets up shop in the temple, as people are are, proclaiming kingly things about Him, and He says, nope. Not gonna happen that way. Temple's gonna be destroyed. So that's not the power.

And the final time is when He comes up against the political powers, and Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. That's not how power comes. And he lays down his life while they mock him as king of the Jews. So time and time again, we see that Jesus refused the powers of authoritative manipulation. Jesus is the king, but his rule is not like the world's rule.

And as Yoder explained that, it clicked so much for me the first time. Because, you know, I had always wondered, when I read Hebrews and I I read that Jesus was tempted in all ways that we were, I thought, well, that's that's really nice that the author of Hebrews could say that. Maybe he knew Jesus personally and knew some things I didn't. Maybe he was his accountability partner or something. And, but the the scriptures never show Jesus' struggle with anything, really.

I mean, Jesus doesn't seem to struggle with lust. He doesn't seem to struggle with lying. He does he just doesn't struggle with anything. So how can you say that he's tempted like we are? But what Yoder does is he shows us that that the temptation isn't these, the temptation of Christ that we see over and over and over and over again.

It's not this one off temptation of something like, like, lust in the moment, but it's this temptation that we all face each and every day, in almost every moment of our day, which is, do we grasp a power in our own way, or do we seek to use the means of God, submit to His will in all things? And that's what we see Jesus struggle with. It's this ultimate, core, human struggle. We see that in the temptations of Satan and then in the subsequent temptations played out, which we just talked, in-depth about. We see it when Peter tells Jesus that He's not gonna suffer.

Jesus knows that's what God has for him to do. That is the means of God. It is not to assert dominance and to take power through angels. And Peter says, you're not gonna suffer. Jesus says, get behind me, Satan.

Right? He he calls Peter Satan for telling him he's not going to suffer. That certainly seems to indicate this was a pretty big temptation for Jesus, to not choose suffering and to choose and to choose dominance and authoritative power. There's a time when a couple of Christ's disciples asked Him to call down fire upon a city for rejecting Him, and He said, you don't know what spirit you're of. Right?

You're of the spirit of the devil. And in the Old Testament, I mean, they were doing that kind of stuff where they would yep. There's one where, like, Elijah or Elisha, I forget who, but, you know, they had some bears come in and, like, maul a bunch of kids, because they called them bald. And so, calling down fire from from heaven upon the city who rejects the true Messiah seems like a pretty good thing to do. But Jesus says, no, that's not how my kingdom comes.

That's that's not what we do. That's of the devil. We see when Peter wields the sword to try to protect Jesus from having to suffer, when he puts his money where his mouth is, back when he told Jesus he's not gonna let him suffer. Jesus says, Peter, put it away. We don't do things with the sword.

That's not how my kingdom comes. Jesus begs for the father to take the cup of suffering from him, to prevent him from going to the cross. He begs Him. He is in so much anguish that He actually sweats drops of blood. You can't tell me that that's not a temptation for Jesus, to walk away at that moment, or to call those legions of angels.

Time and time and time again, we see Jesus Christ struggle with this idea of seeking control and seeking power and refusing to submit to the means of God, which is suffering and cross. Bullishness just doesn't make any sense. Yet, Jesus submitted, as Philippians 2 shows us. And, as Philippians 2 shows us, we're to do the same. And, as Jesus says, we are supposed to take up our crosses and bear them.

We are to expect suffering. In these ways, we are to be like Christ. And so what what a lot of people get wrong is that they they do correctly identify Christ as the Messiah, but a lot of people get wrong the aspects of his life we are supposed to imitate. And Yoder really harps on, like, the monastics. And he says, look.

Now Jesus was itinerant. He didn't really have a home. Does that mean that we are to mimic him in that way? No. I mean, Jesus had a beard.

Are we supposed to have beards? No. We can take aspects of Christ's life that are not intended to be prescriptive. We can take these descriptions about the way Christ did things and try to apply those. And, we get something like monasticism a lot of times, where we we overreach.

But, this idea of cross and suffering, that's not an overreaching. That's the way that the Bible says that we are conformed to the image of Christ. And that's what Philippians says is supposed to be our model for putting others first. Christ's beard might not be prescriptive, but when he talks about loving your enemies, Matthew, when that's his teaching, not just the way that he lived his life, but also the thing that he taught, yeah, that's prescriptive. The attitudes that Jesus had in his life, and specifically his attitudes towards other people, those are prescriptive.

He showed us what it was like to be truly human. He's the second Adam, who is the most human example that we have. He lived the lives that we couldn't, and he imputes that righteousness to us, which means that that we should live the same way. Ross is something that each and every Christian should expect to bear, because it's not something that is specifically messianic. Something that is specifically human in a fallen world.

Christ did not just all of a sudden wake up one day and have Rome execute him. It's not what happened. They executed him because of the way he had lived his life for 3 years, 3 years in his ministry, and who knows how long before that. They executed him because the way that he lived was a threat. The way that he broke down social barriers, The way that he, was trying to get them to, to get the Jews to love Romans and Samaritans.

That's just crazy. The way that he, didn't feed the arrogance of the religious institution. The way that he didn't bow or really cater to the the Roman political machine. I mean, these are the things that that got Christ killed. In our world, it's gonna be the same thing.

When you don't align with the political party that your your community is telling you you have to vote for, or else we're all doomed. You're gonna get backlash not from not from enemies, not from atheists. You're gonna get crucified by your own group. If you're a wealthy individual, you start to associate with people in a different social class. You're gonna get crucified, not by the poor people that you're trying to help, necessarily, but probably by the people in your own group who are going to shun you and not really want to be a part of part of you.

They don't wanna be associated with you if you're gonna be associated with riffraff. Yoder does a a great job of showing that the cross is not just some obscure messianic thing that just so happened to Jesus and and only happens to Jesus. But the cross is something that's prescribed and prescribed and prophesied for believers, that this is going to happen to us, this should happen to us. Because the way that we live our lives should be like the way the second Adam, the true human, lived his life. And we're not talking about insurrection here.

We're not that's not what Jesus did. He wasn't an insurrectionist. We're also not talking about quietism, where you just kind of go off and do your own thing. We're talking about just this faithful living in the world, but completely not of the world. Doing things just just so radically different and in line with with the way Christ lived his life, that it I mean, it's going to turn heads and make enemies.

So, in summary, the life Christ lived, which led to the cross, was a life lived in perfect humanity, and in in perfect harmony and faith in God. And, the end of the cross and suffering is prescribed and prophesied for us. We are to be conformed to the image of Christ, which seems to imply that we will undergo similar processes and results. We should expect the same thing that our our savior, the servant is not greater than his master. As you as you really think through through this particular issue, it's easy to think that Christ's role was only Messianic, and that his example doesn't apply to us.

I would really encourage you to read Philippians 2. Give it a good look. Look at Christ's life. Look at his teachings. Look at his commands.

Think about what he calls believers too. We're not just talking about following his example, though I think Philippians 2 and other passages should be sufficient to show you that, now, his example is what we are to follow. But even beyond that, we talked in episode 2 about the biblical case and the teachings of Christ and the apostles, as well as, the early church and what they were doing in terms of living out their lives. And I think it's it's very clear that in this specific way, we are to live like Christ because it's the human way, it's not the messianic way in particular. Hopefully, that makes sense and clears some things up for you.

If not, I strongly recommend taking a look at Yoder's book, The Politics of Jesus. And, I'll also put another link down, to a book that I think is good called, The Upside Down Kingdom. And it's maybe not quite as clear on this issue. It kind of runs into some other other ideas, but I think you'll find it helpful as well. Anyway, that's all for now.

So peace, because I'm a pacifist, and I say it.