Posted on 02/26/2015 10:00:08 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A pastor friend told me last week that he had church members enraged with him when he suggested from the pulpit that we ought to pray for the salvation of Islamic State terrorists. The people in his church told him that he ought to be calling for justice against them, given their brutal murder of Christians, not for mercy.
I thought about my friend a few days ago when these murderous fiends beheaded 21 of our brothers and sisters in Christ because they refused to renounce the name of Jesus. I was not just angry; I was furious. Can such fury co-exist, though, with the Sermon on the Mount (Mat. 5-7)? When we pray about such evil, how should we pray?
The complexity of the Christian calling in the world was seen even in social media. One friend of mine posted that the slaughter of Christians overseas calls for the worlds only remaining superpower to take action. Another said, quoting singer Toby Keith, that it was time to light up their world like the Fourth of July. To that, I say, Amen. Another friend, a former student of mine posted, Oh, that there might be an ISIS Saul standing there now, holding the cloaks, whose salvation might turn the Arab world upside down with the gospel! To that I say Amen, too.
These are not contradictory prayers.
Jesus says to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us (Mat. 5:44). The Spirit of Jesus in the prophets and in the apostles also tells us that those who turn a blind eye to the killing of others are wrong. The fact that we feel contradictory praying both for justice against the Islamic State and for salvation for Islamic State terrorists is partly because we fail to distinguish between the mission of the state in the use of the temporal sword against evildoers (Rom. 13:4) and the mission of the church in the use of the sword of the Spirit against sin and death and the devil (Eph. 6). But thats not, I think, the main problem.
The main problem is that we sometimes forget that we are called to be a people of both justice and justification, and that these two are not contradictory.
It sounds awfully spiritual, at first blush, to say that we should not pray for the defeat of our enemies on the field of battle. But thats only the case if these enemies are not actually doing anything. This terrorist group is raping, enslaving, beheading, crucifying our brothers and sisters in Christ, as well as other innocent people. To not pray for swift action against them is to not care about what Jesus said we should seek, what we should hunger and thirst for, for justice. A world in which murderous gangs commit genocide without penalty is not a merciful world but an unjust horror show.
As Christians, we ought to be, above all people, concerned with such justice. We not only have the common grace standing of caring about stopping murder and injustice, rooted in the image of God and the law written on the heart. We also have the personal implication here. Its our household being wiped out in the Middle East, the very place where our church started. For us, this isnt a matter of they; its a matter of us.
At the same time, praying for the salvation of our enemies, even those committing the most horrific of crimes, is not a call to stop praying for justice against them. The cross, after all, is not forgiveness in a contemporary therapeutic sensein which one is merely absolved of wrongdoing as though it were all a misunderstanding. No, thats precisely the Apostle Pauls point in the Book of Romans.
The gospel does not say, Dont worry about it; its okay. The gospel points us to the cross where sin is absorbed in a substitute. Gods righteous condemnation of sin is there. He does not, and cannot, enable wickedness. And Gods mercy is there in that he is the One who sends his Son as the propitiation for sin. He is both just and the justifier of the One who has faith in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). The gospel doesnt leave sin unpunished. Every sin is punished, either a the Place of the Skull, in Christ, or in the judgment of hell, on ones own.
The thief on the crossa Middle Eastern terrorist by Romes standardsin his act of faith did not believe that his salvation exempted him from justice. He confessed that his sentence was justice, and that he was receiving the due reward for our deeds (Lk. 23:41) even as he cried out to Jesus for merciful entrance into the kingdom of Christ (Lk. 23:42).
We ought, indeed, to pray for the gospel to go forward, and that there might be a new Saul of Tarsus turned away from murdering to gospel witness. At the same time, we ought to pray, with the martyrs in heaven, for justice against those who do such wickedness. Praying for the military defeat of our enemies, and that they might turn to Christ, these are not contradictory prayers because salvation doesnt mean turning an eye away from justice. We can pray for gospel rootedness in the Middle East, and we can pray to light up their world like the Fourth of July, at the same time.
We are, after all, the people of the cross.
-- Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nations largest Protestant denomination.
(abba)
Both or as The Lord wills it.
NO JIHAD ZONE
VIOLATERS WILL BE
SLATHERED WITH PORK FAT
BEATEN BY A WOMAN
AND MARTYRED
Atheism is for the willfully blind or perhaps stupid.
How about we pray for their conversion and hope for the defeat/destruction of those who refuse to convert? That way, we can be in touch with both our spiritual and human sides at the same time...
Kill ‘em all, and let Allah sort them.
Kill ‘em all, and let Allah sort them.
Yeah.
In my morning prayers I pray for ISIS to be stopped and killed. I don’t waste time praying for their salvation. Complete waste of time and energy. Let God deal with ISIS’s salvation. After all He designed and created them. I have way too many other things on my prayer list already and have to prioritize. To hell with ISIS.
Both
That.
troll the religion forum much?
Absolutely correct. If all of ISIS converted to Christianity, it would be defeated as a Islamic force.
I have always maintained the proper way to pray for your non-Christian enemies is to pray that God would do to them exactly what He did to Saul of Tarsus. Totally destroy the old man that was Saul of Tarsus and replaced him with greatest teacher the Church has ever known. No heart is too hard for the Holy Spirit to soften, even the evilest of terrorists.
Gospel Mt 5:43-48
Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
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