The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed by Brenda Rivera of Orlando, Florida from the tape, GC 1301-S, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 21."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1982. All Rights Reserved.

Question

I have a friend who’s 20 and he’s worried about the draft. What he was wondering was and I’m interested too and if we’re Christians and we are not supposed to murder, [then] what does the Bible have to say about that?

Answer

What does the Bible say about war? It says a lot really...I’ll tell you basically. Well, you want to give room for an individual's conscience, you know Paul says, “Don’t defile your conscience” Romans 14, right? Because if you start to defile your conscience you start to react against your conscience and deny what your conscience tells you to do, ultimately what’s going to happen is you’re going to sear your conscience and then you’re not going to be able to hear it when it talks. Don’t train yourself not to listen to your conscience, so if a person really has a problem with that, the military always provides that a person going into the military can find a non-combat assignment, and still be responsible, "...to be subject to the powers that be for they are ordained of God.

Now, God therefore has ordained governments, and He’s ordained police and so forth, you could take it from Romans 13 that God has ordained the police, and it says there, "...they bare not the sword in vain." What is the sword supposed to do? Kill people and if in a government situation police are permitted to bare the sword, why? For the protection of the good and the punishment of the evil doers. If you can see that on a national basis you can see it on an international basis. And I’ll put it this way, if the United States of America went into a war to protect its people from the invasion of godless aggressor I wouldn’t have any problem baring the sword to protect the innocent and punish the evil doer. It’s a little different to me than police action, if for example, the United States went into Vietnam to protect the Vietnamese people from the encroachment of communism, I would have no problem in fighting that war to win that war, I have a problem in fighting it the way we fought it, but I have no problem in defending innocent people against a godless, murderous aggressor. If on the other hand, and that’s what’s so sad about America’s shift, and we listened to the wrong people during those years. If on the other hand I was in Russia and they conscripted me to go into the Russian Army to attack those innocent people I couldn’t do that. Does that help you to understand the distinction?

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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