If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence

by Ronald J. Sider

Publisher:

Baker Academic

, 2019

Overview

What does Jesus have to say about violence, just war, and killing? Does Jesus ever want his disciples to kill in order to resist evil and promote peace and justice?

This book by noted theologian and bestselling author Ronald J. Sider provides a career capstone statement on biblical peacemaking. Sider makes a strong case for the view that Jesus calls his disciples to love, and never kill, their enemies. He explains that there are never only two options: to kill or to do nothing in the face of tyranny and brutality. There is always a third possibility: vigorous, nonviolent resistance. If we believe that Jesus is Lord, then we disobey him when we set aside what he taught about killing and ignore his command to love our enemies.

This thorough, comprehensive treatment of a topic of perennial concern vigorously engages with the just war tradition and issues a challenge to all Christians, especially evangelicals, to engage in biblical peacemaking. The book includes a foreword by Stanley Hauerwas.

Key Features

• Develops and defends Christian pacifism
• Provides close readings of Jesus’s work and teachings
• Focuses on nonviolence as the very heart of the kingdom

Contents

• Jesus’s Gospel
• Jesus’s Actions
• Jesus’s Teaching in the Sermon on the Mount
• Other Teachings of Jesus
• Peace in the Rest of the New Testament
• But What About . . . ?
• Foundational Theological Issues
• Problems with Pacifism
• Problems with Just War Thinking
• Jesus and Killing in the Old Testament
• What If Most (or All) Christians Became Pacifists?
• Nonviolence and the Atonement
• Christians and Killing in Church History
• If Jesus Is Lord

Praise for the Print Edition

‘Jesus intended that his followers should never kill anyone!’ After you read If Jesus Is Lord, you will be able to reject this claim as unworkable in the real world, but you will not be able to dispute it. This compelling and challenging volume is the lifework of an impressive Christian ‘resistance pacifist’!

—Miroslav Volf, Yale Divinity School, director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, and author of For the Life of the World: Theology That Makes a Difference

Ron Sider is a rare bird among biblical interpreters: he combines well-grounded scholarly attentiveness with a lively, practical passion for a world of just peace. He has, moreover, been at it for a long, grace-filled lifetime. It is no surprise then that this book comes at just the right moment for us. It is a moment in which American Christians, across the theological spectrum, are recognizing that our widely shared historical accommodation to cultural religion is a shameful failure and that we must return to Jesus’s radical core claims. Sider’s exposition of transformative pacifism is based on the cruciality of Jesus, his teaching, and the witness of his life. Many Christians will want to take a deep (spirit-filled!) breath with this book and embrace new resolve about being faithfully present in the world alongside Jesus. Our long-term debt to Sider is deep and beyond calculation. This book is a summons to discipleship in a way that matters.

—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

Over and over lone voices, the most significant being Ron Sider’s, have been calling Christians to think again, probe more deeply, and become more faithful to the paradigm of the cross. But that cross emerged from the teachings and life of Jesus. From Jesus’s opening sermon in Nazareth to the cross there is a consistent vision—pacifist to the core—that needs to become our vision all over again. A consistent follower of Jesus is a pacifist, and Ron Sider has demonstrated this one more time. I have been reading Sider for forty years, and this is his best case yet.

—Scot McKnight, Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary

Product Details

• Title: If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence
• Author: Ronald J. Sider
• Publisher: Baker
• Publication Date: 2019
• Pages: 256
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Topic: Christian Living

About Ronald J. Sider

Ron Sider is known worldwide for providing leadership to the movement of evangelicals who recognize not just the spiritual, but also the social and political implications of a high view of Scripture. His book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger was lauded by Christianity Today as being among the top 100 books in religion in the 20th century and the seventh most influential book in the evangelical world in the last 50 years. Dr. Sider has published 30 books in addition to Rich Christians, including Evangelism, Salvation and Social Justice; Christ and Violence; Cry Justice: The Bible on Hunger and Poverty; Completely Pro-Life; Good News and Good Works: A Theology for the Whole Gospel; Living Like Jesus; Just Generosity: A New Vision for Overcoming Poverty in America; The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?; The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World?; and I Am not a Social Activist: Making Jesus the Agenda. In the 1970s, Dr. Sider played a key role in the drafting of the historic Chicago Declaration, which helped set the direction for evangelicals concerned about the Bible’s social implications. He was the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), which for more than three decades has provided an organizational outlet for Christians committed to holistic ministry. ESA is now a part of the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Palmer Seminary. An ordained minister in the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ Churches, Ron lectured at numerous educational institutions, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Oxford.