“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)
The Medieval crusades misrepresented the kingdom of God. Their goal was to defeat the enemy, whom they mistook as fellow humans, using the world’s weapons of warfare with the same hostile aggression. And Church leaders endorsed them in the name of God. A similar modern error teaches that Christians should be more violent than those who take the kingdom by force. Wrong. Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world; His servants should not fight like it.
The Son of God was made man to deliver us from our ultimate enemy, death, whose sting is sin. The Book of Revelation was written obviously to reveal important things, one of which is that Jesus takes away the sin of the world as a Lamb. That’s how He overcomes the beasts, which are symbols death. Yes, we should be shrewd as serpents, but we’re nonetheless sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves and we overpower their ferocity with our meekness. Let’s stop acting like wolves and like the Lamb, overcome as sheep.
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