A Just War with Bloody Hands?

Commentary by Rev. Thomas C. McConnell

Introduction

"When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood." (Isaiah 1:15)

We are a nation that is [already at war with Iraq]. This is no easy, surgically clean type of war, as perhaps some have made it out to be, but one of huge significance to our nation and the world, given the massive polarization that is occurring between nations, even among allies.

Purportedly, what’s at stake is world peace and commerce, threatened by international terrorism, as evidenced by the devastation of September 11, 2001 and various threats that have followed. That our nation is truly threatened is beyond dispute, as to what really threatens it, that is a whole other sermon. Suffice to say that the wicked shall be turned into hell, And all the nations that forget God (Psalms 9:17).

There is much debate and ballyhoo over whether attacking Iraq would be considered a just war according to the customary standards and protocols of international law. There are protests worldwide and nations from both sides are seeking the UN’s “endorsement” in the justification of their position. Even within Christian circles there is heated debate that is beginning to polarize the churches. This war is no small matter. On the one side you have the national patriots that see Iraq as a real enemy to the peace and safety of the nation, who believe that George Bush is God’s man to lead the attack in prosecuting a just war. On the other side you have those who seriously doubt the just war theory and believe instead, among many reasons, that it is a war over oil and greed, one meant to maintain the United States’ monopoly over world trade.

What really makes our situation particularly difficult and potentially disastrous is the religious zeal of President Bush who frequently quotes Scripture and calls upon the name of the Lord on behalf of our nation for a victorious outcome. Many are saying that they are glad to see this, that they haven’t seen a Christian president express his faith publicly in a long time. The world knows quite clearly that this war is being waged in the name of “Christianity,” even in spite of a major public relations campaign undertaken by the White House to make it a war to protect all religions, including Islam. If it is truly a just war in God’s eyes and we have His blessing in prosecuting it then we can bear any attacks that may come upon our country for whatever reasons. This leads to a very important question. Putting aside the world’s opinion, how does the Lord see this proposed war of the Bush administration? The answer will have everything to do with its final outworking in the years to come. Invoking God’s name publicly and seeking His blessing can be a two-edged sword -- it is best done with clean hands.

The Doctrine of Clean Hands

It matters not whether our nation can fully justify its actions in the eyes of the world, or even if it can justify it from the Scriptures. It matters everything if this war is waged in the name of our just God and we are found lacking because there is sin in the camp. What truly counts is how the Lord sees our nation, for even if it were proven to be a truly just war in all its arguments, the right to wage the war and to seek God’s favorable outcome does not strictly turn on the justness of the cause, but on the justness of the nation waging the war, and God is no respecter of nations, even ours. Knowing God’s righteous and just character, how could an unjust (read wicked) nation find God’s blessing in pursuing a war of justice, especially one that has turned its back on God as much as ours? Our nation’s hands are unclean and have been for a long time.

In the world of courts and litigation there is a precept called the Doctrine of Clean Hands. Essentially, a court of equity will not assist a claimant unless he “comes to justice with clean hands” and should he come with dirty hands, the court will likely throw out his claim. This doctrine finds its source in the Scriptures (Psalms 24:4-5 and Psalms 18:20-21).

This principle applies to the smallest level of human relationships all the way to the great halls of international justice. Within the church, justice begins with the believer, who is warned to get his relationship right with God first before seeking to correct the life of another (Matthew 7:3-5).

When it comes to exacting justice (biblically) against another’s disobedience as a part of spiritual warfare, the believer is to be walking in obedience first (2 Corinthians 10:4-6).

The word punish used in this passage is the Greek word ekdikeo, which means to avenge or to do one justice. Clean hands signify a clean, obedient heart, one that is right with the Lord and submitted to do His will and, thus, able to exact the Lord’s justice in a godly manner and under proper authority. The same principle applies to the larger applications of justice as it involves governments and nations (Psalms 2:10-11).

No president, government or nation is exempt from the righteous standards of God to pursue its policy without accountability to Him. Every soul is to be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1), including the very ones in authority, be it an individual or an ecclesiastical or civil body comprised of many souls (Revelation 2:15-16, Psalms 2). Even in the event where God sends an unjust, wicked nation to judge another, that wicked nation is not immune from God’s justice and will be judged in due season as we saw with Babylon, the hammer God used in judging Israel (Jeremiah 50:23). Although all nations stand before God and are totally accountable to Him in everything, there is far greater accountability to those that name the Lord as their Supreme Lawgiver and Ruler (Hebrews 10:26-31).

With nations that name the Lord and publicly acknowledge Him in prayer, whose actions, therefore, will reflect upon the Lord’s character, it matters everything whether they are just in their ways before God in all that they do. This applies to all nations, even those who heedlessly name the Lord out of pretense and tradition, whose works prove to be clearly pagan.

How many times did Israel march presumptuously into battle in the name of the Lord, only to suffer serious defeat because of her sin (Judges 3:12-13, 1 Kings 8:33-34)? God must defend His righteous character and judge His people when they defame it by their sin. This applies to all nations, no matter how nominal and weak their Christianity is. Otherwise, their hypocrisy will lead the nations to blaspheme God. When the children of Israel sinned by complaining against the Lord after spying out the land of Canaan, they still presumed, nonetheless, that God would be with them in attacking the Amalekites and Canaanites, wherein God brought defeat upon them for their disobedience (Numbers 14: 39-45).

The Doctrine of Just War

According to the Doctrine of Just War a nation, having exhausted all peaceful avenues of settlement, can use force within appropriate means (as opposed to plunder, rape and murder) to seek a just end against another nation that poses a real, immediate threat to its people and/or national security. What is glaringly absent from this commonly held definition is the moral state of the nation seeking to wage a just war, as it is assumed in the modern world of pagan relativism that each state has the right to protect itself, no matter its own moral condition. Every nation today including our own is not in the least bit epistemologically self-conscience [consciously aware of the presuppositions which it holds to] of its status before the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge of nations, Jesus Christ.

There was a time in our nation when this mattered very much and our rulers demonstrated it publicly. When newly elected President, George Washington, swore his presidential oath of office before God and man in 1789, he did so on a Bible opened to Deuteronomy, chapter 28 . . . the very chapter that deals with the judgments and blessings that come upon nations based upon their obedience or disobedience to the commandments of God, Who truly is the Supreme Lawgiver and Ruler over the nations (Mathew 28:18-20, Ephesians 1:18-22, Revelation 1:5-6). Our founders made the biblical correlation between obedience to God and national blessing and success. They understood the futility of seeking God’s blessing if the people or it rulers lived in wickedness, as defined by God’s Holy Word.

Bloody Hands

In considering our President’s call to wage a just war against Iraq, we must consider the moral state of our nation very carefully, for it will ultimately determine the outcome of its cause against terrorism, whether it be for its good or for its harm. One needn’t go far to see that our nation does not have clean hands in any sense of the term. The list of national sins is staggering, but at the top are the 40 million children that have been murdered over the last 30 years through legalized aborticide. How does the Lord see a nation that pursues a just war in shedding the blood of another nation while already waging a bloody war against its own people? Although one might automatically think of Saddam Hussein’s bloody history, that is exactly what our nation is doing, and on a far larger scale!

Can our nation that wages continuous war against its most innocent citizens, a war that has claimed far more victims than Saddam Hussein has ever taken including his foreign enemies, find God’s blessing in anything it does, let alone wage a war of justice? We deceive ourselves if we think the issue of abortion is unimportant in this our hour of peril. Although abortion is still an issue in this nation, it has not galvanized our attention into true repentance, as it should, for no nation can continually defile its soil with innocent blood without incurring the full wrath of God in the long run. We must not consider God’s longsuffering as a sign that abortion is insignificant compared to the terrorist issue or other matters of national importance. Governments are to be a terror to those that harm its citizens, not supporting the ones that do the harm (Romans 13:3-4). The devastating lessons the children of Israel learned over this same issue of shedding innocent blood should bring every Christian in this nation to their knees in heartfelt repentance and intercession (Hosea 4:1-2, Psalms 106:35-42, Isaiah 59:1-10).

The Remission of National Sins

The Law of the Lord is quite clear on the matter of murder, the shedding of innocent blood. The blood of the murderer is to be shed in remittance for the shed blood of the victim, for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin and the land remains defiled, under God’s curse (Numbers 35:29-34).

Abortion is an all-encompassing, national sin in the case of our nation. It is sanctioned and performed under law, which was enacted at the highest levels of government by those elected to office by the people. Therefore, the Lord’s judgment for aborticide will affect the entire nation, even those who claim no direct part in it. The innocent blood of the 40 million children shed through legalized abortion has defiled the land and cries out for God’s justice (Genesis 4:10-11). There are only two ways it can be remitted. The first is by the shed blood of Jesus Christ applied through national repentance. Even then there will still be major consequences to pay, for although He is the God who forgives, yet He will still take vengeance upon our deeds (Psalms 99:8). The other method is through national judgment exacted by the hand of the Lord however He sees fit. It could come through war, national plagues and weather-related judgments, or an internal collapse that leads to despotic tyranny.

It is quite possible that God will turn this proposed war of justice upon our own heads in taking vengeance against our nation’s ongoing bloody war with those who dwell in the womb. What’s worse, He could stay His hand of judgment and let our national sins heap themselves all the more until they lead to massive, irreversible destruction. It is best that we face the music now and seek His mercy for this issue has everything to do with our nation’s future and the war with Iraq. In fact, the entire debate over our nation being justified in attacking Iraq means little compared to our flagrant national sin.

With this in mind, how much worse could it get for our nation than for it to blindly engage in a “just” war, not only being willfully ignorant of its guilt before God, but believing it is just in its arrogant defiance of His laws that define justice? The issues of abortion and the war with Iraq are intricately linked for they both deal with justice and the shedding of blood. There are many more issues of gross national sin—legalized sodomy and same sex unions, debt-based economics, pornography and sexual perversion, religious polytheism, etc.—that have a direct bearing on this matter and must be taken into account as well.

Conclusion

The biggest threat to any nation, Christian or otherwise, is not its external enemies but its internal godlessness and sin, for which our nation has become chief among nations. There was a time when we were chief among nations for our righteousness, but no more.

We cannot assume that God will remember our former righteousness and grant us deliverance from our enemies. We are treading on very thin ice, so thin that I fear it has already broken and we are plummeting into the depths of judgment because of our self-righteous, arrogant blindness. Thus, when we, as a nation, lift our hands to God in prayer to deliver us from our enemies, as is happening across our nation even now, God is likely not to hear us, but to turn us over to our own sin because our hands are full of blood.

Reverend Tomas C. McConnell is the pastor of Covenant Reformed Church in Rayville, MO, and may be contacted by e-mail at CRC-Rayville@rci.wwr.net. The above article is a revised and expanded version of a sermon which he preached on February 23, 2003.