Military service and war

A child of God is a person who is called to pursue peace with all (Hebrews 12:14) and to do good to all (Galatians 6:10), thus he cannot be in favour of war. As a consequence, he cannot be in favour of military service either, because through it people are trained to fight against other people and to kill them. Therefore, I exhort young people to choose the alternative service (of course, provided that there is alternative service in the country they live; in any case they must refuse to do the compulsory military service) lest they learn to use carnal weapons against other people, because their use brings only death and destruction. Thus, beloved, you must be against war, and if a war breaks out and you are called to leave for the war you must disobey the governing authorities in order to obey God.

We who are believers are soldiers of Jesus Christ, and we must fight against the principalities, the powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places; however, we must not fight using carnal weapons but spiritual weapons, because our enemies are spiritual beings and not human beings, and the apostle Paul speaks of these weapons in the epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 6:10-20). The weapons of our warfare are these: truth, righteousness, the preparation of the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the Word of God and prayer. And through them we pull down the strongholds of our enemies (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Our warfare is called “the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12 - NKJV) because it is useful to us and to our neighbour, for by fighting this fight we stand firm in the faith, we help our brothers to stand firm, and we help people to be delivered from the hands of the devil. Furthermore, we are sure of overcoming our enemies because they have been defeated by our head, namely Jesus Christ, who triumphed over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15).

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