rod03801:

> How about Luke 23:36?

To correct the post, it is Luke 22:36. You quoted it out of context. However, this is the great lesson that Jesus taught to us all, and the one that Christians too often forget.

The passage occurs right during the Last Supper. Jesus has finished the Last Supper with the disciples, and he beings to make his predictions:

34 Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

35 Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

36 He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37 It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

38 The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

On the surface, it seems that Jesus has just ordered the disciples to buy swords. They come up with two.

Later in the passage, the mob comes to arrest Jesus:

47 While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, 48 but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”
49 When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” 50 And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.

51 But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

52 Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? 53 Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.”


And therein lies the lesson. Jesus could have told the disciples to strike and kill as many as necessary to escape. Instead he stops them and performs a miracle. He heals the man's ear and surrenders peacefully to the mob.

Hardly an exhortation to violence. Rather, a lesson in peace and self-sacrifice.

Unfortunately, humanity is not enlightened like that.