The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics

by Richard B. Hays

If God allows the monster to wage war on his people and conquer them, what must God’s people do? They must allow themselves to be conquered as their Lord had done, so that like their Lord they may win a victory not of this world…. [T]he church must submit without resistance to the conquering attack of the monster, since only in this way can the monster be halted in its track. Evil is self-propagating. Like the Hydra, the many-headed monster can grow another head when one has been cut off. When one man wrongs another, the other may retaliate, bear a grudge, or take his injury out on a third person. Whichever he does, there are now two evils where before there was one; and a chain reaction is started, like the spreading of a contagion. Only if the victim absorbs the wrong and so puts it out of currency, can it be prevented from going any further. And this is why the great ordeal is also the great victory.