A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

by Brian Zahnd

For the Judean crowd gathering around Jesus, freedom was something primarily political. Their essential idea of freedom was that it was a form of power, especially power over and against national enemies. To come straight out and say it, freedom was a euphemism for lethal power—the power to kill. When you had power to kill your enemies and the will to do so, you were “free.” When you had the biggest, most well-trained, best-equipped, most lethal military—then you were “free.” But it’s not freedom in the form of lethal power that Jesus sees as true freedom. For Jesus, freedom is liberation from sin—especially the particular sin of collective killing. Do you think I’m overreaching to make this point? Am I inserting my own ideas into the text? Have I arbitrarily identified collective killing as the sin Jesus was talking about in John 8? Hardly! Listen to what Jesus said to the Judeans in response to their protest that they are freedom-loving children of Abraham and notice how Jesus brings up the issue of killing: “I know you are descendents of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word” (John 8:37).