Hope

Our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1.29). In the cross of Christ God has pleased to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth to himself (Col 1.20). In and through Christ, God calls the world to come to knowledge of salvation (1 Tim 2.3-6).

We who are “called to be holy” (Rom 1.7) can and must, however, serve the world that God loved enough to save from its own wickedness. And that service—through acts of love that Jesus commanded and exemplified—is our partial testimony to the glory and goodness of God. That service is our proclamation to the world, in deeds, of the good news that the kingdom of God has drawn near, and is available to all through the saving work of Jesus Christ. The life of the church, and of individual Christians, should reveal in the present a glimpse of God’s intended dominion, a “foretaste of glory divine.”

WHAT DO CHRISTIANS HAVE TO DO WITH THE BOMB?

Many evangelical or Bible-believing Christians will wonder why we should work for a nuclear weapons-free world. This might seem like an issue for governments to deal with, not the church. Some of us might have convictions about the righteousness of such weapons, going back to the end of WWII or the Cold War.

But this is a new day. And whatever your convictions about history might be, the objective fact is that in this new nuclear era our nation is refusing to let go of the very thing that will be its undoing. (Christians know just what this is like: haven’t we all seen someone keep a death-grip on a personal sin that’s led to destruction?)

Moreover, in this new day, with this new reality, it’s not good enough for Christians simply to reject nuclear weapons because they threaten us and our loved ones. To paraphrase the Sermon on the Mount, even pagans love their own country.

LOVING OTHERS, LOVING ENEMIES

No, we have to consider what our own nation threatens to do to others in our name—the neighbors and enemies that Christ commanded us to love. A nuclear weapon used on an urban population will kill hundreds of thousands, not discriminating between soldiers, babies in the womb, and the elderly. It will poison the land for years, and everyone downwind of the blast. The fallout will cause birth defects and sickness and death that endure far beyond any given armed conflict.

Is it really the case that Christians can threaten such a thing against people we’re commanded to love—let alone against brother and sister Christians of other nations?

LOVING GOD

But even “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” isn’t enough for Christians to think about, because all the major world religions have some version of the Golden Rule. Evangelical Christians—Christians concerned with the evangel, or gospel, of the kingdom of God—have to ask what our tolerance of our nation’s nuclear weapons says about our trust in God’s providence. In our ability to speak of the good news of Christ to other nations. In our spiritual formation as people of a perfect love that “drives out fear” (1 John 4.18).

If we can’t even add an hour to our lives by worrying (Matt 6.27), can we try to add a day by sinning? If we do not reject the threat of nuclear weapons—against us, and against others—can it truly be said of us that we have placed our security in the promises of the Bible?

And if our deeds show that we’re not trusting God for our safety—both now and to eternity—why should anyone believe the message of salvation coming from our lips?

CONVICTION, CONFESSION, CONCRETE ACTION

The abolition of nuclear weapons is a soul matter, a discipleship priority. It begins with a conviction of the heart, by trusting God alone for our security. It rises to our lips as a confession, when as individuals and as the church, the body of Christ, we renounce such devices of destruction. And, as people blessed with the privilege and responsibility of citizenship in this nation, a nuclear power, our conviction and confession become credible through the concrete actions we take to eliminate this physical threat and spiritual cancer from the world.