Luke 22:36 is one of the verses that many non-pacifists cite to justify violence. In it, Jesus told his disciples, “If you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” As usual, and despite initial appearances, the context refutes a pro-violence interpretation. Here’s the statement in its immediate context:
Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered.
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. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”
“That’s enough!” he replied. (Luke 22:35-38)
Two reasonable interpretations arise from this passage, neither of which condone any violence.
Interpretation #1. It’s hard to argue with Jesus’s own explicit explanation of why he told his disciples to buy a sword: to fulfill a prophecy. Take another look at what he said immediately after telling his disciples to buy a sword: “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors;’ and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
Jesus was quoting from Isaiah 53 wherein the prophet predicts that the Messiah will be a suffering servant who, having done no wrong and committed no violence, will nonetheless be “numbered with transgressors” and consequently bear unjust punishment. Because the Romans only crucified potential threats to the empire, Jesus needed to give them a reason to arrest and crucify him. He needed to appear to be part of a band of sword-wielding outlaws, a member of a group of violent revolutionaries. So he asked the disciples to play the part of criminals by brandishing swords, which they did. In essence, he was saying to them, “I know I’ve previously asked you to trust me and not carry any equipment (referring to Matthew 10:9) and that worked out well for you, but now the time has come when equipment is necessary, so trust me again and go grab a sword. As prophesied, I’ve got to be accused of being a criminal and that needs to happen soon.”
Therefore, according to Jesus’s own words, he was literally instructing his disciples to go buy swords, but only for the limited, immediate purpose of fulfilling a specific prophecy, not to actually use or keep them.
Two other important pieces of context suggest such an interpretation. First, after the disciples produced two swords, Jesus said, “That’s enough!” This begs the question: Enough for what? The only way two swords is enough is if Jesus only intended for them to be used to fulfill the prophecy. Two is enough to be accused of being a criminal gang, but it’s not enough to equip each of the twelve disciples for their impending journeys.
Second, after the prophecy had been fulfilled, Jesus immediately condemned the use of the sword and reiterated that he had just fulfilled a prophecy. While Jesus was being arrested, one of his disciples drew his sword and cut off a man’s ear.1 Luke’s gospel says Jesus reacted by exclaiming “No more of this!” and healing the man’s ear (Luke 22:50-51). Matthew’s gospel gives a slightly more detailed account of Jesus’s reaction:
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matt. 26:52-54)
The nonviolence implications couldn’t be any clearer. Jesus told his disciples to go buy swords to help him fulfill a prophecy, and then just a few hours later after the prophecy is fulfilled, he (1) instructed them to put their swords away, (2) rectified Peter’s use of the sword by healing the man’s ear, (3) proclaimed that if he wanted to use violence to advance his kingdom on earth he would call down a few legions of angels from heaven, (4) condemned the use of swords in general, and (5) explained that using the swords to prevent his arrest thwarted the whole reason he wanted them to carry swords in the first place: to cause his arrest. These are not the actions of a king who wants his followers to advance his kingdom through violence.
This interpretation seems to rectify Jesus’s two contradictory sword instructions quite nicely. To fulfill the prophecy, he needed them to possess swords, so he ordered them to buy some. After the prophecy was fulfilled, he needed them to return to nonviolent business as usual so he ordered them to put their swords away, forever.
Interpretation #2. There’s another reasonable, although I believe slightly less plausible, explanation for Jesus’s instruction to go buy swords: mission preparation. When Jesus sent the disciples on their first mission, a local and temporary mission to spread the gospel among their fellow Jews, he instructed them not to take any money or luggage with them but to rely on the hospitality of their families, friends, and fellow countrymen.2 But now Jesus was preparing them for a much different, more permanent, and largely foreign mission: taking the gospel to the Gentiles. So the material nature of their mission had changed. Whereas before they could expect others to take care of them, now they should expect to take care of themselves. Hence Jesus’s new instructions: “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.”
Even if Jesus was dispensing advice on how to prepare for their new mission, that doesn’t mean he was necessarily giving literal advice. There are many reasons to believe that at least the sword instruction wasn’t meant to be taken literally. If Jesus literally wanted them to each carry a sword, why did he tell them two swords was enough for twelve people, most of whom were going to different places? Why did Jesus not specify how he wanted them to use the sword, particularly because he had never before issued any instructions on using swords? Why just hours later when Jesus was being arrested did he condemn sword use? Why does the Bible not record the disciples ever carrying or using swords while missionaries to the gentiles? Did the disciples blatantly disobey Jesus, or did they understand he meant something else? Given those blatant contradictions, Jesus likely wasn’t giving the disciples literal advice on how to pack for their upcoming travel.
Instead, Jesus was issuing a figurative warning. He was saying, “You completed the first mission in relative comfort and safety, but now you are about to embark on a new mission that will be uncomfortable and dangerous, so brace yourself. Before, you could expect much welcoming and hospitality, but now you must expect rejection and persecution.” The purse and bag represented the material hardship they would face (e.g., hunger, thirst, a lack of shelter, etc.) and the sword symbolized the conflict they would encounter. Such a warning would prove prophetic because the biblical account of the disciples’ second mission is full of such struggles.3
If Jesus was prepping the disciples for their upcoming mission, he was saying “go buy a sword” in the same figurative sense he had said “I come to bring a sword, not peace.”
Interpretation #3. There’s actually a third reasonable interpretation option: a hybrid of the first two. Maybe Jesus’s instructions were part travel advice and part prophecy fulfillment. Perhaps he was giving them advice on what equipment to take on their new mission. Then, needing to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy, the directive pivoted from packing instructions (take a purse and a bag) to prophecy fulfillment instructions (go get a sword right now), both of which he meant to be taken literally but for different purposes. Or maybe the sword served a dual purpose as both a figurative warning and prophecy prop.
As you can see, even if we interpret Jesus’s instruction to go buy a sword literally, there are more reasonable and less reasonable literal interpretations. The most reasonable is that he wanted them to purchase a sword solely to fulfill a prophecy. Any literal interpretation that goes beyond that narrow scope ignores all levels of context and reads things into the passage that aren’t there.
Plus, if we are going to be strictly literal, Jesus was speaking only to his disciples, not a crowd, and he told them to buy a sword, not use one. Thus, to conclude that this instruction to his inner circle to buy a sword really means that his followers today can use swords is a logical stretch, to say the least. It veers away from a literal interpretation into a nonliteral one while ignoring the contextual evidence that must necessarily inform any nonliteral analysis. If we can’t muster the strength to resist what Bradley Jersak calls the “sloppy propensity to literalize metaphors,” we should at least literalize them correctly.4
Furthermore, the fact that Jesus had to instruct his disciples to buy swords speaks to his nonviolence. It implies that his followers, whom he was about to send out into the world, didn’t already own swords (why order someone to buy something he already owns?), which in turn suggests Jesus didn’t literally want them using swords. If he had, surely he wouldn’t have waited until the end of their time together to instruct them on the moral use of violence.
For all of these reasons, Luke 22:36 does not support the Christian use of violence today. Whatever Jesus meant to communicate by instructing his disciples to buy swords, he did not intend for them, or for us, to use them. Tragically, a passage that should be seen as condemning violence has become just one more reminder of how far fallen humans will go to justify their violence.
Footnotes:
Luke 22:50; Matt. 26:51.
Matt. 10:5-14; Mark 6:7-13; Luke 10:1-12.
For example, see 1 Cor. 4:9-13 and 2 Cor. 6:3-10.
Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel (CWR Press, 2015), 2556, Kindle.
This article is an excerpt from Jesus the Pacifist: A Concise Guide to His Radical Nonviolence.