What if you find yourself driving down the street and someone pulls out in front of you and cuts you off? If you get upset and yell at him or honk, most likely that is sin. At the very least it’s un-Christian. It is not you laying down your life for another it is you demanding your rights. You have been slighted and you think you deserve better. The fruit of the Spirit response, in this case, would be considerate, self-controlled, patient, understanding. It is to consider his position, maybe he is late picking up his daughter and he doesn’t want to leave her out in the cold. It is letting things go even if he had no good reason for doing it.

Now consider if the same guy pulls out in front of a small child crossing the street. And you yell something very similar to the first example. Is this sin? Is this un-Christian? I don’t think so. Though the man probably heard you the same in both examples, he was probably upset in both instances, the were different. You were standing up for the less fortunate. You were making a stand on principle, that the man needed correction. Not because of how it impacted you, or because you were demanding something but because you loved this child that was put in danger. The consequences of you not speaking up, or no one ever speaking up might be the death of someone in the future. Real love would not let this happen.

Now make it a little less emotional. You see the man pull out in front of another car and you yell. I believe the same thing applies. Now let’s say you are back in the first instance, and you yell but without any concern for yourself. You don’t care that you have been wronged, but you believe the man needs correction or he is going to endanger himself or others. I believe this too can be perfectly Christian. But it may not look like it. People will often assign you motives based on how they would behave. It’s an interesting thing, people may condemn you because you are worse than they are, but they may also condemn you for being better, because they can’t imagine how that’s possible.

This was exactly the case with Jesus and his disciples and many Christians throughout time. The Jews persecuted the Christians because they thought they were preaching a false Messiah. They thought they were blaspheming the one true God. But really the problem was that they were unable to understand a higher truth, a better motive.

So we shouldn’t really evaluate ourselves based on how people react. Of course they will hate us they hated Jesus and we follow him. We should try to fairly assess our own motives, but don’t get too caught up in it. Generally you know if you yelled from anger. But don’t overthink your motives, or let other people do it to you. You will soon be paralyzed with fear which is a fair characterization of the church these days.

And this is the point. We have taken verses like Philippians 4:5 and turned them into a call to be a wimp, to give in at every turn, sooner if possible. I could only find one translation that used the word ‘gentle’, the rest use something like moderation, reasonableness, or consideration. Given the context where Paul is exhorting someone to moderate a conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, I think those are getting more to the point. As Christians we are exhorted repeatedly to ‘Judge rightly’ “discern” and many other such phrases. We should be good at deciphering good from evil in every situation. We have the wisdom of God. This is precisely what preaching about being a wimp leaves out. These specific situations were given to us to help us in our situations, in our judging. Instead they are turned into warm fuzzy quotes fit for embroidery over the toilet at grandmas. Paul’s exhortations to gentleness and self control are not about acting like good little Victorians, they are about ending conflict by dropping things. They are about sacrificing yourself, as Christ did.

If we look at the word gentleness. It comes from gentleman, which was a political class in England. It was a few steps below royalty. This too is a good context, Christians are told that we are heirs with Christ, we will inherit the earth. We are royalty, we should act like it. Jesus the King is our Father. How do royalty behave? There is a time for quiet reasoned speech. There is also a time for yelling and fighting. Those who are reasonable and good moderators are equipped to judge the time and place for each. Sometimes Jesus was moved with compassion, he spoke gently and healed people. Other times he yelled at the Pharisees with the most vile of insults and chased them away with whips. Being a Christian doesn’t mean you don’t fight, it means you don’t fight for yourself. When other people or the credibility of your Lord is on the line, you fight. The Jews were not wrong in their method of stopping blasphemy. They were wrong in their identification of what blasphemy was. Oh that Christians today would take the commands of God as seriously as they did. People who don’t act on what they believe, are cowards. The other option is that you have cowardice embedded in your beliefs. Neither of these options is the way of the Christian.

John the Baptist was beheaded for telling the regent of Judah that he had no right to marry his brother’s wife. He didn’t preach some generalization, or make suggestions, he said it right to Herod’s face. We have much the same situation today. Herod claimed to be a faithful Jew, vying for the place of Messiahship. Our political leaders claim to be Christians. Both blaspheme the name of the One True God. But our pastors don’t stand up. They don’t defend the sheep with their staffs, with the Word. Instead they teach the sheep to cower. “They are just the world, acting like the world.” Well that’s because you didn’t teach them how to act like Christians. If you can’t even teach your own people how to stand up and fight the world, how will we ever be light to the world? In a sense our cowardice is fighting, it’s fighting for our own hide. John didn’t worry about his own life, he spoke the word faithfully. And God took care of Herod. He lived in fear and was eventually devoured by worms.(Mark 6)

The founders of the United States brought with them the Geneva Bible, handed down from Calvin with his notes. Including notes about the doctrine of lesser magistrates. In Exodus 1 the Hebrew midwives are praised for fearing God rather than Pharaoh. They disobeyed the government, Pharoah, and obeyed God. Calvin’s notes made it clear that lower authorities had the right to call higher authorities to account if they overstepped their authority, became tyrants. Not only did they have a right to resist false authority, but they had a responsibility to intervene. If the sheep underneath you are being abused by the wolves, you have a duty to fight the wolves, even if the wolves have titles like ‘king’ or ‘president’. But tyrants don’t like this sort of thing. They want to be their own masters, they want to be above any rule or law, they want to be God. And so the homosexualist King James, made sure that these notes were absent from his new translation. And so many tyrants to this day preach this passive gentleness from Romans 13, which has been stripped of all context and turned into “sit down and shut up, and do whatever the government says.” Because that’s the power they covet for themselves. It’s no surprise that the founders stood up against the tyranny of George III. It’s also no surprise that our culture is off the rails today, as we all cower in fear. We hand our children less freedom every generation, less Gospel, less of the Kingdom. Is that loving? We are fools. We think the darkness we have created is a sign that Christ is returning. Really it a sign of the retreat of his Body, the Church here on earth.

So, when your wife attacks you, be gentle and understanding with her, forget yourself, repent and ask forgiveness. When someone attacks your wife, forget yourself and dive in to the fight whether by words or weapons. Both are gentlemanly, both are loving, both are Christian.