Matthew 10 has Jesus declaring that he came to bring a sword and not peace. While that sounds like an endorsement of violence on his part, I actually think the context of the passage makes this section a strong proof text for pacifism. 

1. Augustine's argument for why Peter was reprimanded by Christ for defending his savior in the garden is that Christ did not give Peter the authority to use the sword. Matthew 10 gives us the context for what authority Christ gave his disciples, and it has no inclusion of violence. They had the authority to drive out demons, heal, lodge with those who were hospitable, and share the gospel of the Kingdom. The use of the sword is not included. If you want to use an Augustinian line of reasoning to justify violence based on authoritative command, you can't use this passage. 

2. In this same passage, preceding Christ's reference to the sword, he tells his disciples that they will be sheep among wolves, and they are to remain as innocent as doves. He proceeds to tell them how they'll be beaten. This hardly seems that Jesus is advocating violence in response to opposition. 

3. Jesus does give one specific response his disciples are to have to persecution. They are to flee. Jesus just told them that they would be put to death due to their family members betrayal. We're not just talking about how to respond to a beating, but to imminent death. Jesus tells his disciples to run away.

4. The verses immediately preceding Christ's sword comment are the familiar ones about not fearing what men can do to our bodies, God has numbered our hairs, we're worth more than sparrows, etc. This is not at all the language of the disciples bearing the sword, but rather the disciples receiving the sword.

When we come to the verse where Christ talks about the sword, then, the context is that the disciples have authority to help others and spread good news, they will be persecuted and betrayed yet are to remain innocent through that, and they should try to escape evil, but if they don't, remember that the Spirit will help them and God cares for them no matter what. The verse about the sword, then, is metaphorical in the sense that Christ divides a family like a sword (reminds me of the dividing language in Hebrews 4:12), but it is also literal in the sense that a disciple's own family may put them to the sword. 

5. Jesus goes on to say that disciples are to love Christ more than their family, and here tells the disciples what that love looks like. It doesn't look like self defense against persecution, it looks like taking up their cross and following Christ. Because "whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." This passage, then, is not at all about the preservation of one's physical life, but rather the loss of it in light of the eternal. 

If pacifists think that governments and laws are necessary, but a Christian shouldn't serve at levels of the government which would require them to legislate or enact harm, does that mean pacifists are just passing the necessary governmental responsibility on for others to do?

Many Christian pacifists think that participating in governmental positions like the president or congress are compromises for one's Christianity. The president is the commander in chief of the military and congress passes all sorts of forceful legislation and legislation that allows for harm to come to others (self-defense laws, voting to go to war, etc). It seems like a shirking of duties, then, if pacifists are unwilling to participate in government to a certain extent. 

There are several problems with this accusation. The first is that pacifists acknowledge that the Kingdom overrules the kingdom. Their primary responsibility is not to compromise the lesser for the greater. It doesn't matter if people think they are shirking responsibilities. 

Second, a participation in lower government is still possible. There are all sorts of levels in which a pacifist can do great good (public education, healthcare, federal benefits, etc). Why does one have to be willing to serve as a higher level official to be considered a beneficial participant in the land? 

Finally, I hear many conservative Christians bemoaning the onset of what they view as growing socialism in the United States. They hate that we have, in their minds, become a welfare state. But then, sometimes in moments of self-reflection, they acknowledge that the government has likely gotten involved because the church wasn't handling her own business. In Rome the secular government acknowledged that the Christians were taking better care of her people than the government was. We don't have that same problem in the States. Many Christians acknowledge that we would have less intrusion, waste, and handouts from the government if only the church would value life and participate in self-sacrifice more, Unfortunately, I often hear from the same conservative Christian group that legislation is the answer for the moral ills in the United States. So what is it - a bottom up approach or a top down one? 

I would argue that a marriage to the state, an embracing of legislation, and a top-down approach is not at all the answer. Early Rome had gladiatorial events, temple prostitution, state laws requiring worship of Caesar and the gods, slavery, and the list goes on. The Roman state changed for the good by leaps and bounds before Christianity began to be legislated, when there was a bottom up approach. When Christians really lived as Christ taught them to, that seeped out of their everyday lives, into the local communities, and into the nation - long before any Christian was an emperor. While just war theorists can embrace this same sort of notion and recognize the importance of the church, the approach of Christian pacifism highlights and underlines this notion. Christian pacifism places the lever of power on the Church, the gospel, and the Christian life rather than armies, governments, etc. ​

We see clearly that God, at times, has chosen to enact his judgment on the world. In the Old Testament, his judgment was often exacted on individuals and nations via other individuals and nations. The people of God often justly exacted his judgment, and the enemies of God, like Assyria, often unwittingly exacted God's harsh judgment. In the New Testament, God has taken our judgment upon himself and called us to withhold our own judgment. He has given the sword to the State and asks Christians not to bear anything but love and kindness even to their enemies. This isn't because God is soft on evil, but because he will ultimately exact perfect justice. He calls us to place our trust in his provision - not that he will always keep us safe, though he will often protect us - but rather that he will not give us more than he will bear us through. And when Christ the perfect, omniscient, omnipotent God returns, he will do so for judgment, with the martyred saints looking on. 

Violence and justice are not antitheses of God, but he asks the Christian who has had their deserved violence placed on Christ to bear the violence of others. Injustice has been borne by the just one so the unjust could be justified. We don't know the hearts of others. We don't know where the Spirit will move and how it may touch the most wicked heart. It is not for us to decide the fate of others. It is for us to decide to lay down our lives, to forgive to the depths we've been forgiven, to love others even more than ourselves, and to trust God in his sovereignty and justice. 

[Edit: I have just finished the book "Fight" by Preston Sprinkle, who gives a very interesting take on Revelation. I'm still researching it and verifying some things, but I'd recommend you check out his argument. You can find a summary in one of his points online here.] 

[Edit 2: Tim Mackie (the guy from the Bible Project) has a great dialogue about Revelation that I find extremely compelling. I highy recommend checking out how he unpacks Revelation in context. You search for the dialogue towards the bottom of this page, or you can get it in the document below. I think I am officially on board with the non-violent interpretation of Revelation as it seems to make sense of John's structuring, the imagery, the context of the whole book of Revelation, the theme of Christ's sacrifice, etc. You can also find a great podcast interview with Mackie here, or you can listen to his six part podcast on the Day of the Lord here.]

[Edit 3: Greg Boyd has a series on Revelation called "Rescuing Revelation." He does a good job of exploring a more reasonable interpretation of Revelation than the modern notion that we find Hind gunships metaphorically represented in the book. The historic interpretation has tremendous explanatory power and considers that this book was written with the intent of being applicable to a people 2,000 years ago, and was written in the light of martyrdom for adhering to a Cruciform life, like our savior. Boyd follows the same general concept Mackie follows and I highly recommend you check him out. The sermon video below is the video I found to be the most pertinent. While I certainly disagree with Boyd about a number of important things, I think he nails the centrality of the cross and idea of the Kingdom. 

In Luke 3 we see some soldiers come to John the Baptist seeking repentance and baptism. This is a much more powerful passage against pacifism than the one where Jesus tells the centurion that he's never seen as much faith as he had, because there is no context there for an admonishment or exhortation. Jesus wasn't talking about the man's profession and since the passage isn't about that, we have no idea what else they talked about or what the centurion did with his life. Just as we know so little about all the sinners Jesus met with, what they did with their lives after Jesus, and just as Jesus doesn't admonish every sinner with whom we see him, that centurion passage doesn't show anything. 

In this Luke passage, however, the soldiers ask John what they must do to repent and John tells them three things (NIV)- don't extort, don't accuse falsely, and be content with pay. What seems to be missing from John the Baptist's exhortation is that he doesn't tell the soldiers that they must leave the army. This seems to imply that being in the army - which would certainly mean doing bodily harm for some - was legitimate. So what do the pacifists have to say? 

1) This is one of those passages where the translation makes a big difference. If you read the text from the KJV, John tells the men to - do no violence, don't accuse falsely, and be content with your wages. In fact, the rendering of this word as "extortion of money" is a very narrow reading, as most of the definitions for the Greek word used here involve physical violence.

Now if John is telling soldiers to do no violence, what might that mean for their career? It may mean they have to leave their profession (more on that here). 

2. Even if we take the more generous interpretation for anti-pacifists, John the Baptist failing to tell soldiers to leave the army wouldn't be all that surprising. John was the last prophet of the OT. There were a number of times he didn't really understand Christ's way or what he was doing, and at one point he even sent messengers to ask Jesus if he really was the Messiah. Jesus was extremely revolutionary, and the extent of his Kingdom was not realized by any of his closest disciples until after the resurrection. John's failure to directly exhort soldiers to leave warfare wouldn't mean that much to me. 

3. This argument is at best an argument from silence. Even if we take out alternate interpretations of the word "violence" and we assume that John knew exactly what Christ's kingdom was and how he would bring it, this passage would still say nothing of itself about violence. It may be an interesting piece of evidence to bolster an already strong case, but I don't think anti-pacifists have much of a foundation for this verse to be very helpful to them. 

In Luke 22 Jesus tells his disciples that if they don't have swords, they should go buy some. On it's face this looks like a ringing endorsement of force and setting up for self-defense. However, there are a number of facts that turn this notion completely on its head. 

1. Luke explicitly says that Jesus told his disciples to get swords to fulfill prophecy - that he would be numbered with the transgressors. When Christ was met by officals in the garden, he could be numbered a transgressor (or a political anarchist, maybe like a zealot) because his group was obviously armed. Verse 52 of the chapter adds to this plausibility when Jesus says, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?" Luke tells us that the reason Jesus had his disciples get swords was to be considered a transgressor and says nothing about considering them for defense. 

2. When the disciples come up with a whopping two swords, Jesus says that it is enough. It certainly wasn't enough to consider for self-defense, but it was enough to be numbered with the transgressors. The number two may have some significance to bolster this notion. In Jewish law, one could not be convicted of a crime based on one witness. So if there would have been only one sword present, it may not have been enough of a witness or evidence to hold a charge against Jesus. 

3. When Peter uses his sword in Christ's defense, Jesus tells him to sheath it. Some of the early church fathers took this command as an example of Christ's command for all Christians to put away violence (see section 4). The fact that none of the apostles ever (to our knowledge) unsheathed their swords against anyone again seems to indicate to me that Christ was making more than a momentary statement. In light of the evidence of example and early church interpretation, it seems that such a conflicting notion implies that this more ambiguous notion must be explained in another way than that Christ was advocating violence. 

4.  Compare Luke 22:36 in the betrayal scene with Luke 9:3 when Jesus sent out the disciples to spread the good news of the Kingdom.

In Luke 9, we see Christ send out the disciples to proclaim the Kingdom. This is the good news for the world! They were to heal, drive out Satan's demons, and not worry about their lives. Later on in Luke 9 Jesus talks about all the persecution they'll face, how they need to bear their cross, and how they are to lose their lives so they will gain them. In Luke 22, are we supposed to conclude that at the climax of this Kingdom concept - the moment when Satan and Jesus literally come face to face (because Luke, unlike the other gospels, tells us that Satan has entered Judas at this point) - that Christ's ethic has changed? Are we to conclude that Christ's way of bringing about the Kingdom is different?

In Luke 9, Christ's servants were not to worry about money, about possessions (a bag), and they were to have only the clothes on them (but no extra undershirt). In Luke 22 we see a complete reversal. Now Jesus says that the disciples should take their money and possessions, but sell their outer garments (their main article of clothing) to purchase a weapon - a weapon Jesus will condemn them for using in just a few moments. There is obviously something weird going on here. This becomes even more apparent when you see Christ's words in Luke 22:35, immediately preceding him telling the disciples to buy swords. Jesus refers to the command of Luke 9 to take no money or possessions and asks the disciples if they lacked anything. The disciples answered that they had not lacked anything. God provided and was sufficient. So if they didn't need anything but the clothes on their back, how had God changed now  that would require them to take money, possessions, and a sword? 

What we see in Christ's words found in Luke 22 is that he is predicting the betrayal of the apostles (see video at the bottom for thorough explanation). Just as he told Peter that he would betray Jesus in word, now he is telling the apostles that they will betray him in action. Immediately prior to this conversation, the disciples had been fighting over who would be greatest in the Kingdom, and Christ said that it was the one who serves. Then he goes on into the betrayal texts. It's as if Jesus was saying, 

The most common misconception about pacifism is that it means inaction. I'd like to show how pacifism has a basis not only for action, and not only meaningful action, but how it also resists being manipulated and misused.

If I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany, I may actually wish to be surrounded by pacifists than those who are militant, as I'd have a better chance of being assisted in a meaningful way. 

1). Those who accept violence tend towards pragmatism.

I remember a story a few years back from Panama City, Florida, where a girl was raped on the beach by a group of guys while a number of others did nothing. In my experience, non-pacifists tend to be pragmatic in their approach. If a non-pacifist has a gun, has the numbers, or is a confident fighter, they may go take on a group of aggressors. If they don't have the upper hand, they are less likely to confront. That's because force is acceptable to the non-pacifist because it's effective. If someone has a knife but I have fists, I'm out. If someone has a gun and I only have a knife, I'm out of the fight. Violence as a solution requires that it be of equal or greater violence than the potential violence it wishes to meet. If you can't meet the level of violence, you likely won't engage. This is also a core component of "Just War Theory." If you don't have a reasonable chance of winning, the war is not justified. Why engage if you can't win? 

Christian pacifists, however, have already counted their life as nothing, and the lives of victims and enemies as everything. If they see a group of individuals raping a woman, they are much more likely to intervene. Maybe their action - bringing evil into the light - causes the men to flee. Maybe it stalls the act until help can arrive. Or maybe the intervention doesn't cause the act to stop. Maybe it only calls out evil, shows solidarity to the victim, and brings injury to the pacifist. But I can tell you that this bears the message of the gospel. The gospel isn't about pragmatism. 

If I were a Jew under Nazi occupation, I would hope those around me were pacifists, as they'd likely help me even though there was a great risk to their own safety.

2). Those who accept violence are more apt to be coerced.

​There is a fascinating book about the death squads of WWII called "Ordinary Men." It researches how the majority of death squads who killed Jews in Eastern Europe weren't hardened members of the Nazi party. They were the background, conscripted police forces composed of bankers, lawyers, bakers, etc. They were ordinary men. The Milgram Experiment backs up this very notion, that authority so easily directs our actions. 

How is it the case that a Europe still saturated with Christian values could have its average citizen willing to carry out executions of innocent victims? Because if you're willing to make exceptions for doing violence to another human being, one only needs to expand or redefine your exceptions to direct your violence on innocent lives. If you can ever make the exception that some human is not worthy of life, it's just a very steep and slippery slope (as "Ordinary Men," the Milgram Experiment, and the Stanford Prison Experiment show) to get you to harming others. Pro-life advocates use this argument all the time. They say we can't redefine another group as unworthy of the human right to life. But even pro-life advocates will often do that with their enemies. Especially when you couple this directable violence with a sense of nationalism and fighting for your country, it becomes easy to see how a generally non-pacifistic culture (like Germany and the surrounding "Christian" countries that implemented death squads) can easily direct their violence to innocent groups.

Sadly, coercion can even extend to those who you may think couldn't be coerced. In his book "The Destruction of the European Jews," Raul Hilberg discusses how Jews themselves were implemented as a police force to round up fellow Jews. Hilberg says, "Each Jewish policeman was told to bring seven people for deportation each day or face 'resettlement' himself. Now every policeman brought whoever he could catch--friends, relatives, even members of his immediate family.... Bribes were offered to Jewish policemen to ward off arrest.... A middle aged woman held on to a lamppost and a line of Jews crawled on a catwalk on roofs, trying not to slip. Furniture, crockery, and shoes littered the streets." 

As a Jew, I would hope that the community around me were pacifistic, as they value the lives of all - even enemies - and have already counted their lives as nothing. They would be much less susceptible to expanding their definition of human value and they would be much more likely to help me escape. There is a great quote by MLK which highlights this very notion, as he describes his attitude before he embraced non-violence and compares it with his attitude after accepting non-violence. King says, "I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that I couldn't keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it. From that point on, I no longer needed a gun nor have I been afraid. Had we become distracted by the question of my safety we would have lost the moral offensive and sunk to the level of our oppressors." 

Pacifism is a dying to self. It is putting oneself last. Christian pacifism views the ultimate authority as God and recognizes that he is the judge and he has issued the means and standards he sees fit. One who has disarmed themselves and relinquished their life has less with which they can be coerced.

3). Those who accept pacifism tend to love all life. 

At the core of Christian non-violence is that all human life is sacred. Human life, even the life of an enemy, is worth preserving, even at the cost of one's own life. With that in mind, were I to be a Jew in Nazi Germany, I would rather be in a community that was of a pacifistic mindset than a community that wasn't, as I would be more likely to encounter those individuals who would be willing to safeguard me at the risk of their own lives. 

Many seem to have in their mind that an abstention from violence means an abstention from action. That is not at all the case. To smuggle and hide Jews, to help Jewish store owners clean up after their stores were destroyed, to not remain silent when indoctrination was occurring, etc - these are all non-violent ways to do something positive. By killing a German soldier (who may or may not align with the genocidal notions of the Third Reich) I reduce the country's manpower by one. I remove the possibility of that soldier ever changing his life, repenting, hearing the gospel, etc. I create hatred within that soldier's friends and create a cycle of perpetuated violence.

But when I house Jews, like the ten Booms, how many lives do I positively save? How much solidarity do I show and how much do I encourage my fellow brother and sister in love? When I get arrested for helping, how does that influence my neighbors and my community, knowing that I risked my life to save others, and without fault or any possible accusations of my harming another through resistance? What impact can I have on the guards during my detention? They may not see Jews as human, but what of one of their own countrymen who saw the Jews as human and helped them? What does that do to their system? What might that do to their heart? If the country would have been filled with Christian pacifists, there would have been less people whose violence could have been manipulated and coerced, less people who would have done nothing due to their god of pragmatism, and there would have been a love for all mankind. There would have been less blood shed by the soldiers of the nation and there would have been less Jews found by the state as more would have been hidden. World War Two was far more atrocious than it had to be because countries with a Christian foundation were willing to do violence.

[Edit]: As a fantastic example of non-violent resistance which actually worked, check out this article about the Bulgarian salvation of the Jews. Bulgaria may have been the only European country who saw their Jewish population rise during WWII - and they were allied with Hitler!

[Edit 2] Sophie Scholl was a young girl executed in 1943 for treason, as she encouraged non-violence and an end to the war. Now I don't know if Sophie knew about the concentration camps and was acting on this basis, but the point is that she saw what she believed to be the atrocity of war perpetuated by her own people, and she encouraged others to nonviolently resist. What is fascinating about Sophie is that in 2003, a nationwide contest was held in Germany to vote for the most influential Germans of all time. Sophie Scholl placed 4th, beating out great, famous individuals like Bach, Goethe, Gutenberg, Bismarck, and Einstein. While Scholl may not have have killed Nazis or blown up bridges, she worked for what she thought would produce a more genuine, lasting peace, advocating the laying down of violence. While the fruit of her labor took decades to realize, she won the hearts of her country through her courageous and selfless pacifistic action. Her final words before being beheaded are inspiring and insightful.

Using the OT as a metric for how to view violence is pretty thin ice, in my opinion. The fact that Israel was a theocracy directly commanded by God, that Christ came to fulfill the law and bear sin, that Christ commanded us to allow God to have vengeance, and that Christ explicitly exemplified how he wanted us to live as he established his Kingdom, all make the OT a bad metric for justifying our personal defense. While Israel was a kingdom of God, of sorts, it was a physical, national kingdom. Christ brought the Kingdom which is not of this world, and whose servants don't bear the sword for this reason. God was absolutely legitimate in his justice in the OT. But only God can mete out justice and only God can judge. While God gave the ability to judge and mete out justice to Israel in the OT, he rescinds this ability to the new Israel - the church - in the NT, and places the sword in the hands of the government alone. God will bear the sword through governments as he did with Assyria, Israel, and other nations (willing or not). He will not bear the sword through his people. 

If one wants to use OT justice to salvage war and self-defense, they have a lot of explaining to do as far as upholding consistency with the severity of punishment we should mete out, why they don't advocate family revenge for manslaughter, and all sorts of other things we find in the OT that even just-war advocates think we shouldn't implement. What is the rationale for incorporating a civic law from a theocratic ancient Israel despite seemingly clear teachings in the NT that this civic law doesn't apply in the new Kingdom? Yes, the moral law is immutable, but the sacrificial and civic laws were structures used to convey aspects of the moral law prior to God's perfect revelation in Jesus. Under Christ and the NT, how is capital punishment a more accurate vehicle to convey the New Covenant and the moral law as understood through the revelation of God in Christ Jesus?

It is this last part that is really the most important. Colossians and Hebrews are two books that emphasize the perfection of Christ's representation of God. Yes, God did reveal his justice in the Old Testament at times. But now, we have a better revelation. It's better than the angels, the prophets, the Torah, and all previous revelation, as Hebrews argues. We have the image of God himself. And what has that image revealed? The image has revealed self-sacrificial enemy love. If you want to argue that this aspect isn't a reflection of God and is only a role Christ filled to become the Messiah, than what hope do we have, those who were once at enmity with God? No, we love God because he first loved us, while we were still his enemies. The enemy love of Christ is prescriptive. He is the perfect revelation of God. 

More than this new vs. old revelation (or complete vs. incomplete), those who want to use the OT to back up claims for modern violence have to move beyond explaining "just" violence for civic punishments. Most modern Christians who are not pacifists cling to a notion of just war. A just war values the preservation of civilians, yet we see the slaughtering of civilians in the OT. We also see some more gruesome features of war that don't seem to be condemned (e.g. David cutting off Goliath's head and its symbol of victory and taking it about the land). Most just war advocates will argue that this type of warfare was only intended for a theocracy where God directly commanded individuals, or that the more crude aspects of wars weren't directed by God, but were rather faults in the culture that God was patient with (akin to his permissiveness towards divorce due to the hardness of the peoples' hearts). But this is the exact argument pacifists make. It's just that rather than claiming we need a direct command from God to slaughter civilians, we need a direct command to do any violence whatsoever. I would argue that violence in general fits into Kierkegaard's "teleological suspension of the ethical." 

Finally, it's interesting that God's reasoning behind preventing David from building God's temple is that David had shed too much blood. God wanted to be associated with Solomon, a man of peace. Even though David, a man who had done what God directed, was prevented from building God's dwelling place because he had killed (this is very fitting with the Orthodox theology, by the way, as they prevent anyone who has killed with religious leadership). In the New Testament, believers are the temple of God. We are his dwelling place. It makes sense that a God who wants to be known as a God of peace and who revealed himself in the Prince of Peace would not want his dwelling place to be marred by war. 

[Edit: Tim Mackie from the Bible project has some fascinating things to say about God and his relationship to death. He clearly shows how in about 80-90% of instances where we think God is killing in the OT, that killing gets attributed to something else (natural consequences, an evil spirit being, etc). Similarly to Joseph's attribution to the evil of his enslavement to his brothers, but the good brought out of his enslavement to the purposes and hand of God - or how Jesus was crucified by evil men, but also by God's decree - so Mackie argues it may be with God's consequence of death. A God of life may actually not have so much to do with death as we think. Check out his podcast transcript towards the bottom of this link, or take a look at the document below.]