‘A civilisation without violence’ by Owen Lynch, 16 March 2025

From the series ‘A community of hope’ on the book Acts of the Apostles.

This morning can I ask you if you despair over the levels of violence across the world. Do you despair over the stories of violence, murder, and armed conflict filling the news headlines? What is the solution, if any? Well, as we continue our boxset study of Acts, I want to talk about systemic violence and the hope that the gospel of Jesus offers us.

When I started this series of talks on Acts, I assumed we would discover models for being and doing church. This is episode 15, and so far I have not discovered a model for being and doing church.

Instead, I have gained a fresh perspective that this movement of Jesus that we are downstream from was a political, social, and spiritual revolution on the same scale as the French Revolution—there was much violence and bloodshed, political and religious extremism.

During a period of 40 years, most of the leaders of this Jesus revolution were legally and illegally executed in an attempt by the Roman authorities to put this revolution down. There was a reign of terror when saying the wrong thing, or being suspected of being a Jesus revolutionary, could get you deported, imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

Freedom of speech was limited, and so the Jesus revolutionary movement existed in people’s families and close circles of friends. It was underground, hidden to some degree for fear of persecution. If you were part of the revolution, you would have leaned heavily on your fellow revolutionaries for courage and emotional support.

If you are familiar with Paul’s letters, you can see his concern for these fellow revolutionaries in his advice and exhortation. All his letters begin with personal messages of encouragement to keep the faith, endure hardships, and live in peace with one another, in spite of the reign of terror that they were living under.

Grasping the reign of terror backdrop to this period of 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection is essential for understanding Paul’s letters. And in his two-part book, Luke does a great job of describing this reign of terror.

His descriptions that we call ‘Luke’ and ‘Acts’ need to be seen as one piece of work—two sections, yes, but one piece of work that was written for a Greek audience, one for whom discussion of the latest philosophical ideas was their obsession (Acts 17:21):

“All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.”

There is a motif or pattern that is repeated by the author in both Luke and Acts. The motif is the ‘journey' of Jesus to Jerusalem and the ‘journey’ of Paul to Jerusalem and then onward to Rome. Both their journeys end in their legal execution by the ‘civilised’ Roman Empire.

I need to remind us that Luke has an agenda—it is too simplistic to read Luke and Acts as definitive history. It isn’t a definitive history because Jesus and Paul simply did way more than Luke records, so Luke was selective. Why is this?

Well, Luke is Greek himself and would have been educated in Greek literature. The use of the “journey” to Jerusalem and Rome as a guiding principle for his description of the lives of Jesus and Paul was a common pattern used in Greek literature that his audience would have been familiar with.

Luke describes Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and his brutal death ten times, for example, Luke 9:51

“As the days drew near for him to be taken up to heaven, he [Jesus] set his face to go up to Jerusalem.”
(See also Luke 9:53; 13:22; 13:33; 17:11; 18:31; 19:11; 19:28; 19:11; 19:41.)

So Luke described the events that led to Jesus’ execution as an inevitable journey. In the same way, Luke devotes a third of Acts to describing Paul’s journey to Jerusalem, where he is arrested, and then to Rome, where he is executed. Luke describes the beginning of the journey in Acts 19:21:

“After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. ‘After I have been there,’ he said, ‘I must visit Rome also.’”

Luke gives us the sense that both Jesus and Paul, as the two principal leaders of this political, social, and spiritual revolution, both expected to be executed by the Roman authorities. There was an inevitability to the torture, violence, and executions that they experienced. This is what happens to the leaders of revolutions! The system that they set out to destroy almost inevitably destroys them!

So in Acts 20, Luke describes Paul’s journey back to Jerusalem, and in it, he includes a story that draws comparison between Paul and Elijah and Elisha—two revered Jewish Prophets. Acts 20:7-12:

“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man, and put his arms around him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘He’s alive!’ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”

In 1 Kings 17:21, Elijah resurrects the son of the widow in Zarephath by embracing the boy three times. In 2 Kings 4:34, Elisha does the same thing. Luke is clear that Paul was working in a similar vein to the Jewish prophets and should be respected in the same way. Although it’s a bizarre little story, there was a reason that Luke included it—whilst Paul was rejected by many, Luke insists that he was God’s man for the moment.

Luke then records Paul saying a long goodbye to the Jews and Greeks in Ephesus who have embraced Paul’s gospel (Acts 20:17-25).

From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.

“And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.

“Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again.

I can hear the mental and emotional exhaustion in Paul’s words—tears, severe testing, humiliation, incarceration, hardships—and an acceptance that he will soon be executed. He wants to complete the task he believes Jesus has given him before the inevitable happens.

Why was it inevitable that Jesus and most of the leaders of the revolution, including Paul and Peter, would be assaulted, tortured, and executed? I think it is because the gospel of Jesus challenges the systemic violence of human civilisation.

In some ways, the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus and Paul was no different to any other period of human civilisation. By human civilisation I mean all of human activity since about 12,000 years ago when hunter-gatherers started to live in settled communities, when foragers became farmers with the cultivation of food and the domestication of animals.

It happened in the Middle East as humans moved from Africa, a time known as the Neolithic or Agricultural Revolution. It coincided with the end of the last ice age and forever changed how humans live, eat, and interact—paving the way for modern civilisation.

This neolithic/agricultural revolution can be seen in the Hebrew traditions that we find in Genesis 4:1-7.

Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Here we have a Hebrew story that described a settled human family farming crops and rearing sheep or goats. But we also find cold-blooded murder, and it is called “sin.” This is the first time that “sin” is mentioned in the Bible, and it is about violent murder within a family. And if you read through the five generations described in Genesis 4, you watch the escalatory nature of violence. Yahweh tries to stop the escalation of violence, but Cain builds a city and his descendant Lamech boasts to his two wives (Genesis 4:23):

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words.

I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.

If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

It seems that human civilisation was to be forever defined by the escalation of violence and murder, and the Bible called it ‘sin.’ It’s like violence and murder are baked into human civilisation from the outset. And it kind of makes sense, right?

Prior to the neolithic or agricultural revolution, humans didn’t live very long, they were not always top of the food chain, they were few in number, they were dispersed, constantly on the move hunting and foraging. Hunter-gatherers would not have lived in close proximity to each other, but once humans started to settle in larger communities, violence and murder were inevitable. Research shows that rates of lethal violence are higher amongst mammals who live in communities than those who are dispersed - link.

So violence is a systemic feature of human civilisation, and we observe that not just scientifically, but also in ancient writings like the Bible.

Please notice that before Genesis 4:7, there is no mention of sin. Christians talk about Adam and Eve committing the original sin and that all humanity has been steeped in sin ever since. But Genesis 1-3 does not describe the actions of Adam and Eve as sin. Genesis 1-2 describes an ideal of humanity made in God’s image and likeness, but it doesn’t describe what will happen if we don’t act in God’s image and likeness. That comes in Genesis 3. But does Genesis 3 describe Adam and Eve’s actions as sin worthy of punishment? Nope, not a mention of it!

Instead, Genesis talks about consequences. Consequences for acting against our nature, against one another, and against our purpose. If you jump off a high wall, gravity is going to pull you into the ground hard and break your leg—it’s a consequence, not a punishment. So the first mention of sin in the Bible is Genesis 4:7, and it is used to describe lethal violence between two brothers.

So when John the Baptist sees Jesus and says (John 1:29),

“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

…we get a new perspective. By describing Jesus as the Lamb of God, John is using the metaphor of a lamb that was sacrificed in the Hebrew temple to deal with the sin of the nation.

When John writes that Jesus is going to be legally executed to take away the sin of the world, I don’t think that he was primarily referring to things that some British Christians seem to care a lot about, like swearing, getting drunk, or sex outside of marriage. Instead, I think that John is referring to the systematic, collective sin of violence amongst humans.

Just for a moment, consider how endemic and destructive violence is—domestic violence in the family home, physical and sexual violence against women, hooliganism, robbery, child abuse, violence in schools, prisons, against police, against medical staff in A&E, the murder of political opponents, common assault, racially motivated violence and murder, genocide, armed conflict, legal executions. I could go on. Violence appears to be human civilisation’s biggest problem, and Genesis 4 seems to emphasise that.

When Jesus was legally executed by the Roman authorities, John says he submitted himself to the systemic violence of human civilisation to save humanity from its own systematic violence. Perhaps the gospel of Jesus is that the only way to deal with the human sin of systematic violence is sacrificial love, even if that means sacrificing oneself to the system of violence. But that seems so pointless if there is no resurrection!

The resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that there is another way for humans to live, and it does not involve systematic violence—it involves sacrificial love, because you cannot kill sacrificial love. After encountering Jesus, Paul became convinced that the only way to deal with the violence and savagery of human civilisation was sacrificial love, which is why he was willing and expected to follow the way of Jesus to his own legal execution.

Those associated with Jesus became known for their sacrificial love in the face of systemic violence. This movement became so powerful that it spread like yeast throughout the whole Roman Empire, such that within 250 years even the Roman Emperor Constantine embraced Jesus.

What hope do we have faced with the challenge of systematic and endemic violence? The gospel of sacrificial, resurrection love. Only sacrificial, resurrection love can overcome the endless cycle of violence in our society.

Reflections as we share the Lord’s supper

How does the gospel of sacrificial love speak to the violence in our own hearts?

Is the sacrificial love of Jesus enough to move us to express sacrificial love to other people in our lives?

Video - self-giving

Following a previous video showing fruit growing by remaining on the vine, this video explores what the fruit is for. While some will provide seed for new plants, it can also nourish a wide variety of life in a wide variety of ways.

One way we celebrate this is through making wine, which Jesus chose to illustrate the giving of himself. How could the love that God grows in us, as we remain in Jesus (John 15), end up being shareable through our own self-giving?

More in this series