After leftist activists intruded into a Southern Baptist church in Minnesota—disrupting worship, frightening children, and intimidating congregants—a predictable question follows: If Christians are commanded to love their enemies and not resist an evildoer, how can churches justify security teams?
The answer is straightforward. Scripture’s commands to love one’s enemy (Matt. 5:44), to “not resist an evildoer,” and to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39) are not invitations to martyrdom, nor are they mandates for institutional negligence. They are moral commands aimed at restraining revenge, confronting injustice through moral defiance, and restoring proper order. They do not abolish the responsibility to protect one’s own life or the safety of others.
Start with first principles. The Sixth Commandment prohibits murder; it does not prohibit self-defense. From Augustine through Aquinas to the Reformers, the Christian moral tradition has consistently distinguished between legitimate defense of life and bloodlust, revenge, or the desire to kill. Loving oneself and loving others entails taking appropriate and proportional action to protect both. Prudence, law, and defense are not negated by Christian love. Love will ensure that prudence, law, and defense are properly ordered.
The point of Jesus’s teaching is to interrupt cycles of retributive escalation, not to require cooperation with evil indefinitely or the absorption of unlimited harm. An evildoer, moreover, jeopardizes his own claim to non-injury when he creates moral danger zones through unjust action. Responsibility for risk to the evildoer does not rest with those who seek to stop him.
Jesus’s commands to “turn the other cheek” and to “not resist an evildoer” address personal retaliation; that is, the instinct to return insult for insult, violence for violence, pride for pride. The verb in Matthew 5:39 carries the sense of violent retaliation, not every form of resistance whatsoever. Jesus is rejecting the lex talionis logic of personal vengeance, not abolishing prudence, law, or defense. Jesus is calling for principled restraint, not unleashed force by all means available.
Nothing in this teaching nullifies the moral duty of pastors and elders to protect those entrusted to their care. A father who locks his doors at night is not violating the Sermon on the Mount. A church that stations trained, restrained security personnel is doing the same thing at a communal level.
Nor does “love your enemies” require moral confusion about what an enemy is doing. Love is not sentimentalism. Love is ordered to truth and the good. Sometimes loving your enemy means refusing to allow him to victimize others—or himself—through unjust conduct. Treating someone as a criminal when he commits a crime is not hatred; it is moral clarity and moral justice. It is for the good of the evildoer that their actions be restrained and their behavior be named as criminal. Anything less is a dismissal of moral responsibility on its own terms, undermining our understanding of human dignity and agency.
This is where many modern Christians have been catechized into confusion. We are told that love and accountability are opposites. We are told that a radical love for Jesus means reckless self-abandonment in the face of evil. They are not. While situations of martyrdom will certainly arise—for which we must be willing to bear witness where no alternative is available—a willingness to do so does not forbid seeking an outlet to escape. We are not called to give callous disregard for our lives—we are, after all, each image bearers ourselves called to extend dignity to our own persons. Scripture presupposes systems of justice, punishment, and restraint. Jail is not the negation of Christian ethics. In many cases, it is the precondition for repentance, rehabilitation, and restoration. Confinement can be merciful when it interrupts cycles of harm and creates space for moral reckoning.
A church security team, properly conceived, is neither a militia nor a vigilante force. It is not an instrument of fear or aggression. It is a ministry of ordered protection—trained to de-escalate, observe, intervene proportionately, and involve lawful authorities when necessary. The goal is not domination but peace. We seek not violence but prevention. Our aim is not punishment but protection.
The alternative to security is not some higher form of Christian virtue. It is often irresponsibility baptized as piety. When churches refuse to prepare for real threats, they do not display radical faith; they outsource risk to the most vulnerable in the congregation, especially children, the elderly, and the unsuspecting.
The Christian moral tradition has always rejected two equal and opposite errors: pacifist absolutism, which denies the legitimacy of defense, and vengeful coercion, which delights in violence. The narrow road between them is moral action governed by restraint under just authority, guided by love of neighbor and respect for human dignity, including the dignity of those who do wrong.
Christians are called to be peacemakers, not doormats. Establishing moral guardrails is not abandoning love. To recognize that some people intend harm is moral realism in a fallen world. Stopping evil’s advance is Christian love.
Churches that establish sober, disciplined security teams are not betraying the gospel. They are acting in accordance with it: protecting the flock (Acts 20:28-29), honoring the image of God in the congregation as a whole, and refusing to confuse Christian love with an invitation to chaos.
This article originally appeared at X on January 19, 2026.
