My attention has recently been arrested by reading Matthew 11:12:

"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it." NIV

What is all this about "violence" and "forcefulness"? I had heard sermons on this passage that further muddied the picture. Is this violence a good thing or bad? I believe it is good. Necessary, in fact.

Jesus uses the example of John the Baptist's throng of followers to point out the necessity of all who want to be saved to strive to enter into the strait gate. Spurgeon has an excellent sermon on this text in which he describes these "violent men" (and women) both before and after conversion:

"They have hammered at the gates of heaven until it seemed as if they would split the golden bolts rather than be turned away. No man ever gets peace until he gets into such a passion of earnestness to be saved, that he cannot find peace until Christ speaks pardon to his soul, and brings him into life and liberty. „The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

But this violence does not end when a man finds Christ; it then begins to exercise itself in another way. The man who is pardoned, and who knows it, then becomes violently in love with Christ. He does not love him just a little, but he loves him with all his soul and all his might. He feels as if he
could wish to die for Christ, and his heart pants to be able to live alone with his Redeemer, and serve him without interruption. Mark such a man who is a true Christian, mark his prayers, and you will see there is violence in all his supplications when he pleads for the souls of men. Mark his outward actions, and they are violently sincere, violently earnest. Mark him when he preaches: there is no dull droning out of a monotonous discourse, he speaks like a man who means what he says, and who must speak it, or else woe would he unto him if he preached not the gospel. As I look around on many of the churches, yea, on many members of my own church, I am apt to fear that they are not God‚s children at all, because they have nothing of this holy violence.

Have ye ever read Coleridge‚s Ancient Mariner? I dare say you have thought it one of the strongest imaginations ever put together, especially that part where the old mariner represents the corpses of all the dead men rising up ˜ all of them dead, yet rising up to manage the ship; dead men pulling the ropes dead men steering, dead men spreading the sails. I thought what a strange idea that was. But do you know I have lived to see that true: I have seen it done. I have gone into churches and I have seen a dead man in the pulpit, and a dead man as a deacon, and a dead man holding the plate at the door, and dead men sitting to hear. You say, „Strange! but I have. I have gone into societies, and I have seen it all going on so regularly. These dead men, you know, never overstep the bounds of prudence, ˜ not they: they have not life enough to do that. They always pull the rope orderly, „as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.

Vincent's Word Studies has this:
"They seize upon the kingdom and make it their own. The Rev., men of violence, is too strong, since it describes a class of habitually and characteristically violent men; whereas the violence in this case is the result of a special and exceptional impulse. The passage recalls the old Greek proverb quoted by Plato against the Sophists, who had corrupted the Athenian youth by promising the easy attainment of wisdom: Good things are hard."

I believe that we can learn something from the earnest Christians of, say, Constantine's time who felt the need to go out of the world to seek with violent earnestness the grace and presence of God. To be sure, many of them could have learned from Luther's revalation of the just living by faith. I think our age, however, has little of the dynamic resolve of either the early church or Luther. We are willing to use "faith" as a talisman or magic key to open up a kingdom that we have not yet made ourselves worthy of.