The claim this week comes from Frank Viola’s book: 48 Laws of Spiritual Power. “Never Hurt God’s People” is the title of his first law and the topic of today’s conversation.

Here are a few quotes from Viola explaining the meaning behind the claim:

“I’ve known some incredibly gifted men in my life who have hurt the lord’s people in the following ways:

• Insulting individuals privately and publicly when they felt threatened by them.
• Outright lying to manipulate an outcome.
• Threatening people when they believed their reputation was at stake or they wanted to take full credit for something.
• Masking hatred with sarcasm and ridicule with humor.
• Leveling false accusations against people in order to put them down and lift themselves up. (This is usually done out of jealousy or a spirit of competition. See 1 Samuel 18:1-16 for an example.)
• Mocking people out of envy.
• Demeaning those who make them feel insecure. – Employing guilt, condemnation, fear, and/or shame to motivate God’s people into doing something, even things believed to be right and good (more on this later).
• Correcting a believer in an ungracious way.
• Using people to advance their own ministries.” – Frank Viola in 48 Laws of Spiritual Power

“Those who behave in these ways haven’t learned to free themselves from their own self-sabotage. By contrast, the Lord always calls His workers to take the high road, to repeatedly absorb the blows for the sake of God and His people. And most importantly, to hand their egos over to the cross (more on that later). Consequently, like the Lord Jesus Himself, God’s servants can endure injustice, mistreatment, and misuse without moving into the flesh and responding in kind. They’re also secure enough in themselves to not feel threatened by or jealous of other servants whom the Holy Spirit is using.” – Frank Viola in 48 Laws of Spiritual Power

Is this a Biblical claim?

I’d agree with the claim. I truly do think that Christian ministers, and all other Christians for that matter ought not to hurt God’s people and I think you’d find very little textual support to go against the claim. There is however a lot of text to support it.

Firstly, we are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us:

“‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ” – Matthew 5:43-44 NIV

The typical response to having enemies would be to hate them and to attack them, but the Godly response to enemies is to pray for them. The other response we are supposed to have is to love them. The Bible defines love specifically. A description is as followed:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV

We are supposed to treat our enemies the same way as our neighbors. We need to treat them with kindness, forgiveness, and not let pride dictate our actions. If this is how we are supposed to be treating our enemies how much better should we be treating each other? We need to be certain that we are treating each other with love and never harm one another.

Here is one final verse:

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.” – Romans 12:14,17-19 NIV