I’m going to start with a lengthy quote from John Cecil Cadoux’s The Early Christian Attitude to War p. 63. I apologize for it’s length but it’s so well written I felt I needed to include it nearly in full (emphasis mine).

..Was he not in any case [when tempted in the desert] invested by God with supreme authority over men, and was it not his life’s work to bring in the Kingdom as speedily as possible? Assuming that the use of military force did not appear to him to be in itself illegitimate, why should he not have used it? Had he not the most righteous of causes? Would not the enterprise have proved in his hands a complete success? Would he not have ruled the world much better than Tiberius was doing? … But on the assumption that he regarded the use of violence and injury as a method that was in itself contrary to the Will of God, which contained among its prime enactments the laws of love and gentleness, his attitude to the suggestion of world-empire becomes easily intelligible. Other incidents bear out this conclusion. He refuses to be taken and made a king by the Galileans : he does not stir a finger to compel Antipas to release the Baptist or to punish him for the Baptist’s death or to prevent or avenge any other of the many misdeeds of “that she-fox.” He was not anxious to exact from Pilatus a penalty for the death of those Galileans whose blood the governor had mingled with their sacrifices. He made no attempt to constrain men to do good or desist from evil by the application of physical force or the infliction of physical injuries. He did not go beyond a very occasional use of his personal ascendancy in order to put a stop to proceedings that appeared to him unseemly. He pronounces a blessing on peace-makers as the children of God and on the gentle as the inheritors of the earth. He laments the ignorance of Jerusalem as to ‘the (things that make) for peace.’ He demands the forgiveness of all injuries as the condition of receiving the divine pardon for oneself. His own conduct on the last day of his life is the best comment on all this teaching. He does not try to escape, he offers no resistance to the cruelties and indignities inflicted upon him, and forbids his followers to strike a blow on his behalf. He addresses mild remonstrances to the traitor and to his captors, and at the moment of crucifixion prays to God to pardon his enemies : “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

I thought this was a powerful example of how Jesus, despite being able to use violence to further his agenda, refused. He lived in a critical time when the Jews were under Roman rule and his purposes are certainly more important than ours, and yet he apparently didn’t think using violence was necessary nor would it hurry along his message. This reminded me of something Origen wrote in Against Celsus 3.7

[If he had begun his ministry with a violent revolt, he could have allowed his followers to take up arms in defense and kill their enemies] and yet He nowhere teaches that it is right for His own disciples to offer violence to anyone, however wicked. For He did not deem it in keeping with such laws as His, which were derived from a divine source, to allow the killing of any individual whatever. Nor would the Christians, had they owed their origin to a rebellion, have adopted laws of so exceedingly mild a character as not to allow them, when it was their fate to be slain as sheep, on any occasion to resist their persecutors.

For Origen, Jesus’ refusal to begin his revolution violently was a condemnation of his followers to continue it violently. Though we have no records of Jesus bringing up our nuanced scenarios to justify violence, whether it be defending ourselves, defending the innocent or obeying the ruling powers, Jesus lived through all of those scenarios and yet never once did he engage in or promote violence.

He could have invoked a rebellion against the Romans as the Jews did before and after him, surely God could win it for the underdogs as is shown repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, but he did not. Instead he warned that ‘those who live by the sword, die by the sword’. He could have led a rebellion against the slavery that was destroying people’s lives around him, saved John the Baptist’s life, fought against those dehumanized through the painful execution of crucifixion (we know he had thousands of followers listening to him at least twice) but he never did. He could have become ruler of all the kingdoms of the earth, and yet he rejected the offer. He could have defended himself against the soldiers who were to crucify him, and yet he remained silent. I think it’s important to note that his followers did the same in the coming years.

The world he lived in was less different to ours than we sometimes realize. The Jews were not living in a peaceful little enclave where Jesus was able to give only nice, peaceful advice without threat from the outside world. He lived in a violent world within a small group of people who were occupied by a violent government. He led a peaceful life among violent people. His entire ministry came to a head at his crucifixion where he refused to strike back, refused to hurl threats or insults and instead begged for them to be forgiven. His refusal to begin his revolution with violence but instead with love and forgiveness is a powerful statement as to how he wanted the movement to spread throughout and shape the world.