The ancient Jews thought that the Messiah would come with sword in hand and liberate them from Roman rule. But Christ Jesus taught his followers to fight error with the sword of Spirit, not with the weapons of material sense. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds” (II Corinthians 10:4). And Jesus himself gave his followers a directive as to how to be a soldier of Christ, how to fight error with the sword of Spirit, when he said, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him” (Matthew 5:25).
At first glance, this directive may seem like a strange one. The reader might ask why Jesus would tell his followers to “agree” with the adversary or enemy. However, the Greek term eunoeo, translated as agree in this passage in the King James Version of the Bible, does not mean to consent or to concede to something that we consider wrong. The word is actually two other Greek words put together: eu, which means “well,” and nous, which means “mind.” So, eunoeo may be said to mean “well-minded.”
The passage in Matthew might then be paraphrased: “Be well-minded and examine your thought. Check to see if you are thinking correctly about your opponent.” To faithfully follow Jesus’ instruction, we would need to have a change in perspective. To think correctly about evil is actually to deprive it of its very being, because evil can have no real existence, if God, good, is the only reality.
