Does God Dislike that You are a Soldier or a Police Officer?

A bible study for police officers and soldiers about what the bible says about your job and using force.

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The Centurion of Great Faith: Why Jesus Praised a Roman Officer

There’s a question most warriors ask and almost none say out loud. Does God look at what I do for a living and turn away?

If you’re a soldier, your job includes killing the enemy. If you’re a cop, you use force on lawbreakers. Maybe weekly. And somewhere underneath the Sunday routine sits a quiet suspicion that the God you worship is offended by the work you do.

Scripture answers that question, and the answer comes straight from Jesus.

Who the Centurion Was

Matthew 8. Jesus enters Capernaum and a centurion approaches Him, asking for help. His servant is paralyzed and suffering.

Understand who this man was. A centurion was a career professional soldier commanding roughly eighty to a hundred men. He earned that rank through years of service and combat. He was an officer of Rome, the occupying force in Israel. Everyone watching that conversation knew what his job was.

“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

Matthew 8:8-9, ESV

This man understood something the religious scholars missed. He understood it because of his profession, not in spite of it. He lived inside a chain of command. He knew what delegated authority sounds like. So when he looked at Jesus, he recognized the command authority of heaven.

“When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.’”

Matthew 8:10, ESV

Scripture records Jesus marveling only twice: at the unbelief of His hometown, and here at the faith of a professional soldier. The greatest faith Jesus found in Israel belonged to a career military officer.

What Jesus Did Not Say

Jesus healed the servant and praised the man in front of the crowd. He never told him to resign his commission. If the profession itself was sin, that was the moment to say so. Jesus never held back a hard word when one was needed. He told the rich young ruler to sell everything. He told the woman caught in adultery to go and sin no more. With the centurion, He praised him and sent him back to his post.

John the Baptist went further. Soldiers came to him during his preaching and asked directly what they should do.

“Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.’”

Luke 3:14, ESV

John did not tell them to stop being soldiers. He told them how to be honorable ones. He blessed the profession and condemned its abuses in the same sentence. That is the closest thing in Scripture to a direct answer to the question you’ve been carrying.

The Commandment You Were Misquoted

Somebody has probably quoted “thou shalt not kill” at you. That’s not what it says.

The Hebrew word in Exodus 20:13 is ratsach. Murder. The unlawful, malicious taking of innocent life. The ESV translates it correctly: “You shall not murder.” The same God who gave that commandment authorized lawful force in the same law. Scripture has always distinguished murder from justified killing. Many warriors have carried guilt for years over a commandment they were never breaking.

Paul settles it in Romans 13. The governing authority “does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4, ESV). The servant of God. That is what Scripture calls the man who bears the sword lawfully. I taught through the whole chapter in the study on obeying orders, including what happens when the orders themselves are wrong.

David said it about his own hands: “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle” (Psalm 144:1, ESV). He did not see his combat skill as something God tolerated. He saw it as something God gave him.

Proverbs 24:11 commands the rescue of those being taken away to death. John 15:13 says greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. That is your job description, written a few thousand years before you took your oath.

The Line

This is not a blank check. John the Baptist drew the line. The profession is honorable. The sins inside it are still sins. Excessive force. Lying on a report. Using the badge to take what isn’t yours. The same Scripture that honors the sword in a lawful hand condemns it in a corrupt one.

If something you did crossed that line, the answer is not to defend it. The answer is confession. I wrote about that in I Could Never Be Forgiven. Grace does not stop short of you.

But lawful force, under lawful authority, protecting the innocent, is work Scripture assigns, not work it condemns. When God opened the church to the Gentiles in Acts 10, the first man through the door was Cornelius, a centurion, described as devout and God-fearing before Peter ever arrived. A full study on him is coming later in this series.

The Answer

Jesus praised a professional soldier’s faith above everyone in Israel and sent him back to his post. John told soldiers to serve honorably, not to quit. Paul called the lawful sword-bearer the servant of God. The witnesses agree.

Your profession is not the thing keeping you from God. If you’ve been sitting out of church because you thought your hands disqualified you, look at the centurion. The first man Jesus publicly praised for his faith had hands just like yours.

Send this to a brother carrying the same question. He thinks he’s the only one.

Always Be Carrying.

© 2026 Keith Graves. All rights reserved.