What is a Christian Response to ISIS?

Sometimes people ask me, “Should we pray for ISIS to be defeated, or should we pray for ISIS to be converted?” My response to that is both. We have a responsibility, Romans 13, to see to it that the state wields the sword of justice against evildoers. We have radical Islamic groups, including the Islamic State, who are destroying innocent people.

They are destroying and torturing religious minorities, including our brothers and sisters in Christ in Syria, in Iraq, and elsewhere. We need to maintain justice in putting that down. We need to be praying for the defeat of ISIS and other radical Islamic violent groups.

At the same time, we ought to be praying for conversion because we know that the gospel came to us through a great missionary theologian, the apostle Paul, who originally had been a one-man ISIS and who had been on his way to destroy the church in Syria when he was turned around. It is entirely possible that there is someone, right now, who is doing exactly what Saul of Tarsus was doing holding the coats while Christians are being executed who may well be the one who will be turned around by the gospel and be the great missionary to the nations for the next generation. We should be praying to that end.