One Sentence Away
A Review of
How (Not) To Be a Tyrant: Ten Lessons on Life and Leadership from the Bible’s Worst Rulers
Joshua W. Jipp
Paperback: Brazos Press, 2026
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Reviewed by Douglas Brouwer
Joshua Jipp is a New Testament scholar, an associate professor at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of several scholarly books, including Reading the Gospels as Christian Scripture (Baker Academic, 2024).
I mention all of that because How (Not) To Be a Tyrant presents itself — on the surface at least — as something of a departure for Jipp. It reads at first like a practical biblical leadership book, a hybrid of exegesis and leadership manual, complete with end-of-chapter “reflection questions.” It might have been written for an adult education class at my church.
And yet, I suspect that Jipp intends the book to be much more than that.
In his prologue, Jipp states clearly that “the argument of this book is that prioritizing effectiveness and results in Christian leadership at the expense of Christian character is the way of Satan.” He goes on to state that “Satan-inspired leadership” is prevalent at “many Christian churches, schools, and organizations.” Too many followers of Jesus, Jipp argues, prioritize “results and effectiveness over Jesus-like character.” And so, Jipp makes the case (over and over again) that the teachings of Jesus and the entire New Testament are instructive for the development of Christian leaders.
The book’s structure is straightforward and deceptively simple: ten chapters, each with a description of a different tyrant mentioned in the Bible, followed by biblical teachings offering the opposite of whatever characterized the tyrant. Jipp’s tyrants are (in order): Pharaoh, another Pharaoh, Solomon, Jeroboam, Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate, Herod Agrippa I, Caesar Augustus, and Nero Claudius Caesar.
So, to take one example — Herod the Great, who ruled the Herodian kingdom of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE. He was clearly, in Jipp’s words, a “loyal client king” to Rome. He was also a capable political and military leader, as well as a builder of cities, temples, and fortresses. At the same time, he was “cruel, angry, impious, and unjust.” He murdered his second wife Mariamne and her family when he decided that they might attempt to overthrow his rule. And of course, he once famously ordered the murder of children under the age of two who were born near Bethlehem.
Was Herod an effective leader? Yes, without question. But Jipp provides biblical evidence that “God’s kingdom will not come through violence or coercion, because God’s kingdom is a peaceable kingdom.” Jipp offers persuasive examples from Jesus’ teaching and Paul’s writing to illustrate that Christians must “decisively reject the belief that ends justify the means.”
In the case of every tyrant Jipp cites, the contrast between the tyrant and the biblical alternative seems glaringly obvious; nevertheless, Christians, often because they benefit from the exercise of the tyrant’s power, seem to admire and follow the tyrant.
In recent years, some Christians, especially in American evangelical circles, have appealed to Isaiah 45, where the prophet calls the Persian king Cyrus the Lord’s “anointed” and says God called him even though he did not know the Lord. The inference is that God regularly uses flawed, even pagan, rulers to accomplish good ends, and therefore a leader’s character matters less than whatever he delivers for God’s people.
Dallas-based author and speaker Lance Wallnau and others made this case for Donald Trump beginning in 2016, and variations have been repeated since. It is not a silly argument; there is a real text behind it. But it is also close kin to what Jipp’s prologue calls the way of Satan, the prioritizing of results over character, with a proof text attached.
What I sensed throughout the book was that Jipp was always a sentence or two away from drawing a parallel with the current political situation in the U.S. At times I found myself wishing that he had made the application explicit. In the chapter on Pontius Pilate, for example, Jipp writes that “tyrants use their power to scapegoat and terrorize the weak and vulnerable.” And then he says, as an indictment, “The Scriptures frequently decry both leaders who propagate falsehoods and subjects who tolerate them (Ps. 12:1-5, Jer. 6:13-14, 7:4, 8-10).”
I thought I could predict the next sentence. But in that and every case, Jipp stopped short and in effect asked his readers themselves to make the connection. I suppose that Jipp’s approach is ultimately a wise one. In the current climate too many people (on both ends of the political spectrum) are quick to label and then dismiss. Instead, Jipp leaves his readers to do the hard work of applying biblical truths to their own assumptions and conclusions.
There was little in the book that I didn’t already know, and for most students of the Bible, the stories and citations will be familiar. What makes the book worth reading, reflecting on, and perhaps using in an adult study is the way Jipp puts all of it together — coherently, persuasively, and with a sense of urgency.
“Why are there so many stories of bad rulers in the Bible?” Jipp asks. Because “these tyrants offer a constant reminder to God’s people that any attempt to establish God’s purposes through violence, deception, or coercion is ultimately the path of Satan.”
Douglas Brouwer
Douglas Brouwer is the author of seven nonfiction books, published by Eerdmans and Reformed Journal Books, plus a forthcoming novel, The Secret Heart. A graduate of Calvin University and Princeton Theological Seminary, he writes a Substack newsletter at dougsblog.substack.com.
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