Banditry in Nigeria has created a persistent crisis of violence, fear, displacement, and vulnerability, particularly in rural communities across the Middle Belt and adjoining regions. For Christian communities, the crisis raises a difficult ethical question: how can believers resist destructive violence and protect vulnerable life without becoming agents of revenge or reproducing the very violence they oppose? This article examines Johannine light–darkness language as a theological resource for constructing an ethic of Christian resistance. Through qualitative theological and exegetical analysis, the study reads selected passages in the Fourth Gospel alongside Johannine scholarship and Christian ethical discussions of violence, self-defense, nonviolence, political responsibility, and resistance. Particular attention is given to John 1:4–5, 3:19–21, 8:12, 10:10, 13:34–35, 14:6, and 18:10–11, with contextual dialogue with recent scholarship on banditry in Nigeria. The article argues that Johannine dualism should not be understood as a symmetrical conflict between two equal cosmic powers. Rather, light and darkness function as morally and theologically charged contrasts in which life, truth, love, and faithful witness confront destructive practices. The study therefore proposes an ethic of active but non-retaliatory Christian resistance: protecting vulnerable life, telling the truth about violence, resisting injustice, supporting legitimate public responsibility, rejecting revenge and collective punishment, and pursuing restoration without reproducing violence.

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