Romans 12:14–21

Let us turn to Romans, Chapter 12. We are continuing our study and are now approaching the home stretch, verse 14 onward. I am going to read it first before making any comments. If you do not have your Bible, glory to God, and thanks to the brothers who put it up here.

If you need translation, if you don’t have earphones, please raise your hand. I’ll be very happy to have someone… Back here, there’s one, okay… Brothers who are ushers, there is a young man here who needs translation. If you need translation, just let us know, please, and we’ll be happy to provide you with some earphones.

Chapter 12, verse 14: “... Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Be of one mind among yourselves; do not be haughty, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. Repay no one evil for evil. Seek what is good in the sight of all people. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not avenge yourselves, my beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; and if he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good...”

May the Lord bless his word. It pains me to read those verses because they hit me hard, and they pose a great challenge for my life, but we cannot escape the call of the word of the Lord—a call that is not incidental or isolated, but lies at the very heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we are called to adopt that posture.

I could title this message and these verses “The Attitude of Mercy,” and in my Bible I also have another note that I wrote here some time ago, which says, “An X-ray of Love.” These verses, especially from verse 9 through the end of verse 21, are as though we took love—the concept of Christian love, agape—disassembled it into its constituent parts, and presented it in its possible manifestations in human relationships, both within the context of the church and within the context of the world in which we walk.

This morning I had to decide whether to begin with verse 9, and I realized that verses 9 through 13 form a unit in themselves and that some time ago, months and months ago, I discussed this text before beginning to study the Epistle to the Romans systematically, as we have been doing. So I do not really believe that I have addressed verses 14 through 21 specifically in this way. Therefore, I also felt led by the Lord to take this particular passage, this text from verse 14 onward, and discuss it with you this morning.

I would say that verses 9 through 13 refer to love as it is manifested within the context of the church, among brothers and sisters. It speaks of love being without hypocrisy, of our teaching what is good, of loving one another with brotherly love, and so forth. It is more about love in its congregational conduct, in our relationships with one another. And how important it is, brothers and sisters—if I may say this before delving fully into the other text—for love and brotherly affection to reign in a Christian congregation. The word translated “brotherly affection” is philos torgos, which refers to familial affection, to family love. I could call it tenderness: that we love one another tenderly. Tenderness must prevail in a church because we are often so spiritual, aren’t we? “May the Lord bless you, dear brother,” but we are so formal, aren’t we? Yet God wants us to be affectionate toward one another. Amen. He wants us to express love in practical ways, in familial ways—to support one another, offer one another hospitality, invite one another to eat, forgive one another, and settle accounts quickly. If something did not go well, look, forgive one another. Let us restore congregational harmony immediately.

Brothers and sisters, congregational harmony is the bond through which the grace of God flows in a church. If there is no harmony, if there is no love, the power of God cannot flow. God’s heart is broken when Christians in the same congregation are at odds with one another and do not speak to or greet one another, when they harbor grudges and there are hidden things there. In the name of Jesus, I encourage you right now to restore any relationship that has been broken. Amen. Try in the name of Jesus—and do not merely try; do it in the name of Jesus—because we impoverish our church to the extent that we fail to contribute to maintaining a completely perfect, intact network of love among ourselves.

But do you know what? We must also behave lovingly toward people outside the church. And that is very difficult. That is why I was telling you that this text pierces me very deeply, because I can tell you right away that, up to this point, I have not lived out these eight verses completely and, at times, have not even come close to living them as God wants me to. But one thing I can tell you is that I cannot make excuses about the fact that this is the Lord’s calling for my life and for yours as well. I am never going to say, “No, that is for super-spiritual people; it is not so easy to live that way,” as we say, and thereby excuse ourselves, right? And we rush past these verses at a thousand miles an hour because we do not like them. Or we simply put up a mental block that prevents that word from penetrating our hearts; we do not wrestle with it. We go through it as we go through the lists saying so-and-so begot so-and-so, and so-and-so begot so-and-so in the Old Testament, right? We race through there as quickly as possible to get to other things that are a little more appealing. But we cannot do that. The very essence of the Gospel is embodied in these verses.

And if you want to make sure of that, you can turn to Luke, Chapter 6, where the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the founder of our faith, speaks to his followers about loving their enemies, loving people who do not love us very well and whom we do not love very well either, and how we ought to treat those people. And I believe that the distinctive aspect of the Christian faith lies in that love which refuses to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which refuses to live by the law of retaliation and retribution, vengeance and legalism: “You did this to me, so you have to pay for it. You killed my brother, so I can take revenge by killing you or another one of your brothers.”

Unfortunately, that is what we see in a large part of the world. Look at the Middle East, where there is so much war, where there is so much discord, where members of the same nation—not only of the same nation, but of the same religion—kill one another in inconceivable ways simply because they belong to one sect or another, and because they feel, “Well, he killed my brother,” or, “They killed ten people from my neighborhood, so we are going to kill a hundred people from their neighborhood.” That is what keeps the world, and has kept the world throughout history, embroiled in war after war after war.

Unfortunately, brothers and sisters, it is not only Muslims or Buddhists and Hindus—even Buddhists are sometimes more peaceful than Christians themselves—but we Christians ourselves have fallen into that, and there have been religious wars, such as those that took place in Europe in the seventeenth century, the so-called wars of religion.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Czech Republic and visit a museum where they displayed the instruments of war Christians used to kill one another. There were weapons there deliberately designed to cause the greatest pain and the greatest bodily harm, in order to kill other Christians.

And I say that being a Christian is not enough, loving God is not enough, giving God our money is not enough, and being willing to die for God is not enough. Rather, unless the essence of the Gospel penetrates our hearts—that refusal to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—unless the tenderness of Christ, unless that love which does not take revenge, which refuses to do harm, which refuses to enter into the diabolical game of “You did it to me, so I am going to do it to you,” unless that ultra-human, divine, angelic sensitivity becomes part of our hearts, our emotions, and our minds, unless we continually program ourselves, brothers and sisters, to say, “I will not be one more instrument of violence, vengeance, retribution, and resentment in the world. I will take at least one weapon away from the world—mine. I will take it away and put it aside,” the world will not experience healing, brothers and sisters. And the heart of Jesus will not be able to manifest itself as it should. That is why the church must insist upon passages such as these, even though many times none of us can attain that level. But we must do everything possible to try. We must embrace that sensitivity.

Luke, Chapter 6, verse 27: the Prince of Peace speaks to his followers and says to them, “But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who slander you. To the one who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also; and from the one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. And just as you want people to do to you, do likewise to them. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them...”

You see, the essence of the Gospel lies in the fact that it is very easy for you to love someone who loves you, and if someone opens the door for you, to feel gratitude and affection for that person. As for someone who treats you well—look, why not love that person, why not treat that person well? You would have to be depraved to hate that person, wouldn’t you? In other words, even unbelievers, those who do not know the Gospel, do that. The tribesman deep in the Amazon jungle does that, or the soldier fighting in a war does that: he does not kill those who share his convictions or belong to his side, or whatever the case may be. The unredeemed person, the untouched person, the biological person, does those things; that is normal. But what happens? Christianity calls us to rise to the level of the divine, does it not? It calls us to imitate our Heavenly Father; it calls us to imitate God’s agape love.

How does God treat us? Listen, if God treated you and me as we deserve, where would we be? We would be in a pit in hell. But the word says that while we were mired in sin, Christ came into the world and died for us.

Someone has said that grace means not giving someone what they deserve and giving them what they do not deserve. God gave us something we did not deserve—forgiveness of our sins and reconciliation with him—and did not give us what we did deserve, which was the fire of hell and eternal death.

Then, based on that, God says, “Do you know what? You have to do the same thing with your neighbor.” That is the consequence of that act of God. So we must wrestle with that calling, and it manifests itself in so many ways. In other words, the quintessential Christian ethic, brothers and sisters, is to go beyond, to go the second mile, to go beyond the minimum. Most human beings settle for the bare minimum of Christianity, but God calls you to go to the maximum. That is why Christ was always saying, “You have heard that such-and-such was said,” because Judaism, in its legalism, had reduced everything to the minimum. But Jesus said, “Do you know what? I have come to do something much greater and to give you higher standards by which to live, more powerful principles.”

So, if someone wants to harm you, bless that person. If someone offended you at work, do not sit there plotting how to harm him or her. If a brother or sister in the church offended you or did not treat you the way you think you should have been treated, do not harbor resentment in your heart; instead, look for a way to restore that relationship. Pray for him or her. How many can say amen, even if only by faith?

Nevertheless, we can say that this does not always happen, even among us here. I know that there are unresolved situations, and we must always be examining ourselves; I must always be checking the temperature and condition of my soul. And wherever I see a stain of rancor or resentment against someone—something I have not resolved—I must immediately try to heal it, brothers and sisters, and my attitude must be one of grace: militant grace, abundant grace, generous grace.

Do you know, brothers and sisters, that this attitude of grace and mercy is the greatest source of emotional healing there is? If we could practice that attitude of grace, I believe that in most cases we would not need to go to a psychiatrist or take sleeping pills, because what often happens is that our inner universe is contaminated by untreated, unhealed things and by negative attitudes. Our marriages are often contaminated by that attitude of “You did it to me, so you are going to pay for it”; “I am not going to give to you because you did not give to me.” All of that is more characteristic of the practices of a person who has not been touched by God, and so all of that damages marriage and damages the relationship between parents and children—and between children and parents as well. Children also need to have that attitude of mercy, love, and forgiveness toward their parents.

I see many children—and, by the way, this is a “pet peeve,” as they say in English; it is a little issue of mine—who, I believe, in many of our generations, not only young people who are 17 or 18 years old but also those generations who are 25 or 30, are doing themselves a great deal of harm because they have a judgmental attitude toward their parents. They refuse to forgive their parents for the offenses their parents committed. What father does not make mistakes with his children? They will make them later on; when they have children, they will make them too.

And do you know what has redeemed the generations throughout the centuries? It is that children have had that attitude of mercy toward their parents and a reverence that keeps them from looking at their parents with that glaring, fluorescent, phosphorescent judgmental attitude with which many young people sometimes look at them today. The psychoanalytic culture of counseling and all this—and the legalistic culture, I believe, of modern man and of questioning authority—has created a generation that views its parents negatively and judgmentally, expects perfection from parents, and then refuses to give parents that generous acceptance, that love, that honoring of parents. And do you know what? Those generations are harming themselves, and they are preparing to reap the consequences of that when they become parents.

If your father offended you, if your mother was not everything she should have been, all right, acknowledge it, but do not harbor resentment in your heart. Heal that immediately. Close that breach, because you are hurting yourself. You are not hurting them as much—although it does hurt them—as you are hurting yourself. Forgive everything you need to forgive, and make sure there is an unclouded love, a generous heart. Give, bless, and that is what it says here in this passage.

In verse 14 it says, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” It would have been a great deal if it had simply said, do not persecute those who persecute you, do not kill those who persecute you, do not seek the harm of those who persecute you; but no, it went further and says, “Bless them.”

We must understand the context in which the Apostle Paul writes, a context in which Christians were persecuted or denigrated. In the neighborhoods where they lived, people viewed them with resentment, with bewilderment, with hostility; they did not treat them well, some were martyred, they were mistreated because they went against the current of the culture in which they lived. And so the Apostle Paul says, do not get into the little game of persecuting or harboring resentment against those who persecute you. No, pray for them, bless them in the name of the Lord; instead of cursing them, do the complete opposite: bless them.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot curse. When we curse people, the curse first has to pass through our heart, through our mind, and through our mouth, and it contaminates. It contaminates us first before it comes out; that is the harm. So we have to refuse to curse people, and sometimes, do you know what? I would go further: sometimes we curse people in our heart. We do not curse them with our mouth, but in our heart we curse them. Not with words, but with our emotions.

Paul says, no, speak words of blessing; ask the Lord to bless that person. That blessing will taste like sand when you speak it, but do you know what? The second time will be easier, the third time easier, and then the glory and blessing of the Lord will flow over your life; your mind will be clear, your heart will be clear.

If a husband whom you divorced, or who divorced you, did not treat you well, forgive him, let him go, release him from prison. Do you know that the word forgive carries that sense of letting a person go, setting him free? Because many times we keep people in prison. The law did not put him in prison, but we did, inside ourselves. We have a special cell; in fact, many of us have an entire dungeon, a whole prison, with a great many cells there, and we have a number of people in them to whom we give neither bread, nor water, nor light, nor even air. And every now and then we take the little grate and open it like this to look at them suffering inside, and then we close it again and carry on with our work.

The Lord says, open the door for all those prisoners you are holding, bless them, feed them, and send them on their way. We have to try to do it, brothers and sisters, in the name of Jesus. Right now I encourage you: take an inventory in your mind of anyone you have locked in a cell inside you, and promise yourself that you are going to release that person, bless that person, and give that person money to buy a ticket—perhaps so that person can go very far away from you—but at least give it. But set them free; bless those who persecute you; do not curse. Cursing contaminates you and does no good at all.

It says, “... rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep...”

Do you know what? That passage also cuts me, because sometimes I would say that it is easy to weep with those who weep. I think it takes a very bad person not to be moved when someone is crying, for example, because of a tragedy or a loss. Sometimes it is easy to weep and grieve with people who are crying and mourning.

But for me, I confess to you, the part that hurts the most is rejoicing with those who rejoice, because sometimes, brothers and sisters, it is difficult to celebrate someone’s triumph, isn’t it? It is as though we get an itch inside: “And why not me?” Let me confess something to you: I do not like to think very much about those people who hit the jackpot for a hundred million dollars, who sometimes win the lottery; I do not like it. Do you know why? Because I say, goodness, a person works so long and so hard to earn money, and these people get 150 million dollars, and I can already see them going to the bank and taking out money to buy themselves a sports car and a house in Mensa and all that, and I would rather not even think very much about that kind of fortune, shall we say. And that is my problem, because I ought to celebrate and say, glory to God, how wonderful that they got it. Amen. I hope that... Lord, bless them, and may they enjoy it and make the most of it. But there one is, instead saying, “Why them and not me?”

The word of the Lord says—it calls us to be generous and to rejoice with those who rejoice. If someone had a triumph at your workplace, if that person was given a higher position, look, bless that person and rejoice with them. Glory to God. That generous attitude, brothers and sisters, has great, great merit, and it blesses and clears the inner landscape of the human being.

It also says, “... be of one mind among yourselves...”

There is the idea again: among believers there should be unanimity, not in the sense that we all think exactly the same thing. That will never happen. Every mind is a world of its own, someone has said. But I believe that Christian unity is the unity of an orchestra that has different instruments, yet all of them together produce harmony. One may be playing in one rhythm, another in a different rhythm, but there is unity, a tremendous fluidity. If you listen to any of the music by Johann Sebastian Bach that Eric was playing here, some of his piano pieces, you can see how the left hand is sometimes doing something completely different while the right hand is elsewhere. And it seems as though there could be conflict between those two parts of the music, but it flows in an incredible way and makes musical sense.

And that is what harmony among believers is like. Sometimes some come from one culture, others from another culture; some are better off financially, others are more modest in their financial circumstances; some are highly educated, others less so; some have slightly more modern ideas, others are more conservative. But do you know what? God rejoices in that diversity among His people. Amen. The important thing is that this not lead to conflict or to people looking down on one another; that we all know we are playing in the same key—the key of Christ, the key of the Kingdom of God; that we are all working to advance the Kingdom of God; that we are all members of one family; that we must all love one another; and that, at the end of the day, although we think differently, we must give one another the kiss of peace and recognize one another as brothers and sisters, members of the household of faith in Christ Jesus. We must all work in harmony, move in the same direction, and be of one mind with one another.

Oh, brothers and sisters, if the church of Christ were united in New England, what tremendous, incredible things would happen. If we Hispanics, African Americans, and whites learned to work together. If even among whites, evangelicals from one group and those from another group learned to work together, brothers and sisters, I believe New England would belong to Christ in a single day.

Christ always prays in His high priestly prayer, in chapter 17 of John, that they may be one, as You and I, Father, are one. And at least here in this church, brothers and sisters, we have to try to work toward that unity, toward that unanimity, that harmony among us. We must be of one mind, united with one another; let us avoid anything that harms that harmony, that unity. Unanimous means of one soul. Whatever takes away that unity of the collective soul of our church—let neither you nor I be agents of discord in our congregation. Once again, remove at least one element of discord from this church through your life, and try to preserve and work toward the collective peace of your congregation.

It says, “... do not be haughty, but associate with the humble....”

There is a call there—to what? To humility. Again, in a church as diverse as ours, as Christianity was in the first century, there were Christians with a great deal of money and slaves sometimes sitting in the same space. It required an ethic of equality. Christianity dealt a death blow, I believe, to the system of slavery. It did not do so through violent revolution; it did not do so through armed forces, but it did so through the ethic of love. It is said that there were occasions when, in the same church, a slave sat beside his master, his owner. Or sometimes a bishop or a person in a high position who was a slave exercised spiritual authority over a person who was a slave owner. Sooner or later, that kind of contradiction would deal a mortal blow to the institution of slavery, as it has wherever Christianity has been put into practice, because unfortunately there have been many Christians who have not put Christianity into practice.

Meche and I have just seen the movie Amazing Grace, which I highly recommend to you. It is the story of Wilberforce, the great English reformer, who spent a good part of his life fighting against the institution of slavery in England. And to the shame of Christianity in America, in England, and in other parts of the world, slavery persisted despite the Christian faith. Why? Not because Christianity failed, but because many people—wealthy people, people in government, political figures—benefited from the slave trade and took the ethical call of the Gospel to heart, because no one who took the call of the Gospel to heart, I believe, could enslave a man or a woman, much less denigrate and torture them as was done under slavery.

That is why, brothers and sisters, it is so important for us to understand that being a Christian is not enough. Many Christian cultures throughout the centuries have committed atrocities against their neighbors because they compartmentalized the Gospel and refused to ingest the formidable call to love their neighbor, not to regard anyone as inferior, but, on the contrary, the further removed someone is from your own circumstances, the more you should love that person and the better you should treat that person. When you identify someone in this church or out there in the community who is not on your same level, make sure you treat that person with extra favor. Amen. Do a spiritual exercise and serve that person, reach out your hand to that person, show that person honor, and treat that person with deference and respect, because human nature rebels against that act, and that human nature must be trampled underfoot, and we must bring the nature of Christ into ourselves.

When you see someone here in this church who does not dress like you, whose eyes do not look like yours, who does not have the manners you have, or who does not drive the car you drive, make sure that person receives a greeting, good treatment, consideration, and respect from you. Amen. That is necessary, brothers and sisters; as followers of Jesus Christ, we have to do it. Merely not despising that person is not enough. Some would say, well, I do not despise that person, I do not treat that person badly; but are you doing anything to bridge the distance? We have an incredible diversity of people in this place, from all the different categories, and God’s desire is that every day we become more closely connected and break down the barriers.

If there is someone you do not know, look, go and greet them. Instead of greeting one another, what do we do at the end of the service? We immediately go to the person we know best—to those we know, those who are from our country, those who are in our small group, those who dress like us, those who belong to our category. We unconsciously identify them and stay within that little group, that circle, yes or no? That happens many times; you do not have to say amen and give yourselves away, do not worry. But ultimately, what each one of us, as a minister of God, must do is approach someone we do not know, approach someone who is not like us, approach someone who may not be able to invite us into their home, approach someone whose hand it may not give me pleasure to shake because I do not see myself reflected in them—my values, my standards, my money, my social status, or my nationality. That is the spirit of Jesus: to go against human nature, or beyond human nature, and enter the realm of the divine. Amen. Give glory to the Lord. That is important.

Do not be haughty. Haughtiness is more than pride; it is looking down at a person from your lofty position, right? Who are you? It is setting yourself higher than you really are. It says, “...do not be haughty, but associate...”

The implication in the original Greek is walking with, walking together with, alongside. It means integrating your life with theirs and having koinonia, having intimacy, associating with the humble. And the part that follows there, “...do not be wise in your own opinion...” might seem like a non sequitur, as though it does not follow, as though one thing is not connected to the other, but it is, because haughtiness—the implicit or explicit sense of superiority—is associated with this idea of overestimating yourself and believing that you know more, have more, and are more than the other person.

And the quintessential Christian attitude is exactly the opposite. Not only are you not wise in your own opinion, but you know that, after all, you are simply not that wise, period. If it were not for God’s wisdom in you, you would make a mess of your life; what you did with your life would be a disaster. You always need God’s wisdom; to solve your problems each day, you have to say, “Father, today I need my dose of wisdom to deal with my job, my marriage, my children, my finances, and my health.” To manage, you need the wisdom of God. None of us can depend on our own understanding. There must be that humility: “Father, I need You to enlighten me.” There must be an awareness of our own frailty, of how prone we are to make improper decisions that harm us.

If you are like me, I cannot trust my own wisdom, my own judgment. Every day I have to ask the Lord, “Lord, replace my mind with Your mind, so that I may have the mind of Christ.”

The Apostle James says, “If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask God.” We do not operate according to human wisdom. Human wisdom leads to what we have in the world: disaster, frustration, dysfunction, violence, mistakes, and twisted thinking—that is the human mind. That mind cannot bring humanity anything good. You need God’s illumination. No one, none of us, can say, “I am wise; I can handle life; I can solve my problems by myself.”

Oh, how God loves that humility. As David says, “Like a weaned child, so has my soul been before You, Lord.” Like a fragile child before his mother. When a man or a woman walks like that, with that simplicity, with that humility, knowing that they cannot make any decision on their own but need divine illumination—listen to me, there is blessing in that.

There are many haughty people, even in Christian churches, who cannot enjoy God’s blessing because in their minds they have decided that they can fend for themselves, and they are always making mistakes. Whereas when a man or woman has that humility, that simple heart of a child, of an infant who needs his father—listen to me—God grants that person wisdom and delivers them from so many mistakes, from so many difficulties.

“...Do not be wise in your own opinion; repay no one evil for evil...”

Again, it is that same calling, right? Do not simply do back to someone what they did to you: “That is what I’m going to do to them.” They did not look at me kindly this morning when I arrived at church, so I will not even look at them when I leave church. They did not give me a Christmas present; next year they can forget it—they are not getting anything. They did not invite me to their wedding, so just wait; do not worry, I am not going to invite them to my Christmas party, my daughter’s wedding, or whatever it may be. We hold grudges; we are always keeping track. The Bible says no: do not repay anyone evil for evil. Bless them, be generous, give to them abundantly, and there is great blessing in that.

“...pursue what is good in the sight of all men...”

The Christian who has been touched by God is characterized, I believe, by an attitude of essential goodness. It is an attitude in which you are an agent of good for others. You are not a weapon that harms anyone; quite the contrary, your life is oriented toward helping others, blessing others, helping others prosper, and helping others move forward.

The child of God is an instrument of grace in the Lord’s hands. Your mindset, your heart, should be: How can I help someone today? How can I help a young person who is disoriented find his destiny? That son of a single mother who has no father figure—how can I be a role model, tutor, and mentor to that child? How can I counsel a woman who is depressed? How can I call someone whom surely no one has called? How can I attend to that person at church whom no one greets because they dress badly, smell bad, and seem to have a few screws loose, and whom people avoid? Because their conversation is not entertaining; it does not even make sense.... How can I add a spiritual vitamin to their life this morning or this day, and make their life a little better?

That is what “pursue what is good in the sight of all men” means. And it says, “...if possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men....”

This is one of the few times in this entire passage—perhaps the only time—when there is a qualification, a sort of cautionary note and a small way out, an escape clause here. It says, “If possible, as far as it depends on you”—two small conditions. The Christian must do everything possible to be on good terms with people, but there will be occasions when that will not be possible, right? And so there are moments in Christianity when you will have to stand up and say, “No, I do not agree with this.” The church of Jesus Christ is living in an age when there are things about which it must say, “We do not agree. We are going to resist it. This is not from God,” and take a clear stand. They will insult us, they will protest, they will say that we are not people of mercy and love, but in that situation we say, “No, this is not possible; we are very sorry.” We must resist evil as well.

So there will be occasions in life when, for various reasons, you will not be able to be one hundred percent right with a person. As someone says, “I’m not a little gold coin that everyone will like,” or something like that. There will be times when there is conflict, but those times should be the exception and not the rule—that is certain. We should do everything possible to be on good terms with a neighbor, a brother or sister from church, a coworker, or whomever it may be. But if that is not possible, then we must use Christian means to draw the boundary, distinguish between right and wrong, and keep our distance. We cannot use methods that are anti-Christian or unchristian.

“...if possible, and as far as it depends on us...” There are people who will simply have it in for you, and they will persecute you and do everything possible to harm you, and they will continually oppose you because they hate you, because there is wickedness in their hearts, or whatever the reason may be. You cannot deal with their hearts, but you can deal with yourself; and as far as it depends on you, you can make sure that everything is right. If you have done everything possible to be on good terms, if you have loved, prayed, and blessed, then I believe that, in a sense, you are free from having to keep trying to be on good terms with that person.

I believe there is a tension here in what this passage is saying, but I have to make sure of this: as far as it depends on me. I believe that is a great principle. In marriage, for example, perhaps you cannot change your spouse and turn him into a paragon of virtue, but perhaps you can change some things. Deal with yourself; do everything you can to improve yourself, and then that will put you in a stronger position to try to see changes in your spouse’s life as well.

Now, at the end, the final exhortation says, “...do not avenge yourselves, my beloved, but give place to the wrath of God....”

It is like a summary, stated another way, of everything that has been said. Vengeance, grudges, resentment, and retribution for harm received are things that are always threatening to possess us. Someone did something to me, and I have that desire to take revenge on them. There is a call from God not to seek vengeance ourselves. Instead, what must we do? Give place to the wrath of God. In other words, make room for God to be the One who carries out justice, and that is what makes it possible for us to say—do you know what, brothers and sisters? Many people say, “I am not going to forgive him, because if I forgive him, then he gets away with it and there is no justice.”

Brothers and sisters, God’s justice is relentless and impeccable. I believe there are governing spiritual laws. When a person does something harmful, something evil, there is a consequence, and God sees to it that justice is brought about in some way. Many times, however, we do not have the privilege and joy of seeing God’s justice carried out, but we have to believe. “Your Word says, Lord, that You are just and that You carry out justice.” So we entrust justice to the Lord; we entrust retribution to the Lord. Let Him take care of it, and let Him do it however He wishes and prefers. And do you know what, brothers and sisters? I believe that God’s justice is often so profound, so systemic, that it is more just than ours. We might cut off someone’s arm or put him in prison for three years, but perhaps that does not touch the person. Sometimes God’s justice reaches all the way down into the depths and is more powerful and more just than ours.

Now, that requires faith. It requires faith to take your hands off the matter and say, “Lord, I leave it to You. You take care of it.”

There are three reasons, it says, right, why we must leave justice and vengeance to God. First, because the Lord says, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord.” The Lord says, “That is My department, not yours. The department of vengeance and retribution belongs to God; that is not our responsibility.” So the Lord says, “I will repay; vengeance is Mine. No, that is My area. Do not meddle in it; it belongs to the Lord.”

Second, there is something here that says, “...so if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for in doing this you will heap coals of fire upon his head.”

That is an expression meaning that it is like taking burning coals and placing them on top of the person’s head. What happens if you put a pile of coals on people’s heads? Before long, they do not know what to do. Their heads are burning, their heads are on fire, and they have to run away. And the idea, I believe, is that when we do good to people—do you know what?—we put them to shame. We heap so much pressure on them that they cannot bear it. And besides, I believe that, in a sense, it is as though we were saying, hey, we are heaping even more wrath from God upon them. It could be interpreted that way as well. It is like saying that we are heaping more judgment upon them. Do good to them, and then let the Lord take care of it.

And finally it says, “...do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good....”

That sums it all up, right? Because that is the issue: when you act according to the flesh and your animal nature, treating people the way they treat you, you have allowed them to overcome you. You have become just one more of them; as they are, so you have become.

I will finish with this illustration. Meche and I were in Providence last weekend, I think it was—it feels like an eternity, let me tell you. We were relaxing over there. I was sitting in a Starbucks reading, and I overheard a conversation. Meche tells me that I am one of the most quarrelsome people in the world, and I was reading and heard a conversation, and I stopped reading because what those two people were saying captivated me. I could not see them. One of them, as I later learned because I struck up a very interesting conversation with him, was the manager of the hotel parking garage—a very well-educated gentleman, I later discovered—and he was speaking with the young women who worked behind the counter at Starbucks. It seemed that he knew them because they were part of the same commercial operation there. So he was telling them about an incident he had just had that day. There was a large Mary Kay convention, and there were thousands of women in that area.

So he was saying that they had all behaved very well, and that he had had a good time working with the women who arrived at the parking lot, and that they had behaved very courteously except for one woman. He said that when he went to open her car door, she burst out at him and insulted him, saying that she could open it herself, and this and that, and that he should leave her alone. And the girls said to him, “Oh, if it had been me, I would have insulted her, and why didn’t you say something to her,” and so on and so forth. And he said to them—and this is what caught my attention—he said, “No, never; you can’t do that.” He said the following: “If I react with the same attitude she had, then I am giving her control. I am allowing her to control me. I am allowing her to define the way I act, and then she owns me and controls me. I couldn’t do that, so what I did was greet her and say, ‘Have a nice day. Have a good day.’”

And I said, wow. A secular person talking that way, and I myself felt challenged, you know. Because I don’t know whether I would have that control, that self-control, to have such ethical clarity at that moment and say, no, I am not going to let this person define the way I act or let her turn me into a clone, a reproduction of her and her attitude. I am going to take a higher stance, and I am going to take control of the situation with the weapons of light.

The Bible says that our weapons are not carnal, but what? Mighty in God for the destruction of strongholds. In other words, we do not go after the outward symptom. No, we go down to the stronghold, where the root is, and we destroy the root so that the root of evil dries up. Because you can cut the grass aboveground all you want, but if the root remains inside, the grass will grow back. So Christianity says, No, we are not going to fight with weapons—weapon against weapon, hatred against hatred, resentment against resentment, negative action against negative action. We are going to remove the very root by refusing to play the devil’s little game. We are going to be different.

This morning I want to ask the Lord to help me, first of all, to embrace that ethic of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Let us ask the Lord to make us agents of blessing. I would like to ask the musicians to please come over here immediately, if they would be so kind.

Brothers and sisters, I want each one of us to strive. I know that God’s call this morning is very weighty, but it is a call we cannot escape or evade. If we want to be true children of our Heavenly Father, true imitators of Jesus, true followers of our God who causes his sun to rise on the righteous and the unrighteous, we have to ask the Lord, “Father, I want to be better than the world. I want to live at a higher level, or I want to live at a greater depth. I want to tear out the root of vengeance and retribution, and I want to be like Jesus, who blessed his persecutors on the cross and said, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.’” And Stephen also, when he was being stoned by the Jews, lifted his eyes to heaven and said the same thing: “Lord, do not hold this great evil they are committing against them.” There in that scene was Saul, holding the garments of those who were stoning Stephen. Saul later became the Apostle Paul, and he remembered that scene. It cannot be denied that perhaps we have the Apostle Paul here today writing those passages because Stephen’s prayer reached heaven, and this man was blessed and this horrible Pharisee was converted. So, brothers and sisters, that is how strongholds are broken through a positive action of militant grace. Let us be agents of grace, not of legalism.

Let us stand for a moment and ask the Lord to please touch us, touch our lives, and make us instruments of peace, instruments of good. Meditate for thirty seconds, one minute, on what you have just heard, and take that time to settle that word in your spirit. Let it enter deep within. To what extent does this word touch you? To what extent does it confront you, and what are you going to do with it? How are you going to incorporate it into your life and your plan for living? How can you change? How can I change today? How can we bring our walk a little more closely into line with that of the supreme Master we have?

Lord, we choose to forgive those who offend us and to bless those who curse us. We choose not to seek retribution or vengeance. We choose to set free those whom we have placed in our inner prisons. We choose to exercise grace in forgiving our parents, our relatives, and the members of our church who have offended us. We will also try to ask forgiveness, and we will make restitution—or rather, restoration—to those whom we have offended or harmed, insofar as possible. Today, Lord, we choose to be agents of light, peace, and good in this world, not agents of evil, not those who perpetuate the same dynamic of war and conflict that characterizes this deeply wounded, deeply damaged world.

In this church, Father, in this place, we receive your word and know that it is true. We recognize it as the word of God, which can bring blessing to our lives, and we heed it and obey it. Give us strength, Lord; this is far too serious and too weighty for us to carry out in our own human strength. We need the gift of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God within us. Holy Spirit, strengthen us in our desire to honor the example and teaching of Jesus Christ. Bless this people, Father. May this word continue to speak to us today, and may it result in blessing for this church, for our families, for our community, for the places where we work, Lord, and also for the schools we attend. Thank you, Father. We entrust ourselves to you, Lord, and to your mercy, in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Glory to God.