Romans 12:14-21

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. [c] Do not think you are superior.

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," [d] says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." [e]

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.


Dig Deeper
Paul is certainly one of the most captivating and interesting characters in the entire Bible. We probably know as much about him as we do anyone in the New Testament save for Jesus. We know that Paul grew up and was a bright and shining star in the Judaism of his day. We get the impression that he was something of a hotshot. If we piece together different portions of New Testament information, we learn that Paul (before he changed his name from Saul) was a disciple of Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis of his day. He was a top student that had shot past many people that were older than him. He was extremely zealous for God’s law and was willing to sacrifice anything and do whatever he needed to do in order to further God’s cause. In his own words, he was the Pharisee of Pharisee, which meant that he followed God’s law meticulously and sacrificed everything in order to follow God. He even zealously persecuted and tried to destroy Christ’s church. Then Jesus changed everything by challenging him as he was on the road to Damascus. The risen Lord came to Paul and demanded to know why he was persecuting God’s people. Paul responded humbly to this confrontation and eventually began to serve the Lord Christ with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. In the process of his conversion, the Lord told Ananias that Paul would truly find out how much he had to suffer for the name of Christ. Paul certainly thought that he had sacrificed and suffered for God but now God was really going to challenge him. He must show love to the very people that he thought were his enemies. He must love and embrace the Christian community and then go and show love to the pagan world that his Pharisaical mind would have told him were every bit as much enemies to God. If he wanted to follow Jesus he would find out just how much he had to sacrifice.

In the beginning of this chapter, Paul called Christians to embrace a non-conformist mindset that they are to be sacrifices. All of us in Christ are to live each moment of every day in sacrifice to Christ, doing his will rather than our own. Any of us who have truly grasped hold of the life of Christ and attempted to make it our own, know that this can be a daunting task. Following Christ is not burdensome but neither is it easy or non-challenging. It is one thing to approach the type of Christian service and unity that Paul discussed in the previous passage with a heart bent on sacrifice. That can be hard enough. But in this passage Paul is calling us all to mimic the very challenge he found in the Christian life. We might have thought that was challenging and sacrificial but now he will show us how much we must really sacrifice. We must not just love our brothers who are loving us back, but we are to love and do good to those who persecute and hate us. This is what it really looks like when we sacrifice our lives for God. This is the real deal.

So far, Paul has had instructions for the Christian community trying to embrace the resurrection life in as much as it concerned their relations with one another. Now he turns to behaviors that will be demanded of them both within the Christian community and outside of the new family. Each of these elements will demand a sort of self-sacrifice on their part. In a sense, we are to embody what Paul said about the Messiah in 5:6-11, while we were still powerless sinners, Christ died for us and reconciled us to God. The resurrection community is to take evil upon ourselves and stop the cycle. Rather than retaliating and passing evil on and on, Christians are to take behavior that should rupture relationships and instead offer reconciliation.

At several places in this passage, not the least of those being verse 14, Paul seems to be paraphrasing instructions that came directly from Jesus’ teachings. Presumably these would have been so well known that Paul doesn’t feel the need to attribute them to Jesus; everyone would have known that already. Don’t just tolerate those who persecute you, says Paul. And certainly don’t sink to the like behavior of cursing those who persecute. Rather they are to bless those who persecute them. Paul here seems to be combining quotations from Jesus found in Matthew 5:44 and Luke 6:27-28.

The quiet demand of the resurrected life is to live in harmony demonstrating the reconciliation that God has given to his people. God’s people celebrate with people when there are things worthy of celebrating. Rather than spiraling into envy or self-obsession, we should identify with the one celebrating and share in their blessing. But we also should empathize and mourn with those who mourn rather than dismissing them or celebrating their misfortunes. Christians identify with others as we demonstrate the unity, love, and reconciliation of the age to come. That means avoiding pride, being willing to associate with anyone of any position, especially those of low position. A Christian that thinks they are superior is one who has completely missed the leveling and reconciling power of the resurrection and the life to which it calls those in Christ.

At the heart of this new ethic is to avoid the deep human desire for revenge. The desire for revenge wells up deep within us and beckons us to level the playing field. Someone does evil to us and we feel compelled to see evil visit them, But this goes against the current of life that flows from the resurrection of Jesus Christ directly into the communities of those who believe in him. Revenge keeps evil circulating and flowing from life to life. Paul says, “do not repay anyone evil for evil”. His point is to simply not allow evil to be passed on. We are to stop the buck and meet curses with blessing, hate with love, persecution with kindness, and revenge with forgiveness. This is not to be done in a self-seeking or attention-grabbing manner but it should be a way of life that is lived out under the watchful gaze of everyone so that they may see this subversive way of living and be drawn to its source. This is a great reminder for Christians to always point our behavior back to Christ. If someone asks you why you did such good work, or why your children behave so well, or why you would forgive someone under those circumstances, rather than just deflecting the praise and saying “oh, it was nothing,” we should seize the opportunity to declare that we have taken the praiseworthy or noteworthy actions because this is the type of life to which Christ calls us, a resurrected life. In doing so, we don’t exalt ourselves but the Lord who gives us his resurrection life.

Revenge is not ours to take. God alone will take justice says Paul quoting from Deuteronomy 32:35: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” This prohibition against retaliation extends beyond just fellow Christians but to the much more challenging call to extend forgiving behavior to all people. When we take revenge ourselves we actually put ourselves in the position of being God. Judgment and punishment are God’s to take both in time and for eternity. A refusal to seek leveling behavior like revenge is a declaration that we believe that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ God has set right the wrongs. When we entered into the resurrection life at our baptism we entered into a world where God has already passed judgment on death, sin, and evil. Leaving the avenging of evil to God is a sign that we truly believe in and live in that age. That is not to say, that humans should just ignore evil, though. Societies and governments, as Paul will make clear in the next passage, absolutely have the authority and responsibility to punish wrongdoing. But individuals should never try to assume the authority given to governments and certainly never that which is God’s.

What Paul makes clear is that Christian love is not just a statement or a belief, but is an action. We are to sacrificially love others in the Christians community and even more importantly, in some ways, our enemies. But Paul calls believers to far more than a casual or comfortable kindness or politeness that counterfeits the genuine love that is part of the age to come that is to be lived as a reality now. Many have read Paul’s quotation from Proverbs 25:21-22 and presumed that Paul is calling for God’s people to offer food and drink to one’s enemies so that we may shame them or make them feel bad about their evil or unkind behavior towards us. But this is flawed thinking. Loving others in order to shame them would run counter to everything Paul is saying here. Indeed it would run directly counter to the type of love that Paul is calling for.

A simple custom from the ancient world will help us to understand what Paul is saying here. House fires were kept going with burning coals. From time to time, someone might run out of coals and would carry a basket to a neighbor’s house to ask for coals. The neighbor would take burning coals from their own fire and put them in the basket that was usually carried on top of the head. Thus, you were helping someone get their fire burning when you heaped coals on their head. Paul, then, is saying that in acting in a way that absolutely does not conform to the normal behavior of the culture, which is to seek revenge and repay evil with evil, that we might be opening someone up to the flow of love that comes directly from the resurrection. We just might be helping them to start their fire by sacrificing our own perceived right to receive justice. In this way we loudly pronounce that there is a different reality available, a different way to live, and so rather than being overcome by evil, we “overcome evil with good.” If our churches today would really embrace that way of life we just might be amazed at the fires all around us that were re-ignited.


Devotional Thought
In what ways does this teaching challenge your life? Do you demonstrate God’s values of the age to come by loving others and living in peace as much as you are able? How can you begin to live out the values of this passage today?