20 February 2022
Never pay back evil with more evil. (Romans 12:17)
This is not the code of the world, not the way the world works.
But it is absolutely the way of Jesus, the revolutionary ethic of His followers.
The Christian would rather suffer evil and do evil. Why? Because this is who God is, what He does, and what, according to Peter, God has called us to do:
Don’t repay evil for evil. Don’t retaliate with insults when people insult you. Instead, pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do, and he will grant you his blessing. (1 Peter 3:9)
Both Peter and Paul sound a lot like Jesus when He said, “Do not resist and evil person” and spoke of turning the other cheek. (Matthew 5:38-39)
To be clear, Jesus is referring to personal injuries between individuals, not societal or institutional injustices. (We know this from the section of Old Testament law He’s referring to.) And this doesn’t mean remaining in an abusive relationship, or being someone’s punching bag. Not at all.
But it does speak to remaining open, even vulnerable, in our overall relationships, and not striking back. The Jesus ethic says we need not raise our fists, but can instead trust our pain has raised God’s attention.
Peter is calling us to not only refrain from participating in the payback cycle, but to break it with blessing—to run counter to the ways of this world and the satisfaction of our nature (let’s admit, payback can be pretty satisfying.) Jesus wants to build in us a new reflex of love instead of revenge. He is looking to surgically remove our ego and our need to indulge our anger.
Here how Paul put it to the Thessalonians:
Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else. (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
As we adopt this point of view, we see more widely and deeply. Our world and our perspective of it do not become only about our injury and the one who inflicted it. We see God, and ourselves as His beloved children. We see the one who has done us wrong as more than just someone who deserves our ire, but also as one loved by God, whether they know it yet or not, and full of their own insecurities and traumas, limitations and besetting sins, much like us.
So in love and blessing we don’t “pay back evil with more evil,” because we realize that if payback becomes the ethic we live by, we’re doomed too. Grace is the way. But this isn’t niceness or mere civility. It’s a subversion that's meant to change the world.
I COULDN’T AGREE MORE…
“If we are going to live as disciples of Jesus, we have to remember that all noble things are difficult. The Christian life is gloriously difficult, but the difficulty of it does not make us faint and cave in, it rouses us up to overcome. ...Thank God He does give us difficult things to do!”
Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest
FROM MY READING…
That Dr. King was as much a prophet as a preacher is so evident to me. And like a prophet, he not only saw over the edge of history’s horizon and declared truths that are constantly contemporary and relevant, he shared words that keep cutting to the heart—our hearts and the heart of the issues at hand. These particular words from Strength to Love always stir and convict me:
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
…Few people have the toughness of mind to judge critically and to discern the true from the false, the fact from the fiction. Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts. One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted from the morass of false propaganda.
…The soft-minded person always wants to freeze the moment and hold life in the gripping yoke of sameness. …The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft-mindedness. A nation or a civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
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THE WHOLE (HI)STORY…
“When George Liele set sail for Jamaica in 1782, he didn’t know he was about to become America’s first overseas missionary. And when Rebecca Protten shared the gospel with slaves in the 1730s, she had no idea some scholars would someday call her the mother of modern missions.”
This article from Christianity Today is worth a read, and if you’re not a subscriber, these missions pioneers are worth a Google search.
A PRAYER TO BREATHE…
“Father, You are my defender.”