Sermon Transcript
Romans 12:9-21. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you.
Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.
Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 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, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
We’re in a series on the fruit of God’s Spirit. We’re studying as we grow spiritually, what really grows. So after we receive the gospel, after we believe Christ has taken all the blame that we deserve and he has given us instead substituted for us his reward, his status, his righteousness, when we step into our inheritance as co-heirs with Christ in God’s eternal kingdom after we are reconciled to the very source of life itself. How do we change? Even if it ends up being rather slowly, how is it that we grow?
What grows? So over the last couple of weeks we have talked about love and we’ve talked about joy, you know, that we will feel more loved, we will know that we are accepted down to the very bottom of our souls and then celebrated to the sky by God himself so we can walk with confidence and love those around us more and love them better and we’ve talked about that we have access to joy. A joy that is deeper than sorrow. So even when we have sorrow, we can know that one day God will set all the wrongs right. And not only will he set them right, but he will mend them in a way that is better than if they had never been broken in the first place.
All the sad things really will come untrue. We’ve talked about love and joy, and today we’re talking about peace. Specifically peace with others, how God’s Spirit in us makes us peacemakers with those around us. Now the gospel also gives us tremendous resources for internal peace, of feeling settled in the world and with our circumstances, content. Scripture speaks of the peace of God that surpasses understanding, but since that kind of internal peace overlaps so much with joy, which we studied last week.
Today we’re focusing on external peace, creating harmony with others where there is division, turning enemies into friends, changing our narrative from us versus them to us for them, being able to bring the temperature down on all the outrage that is around us, which frankly seems to be needed on a national level for sure. Pretty hostile right now, even though there are calls for peace between tribes. Those tribes just go right on attacking each other after calling for peace, and then their pundits do the same. You might be wrapped up in all of that. There might be some of you who you don’t speak to friends anymore because they’re on the other side of the aisle from you.
Or maybe the instances of division and outrage in your life, maybe they’re not related to national issues at all. It might be much more close to home. You know, for our students, maybe your siblings can really make your blood boil. You know, they just seem to enjoy bothering you. They’re always trying to get you in trouble, use your stuff, wear your clothes without asking, take too long in the bathroom, put a hand right in front of your face and say, I’m not touching you.
I’m not touching you. You can’t get mad. I’m not touching you. And you think, oh, I can get mad. You’re about to see how mad I can get.
And of course, when kids are acting like that, parents, what do we do? We escalate right with them. Right? Our eyes bulge out, and for some reason we think more anger and outrage will end anger and outrage. Hasn’t worked yet.
Let’s get a little more personal here. Husbands and wives, maybe you’re in a season where you really don’t like your spouse, and every morning you look at the one who you pledged to honor for your entire life, and you think, you again?
Ugh. You don’t know exactly what point you lost peace with your spouse, but now your home feels like a war zone. Or maybe your home is peaceful, but work isn’t. Maybe there’s someone at work who makes your life difficult, that guy who procrastinates on what he’s supposed to give you, which then makes you late in your deliverables, and then you get a bad evaluation. Or his work is so poor quality, and nobody seems to do anything about it.
They just let it happen. Or worst case, someone on your team might be outright malicious to you, like maneuvering, constructing power plays to bring you down. And just thinking about that person right now, you press your lips together. You tighten your fist.
Have I raised anyone’s blood pressure a few points? Is anyone triggered?
Have I surfaced anything in you?
Listen, we need more harmony with others in our lives. Even though most of us probably aren’t typically combative, You know, we don’t attack those people who make us angry usually, right? We just stew with it. But even if we are only stewing, it indicates we are not at peace. If I could make us feel angry in just a few minutes, just with words, If your blood pressure actually did go up, then we don’t have as much peace with those around us as God wants us to.
We have room to grow. So as we study our passage today, we will see God’s vision for a peaceful community, meaning the goal, the ideal, what God ultimately wants for us. Then we’ll see why it fails, because it does. Then we’ll look at the first step toward getting it back. Toward making it work, and then we’ll see the strength and motivation to take that step, because it’s hard to do.
God’s vision for a peaceful community, why it falls apart, first step to getting it back, and how to find the strength to take that step. So first, God’s vision of a peaceful community: others above self. The vision is everyone putting everyone else above themselves. So imagine being part of a group, you know, whether it’s your work team or a Bible study or your family, any group you pick, where every member of that group is more interested in your welfare than their own. Every member put more energy into you getting your needs met than their needs met.
Everyone was more interested in you getting recognition than them getting recognition. The group is all about you, all the time. They greet you with enthusiasm every time they see you, you know, whether it’s first thing in the morning with your family, Or you walk into work or you see them at church, it’s like you made their day just because here you are. They encourage you for all your efforts, no matter how small. They recognize your contributions.
They express gratitude for you all the time, and you can tell they are genuine. No, they elevate you, to put it simply, always. Simultaneously, you elevate them. You care about their needs more than your own. You champion their recognition more than yours.
So that means everyone in the group, including you, is outward-facing, not inward-facing. That’s the vision Paul lays out. He says, be devoted to one another in love. Honor others above yourselves. Share with those in need.
Practice hospitality, which is everyone making an effort to make everyone else feel Welcome. He instructs them to be empathetic. He says, rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn, which requires everyone knowing what’s going on with everyone else and caring about it. Good or bad, happy or sad, everyone attentive to what’s going on with those around them. Again, including you, you’re doing it too, which means everyone has all of their needs met.
Everyone feels honored. Everyone feels heard, understood. Everyone feels welcomed. Everyone feels recognized and appreciated. Everyone is provided for, but no one looks out for themselves.
No one is trying to get their own needs met. No one needs to think about their own needs. Everyone can be totally self- uninterested. Everyone can be totally self-forgetful, but at the same time no one feels shorted. Everyone feels relationally full.
That’s the picture of a perfectly harmonious community. Paul says— that’s what he means when he says, live in harmony with one another. This is the way he describes it. That is the peace God wants us to have with others. That is the goal, that is the ideal.
We’re not quite there, are we?
We have a ways to go before we get there.
So what’s the problem? Why don’t we have that kind of harmony? Whether it’s in our families or a Bible study or a work team or throughout history, some people have tried to design economic systems like this. It has never worked, ever. It has always failed.
Why?
Why does it fall apart? It’s not very profound, no one’s going to quote me on this. It’s because people are broken. That’s why. People are broken.
You can think about it. If everyone were like Jesus, right? If everyone were totally focused on the good of others at all times without fail, Families would have harmony, workplaces would have harmony, and it wouldn’t matter what economic system was in place. I mean, you could even design a system where all the wealth in the world went to one dude, but if that guy was laser-focused on the needs of everyone else above himself, right, he would use that wealth to fund everything that didn’t have anything to do with him. And then everyone using those funds or programs, whatever he came up with, all the those people would also be focused on everyone else.
All the beneficiaries would use their resources for everyone else, not themselves. And it would work.
Sin is the problem with any system. If we were always others above self, any system would work. But we’re not always others above self. We can and often do prioritize ourselves to the detriment of others. Now that doesn’t mean that there’s no good in us.
There’s a lot of good in us. We have enormous capacity to make the world a better place and we often do. But there’s also something broken in us.
If you’re the parent of more than one kid, you see your kids don’t always have harmony with one another. I mean, they’re— of course they’re beautiful and they are brilliant and they can show remarkable kindness to one another, and you love them completely. But also, they fight. They want the bigger cookie. They harm each other to benefit themselves.
Sometimes it seems like they like harming each other. And as adults, we don’t totally grow out of that, even toward the people that we love the most. There are times even when we consider ourselves more important than our spouses. Right, Beth and I sometimes have the privilege of meeting with engaged couples leading up to their wedding and we walk with them through premarital counseling and we get to hear their story, they get to hear a lot of our story and we always tell them as a bit of a warning I suppose We say in marriage you will realize to a greater degree than ever before how self-focused you can be, how agitated you can become when you don’t get your way, even over relatively silly things, right? What shows to watch, where you sit on the couch, how often to clean dishes out of the sink.
You know, I want it my way. Not yours. I heard a comedian one time say, marriage is someone standing in front of the cabinet that you want to open.
You know, 20 cabinets in this kitchen, and you always stand to be— seem to be standing in front of the one that I need, right? And then we’re grumpy, right? And we wonder things like, how is it statistically possible that you’re always in my way? Right? 1,200 square feet in this house, and you’re in the 1 square foot that bothers me.
What is that? Why does that frustrate us? Why do we think we have more of a right to that 1 square foot than our spouse does?
Because we’re broken. We’re not others above self. And everyone else is the same. Paul refers to 2 types of brokenness in this passage. One is more obvious than the other, but both of them ruin the idyllic community that God wants for us.
The first and obvious way to ruin community is by actively tearing each other down, right? Others down. You know, being outright— Paul actually uses the word evil to one another. I mean, people can rob, steal, slander, lie, hit, abuse, oppress, right? There really are terrible things that happen in the world, and of course those disrupt the peace, of course.
But there’s a more subtle way to destroy harmony in a community, one that we may not initially realize. It’s when we ignore people. Even if we aren’t rude, even if we haven’t been hostile in any way. I mean, we haven’t lied about anyone, we haven’t attacked anyone, we’re just silent to them. That is enough to corrupt the harmony.
And Paul calls it out in verse 16. Evidently, maybe some church people weren’t associating with others who were what Paul calls in a low position. In Paul’s day, low position would have been referring to low status in society in terms of wealth or privilege or rights, you know. So if a slave came into their church or the poor came into their church, seems like some people were not associating with them, even though it doesn’t seem like anybody was being outright rude. No evidence of that in these verses.
I mean, no, nobody told them to leave. But at least some people must not have been paying attention to them, weren’t welcoming them, greeting them, including them, because because Paul tells them the correct behavior to do. So they must have been saying something like, I’m not going to involve myself with those people. They can sit over there, that’s fine, I’m going to sit over here. And even that can ruin harmony between people.
It does not have to be an outright attack. Neglect is enough. And we’ve probably always— we have probably all experienced that, right? We’ve probably all been in a group where no one was rude, you know, no one told us to leave, but also no one got to know us. No one ever acted like they were excited that we were there.
No one said anything, in fact. So we felt like an outsider even if we kept showing up. We felt rejected to some extent because no one associated with us. And that’s why throughout this passage Paul places such an emphasis on the need to proactively encourage, honor, elevate, empathize. I mean, of course don’t be rude, of course don’t actively hurt others, obviously that destroys peace, but even if we just kind of let others be, if we kind of ignore them, we will corrupt the vision of community where everyone puts everyone else above themselves.
Beth and I have actually had this argument more than once this week, and spoiler alert, she’s right because she says the same thing as Paul. But Beth by nature is very affirming, nurturing, and verbal, expressive, and I by nature I’m not. My default is mostly, you know, if everything is fine, no need to speak at all, right? The only time I need to comment on a situation is if it needs to be fixed. Amen, engineers?
You know, you just keep the harmony by saying nothing. In fact, You should take my silence as a compliment.
Engineers, once you say it out loud, you realize how ridiculous it is, right? That’s not how it works, is it? I’ve learned, I’m still learning actually, don’t want anybody to think I’ve arrived. I’ve learned, I mean, I am learning. If you want to keep harmony, you better pour in excessive amounts, proactive encouragement, honor, recognition, empathy.
Because if you— because if the people around you aren’t receiving positive affirmation, right, they will feel ignored. Even if they aren’t being torn down, even if they aren’t being slandered, nobody’s attacking them, right? The absence of elevating interactions is enough to break the peace. It’s why with kids, we know this with children, right? If you neglect kids, what do they do?
They act out. They want some kind of attention, any kind of attention, right? Even being scolded is better than not being seen to them.
And adults will act out too. If they are not being seen. We need to be elevated by others, right? It’s commanded here. If you don’t agree with me, agree with Paul, right?
And if we don’t do it, it will lead to friction no matter our age. So those, those are the things that can ruin God’s vision of an idyllic community. Actively tearing one another down, of course, being evil to one another, that’ll do it. But also neglect, not associating with.
Now what are we to do about this? Let’s say you’re in a relationship, someone in your family, professional relationship at work, or relationships here in our church community, and there isn’t peace in that relationship. Maybe the other person has been outright rude to you, they have been evil. Or maybe it’s just that you’ve been ignored. You know, they haven’t proactively celebrated, esteemed, honored you, and you feel invisible.
What is your next move?
The first step to getting it right, getting it back, is to repay evil with good. Bless and do not curse, verse 14. Even though they might deserve to be cursed, probably do, bless them instead. Paul even adds, if your enemy’s hungry, feed him. If he’s thirsty, give him something to drink.
Promote the welfare even of people who seem to be doing all they can to tear you down. You build them up. That’s true whether it’s outright evil or they are just ignoring you. Either way, elevate them. So if you feel left out And I hope that doesn’t happen at church.
We’ve put a ton of effort into welcoming and including people, and we’ve made progress. But if you happen— if you still feel like you’re on the outside, what do you do? Of course, they should do something too, but you can’t control them. What do you do? What does Paul say?
Associate with those who don’t associate with you. Include those who don’t include you. You take the first step. Return evil with good. And even if someone’s been outright nasty to you, that’s here at work, in your family, what do you do?
Turn around, proactively encourage, welcome, elevate them. Use your words to bless them. It’s not enough to stay silent. If someone slanders you, And you think, I’m going to take the high road and say nothing, you know, because grandmama told me if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Okay, I know that’s what grandmama said, right?
Paul disagrees with grandmama.
Paul says if you don’t have anything nice to say, find something nice to say. He adds, if you do, you will heap burning coals on your enemy’s head. His approach, it’s sort of like but not really, his approach is sort of like kill them with kindness, but it’s more like win them with kindness, because the goal is not to destroy them with your kindness but to create relational harmony with them. This does not mean roll over and be a doormat, right? He’s not saying let people walk all over you because for one reason doormats don’t stand up and bless people.
So that’s not the picture here. And of course if someone is rude tell them that you don’t like that, right? All other Scripture still applies. Matthew 18, if someone sins against you point it out, right? Doormats don’t do that either, right?
So bless and tell them how what they did hurt you. And then God forbid if you’re in some kind of something as tragic as an abusive relationship and you aren’t safe, get out. Report it. Distance yourself for sure. Paul is not saying you need to stay in that spot.
Paul bailed a lot of times when he was getting persecuted. So you leave. Okay, if you need help with that, let us know. You do not need to stay where it is unsafe, right? Paul is not— Paul’s not saying you need to stay.
But Paul is saying, don’t return violence for violence. Don’t return rudeness for rudeness. And in some way, maybe after you have distance, even if it is only praying for that person, Repay evil with good. Bless and do not curse.
Paul gives those instructions to the church in Rome who were at least occasionally experiencing some severe injustices. Both Paul and Peter would eventually be executed in Rome by the Roman government. The church needed to meet in underground catacombs so as not to be discovered. And yet, even in that extreme situation, Paul says, bless those who persecute you. If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
So, even under persecution, even under execution, Paul’s approach is first not to return violence with violence, for sure, but then also return violence with love. If we don’t do that, there will never be peace. Because if we’re not pouring in that kind of kindness, no one else is going to do it. Right? If the relationship is ever going to have any kindness in it, it will need to be us doing it.
Right? I mean, if they’re as bad as you say they are, it has to be you.
Now I know some of our pushbacks. We probably have many. I’ll just mention one. We argue. The reason why we don’t do this, we say, I already tried that.
If we’re in the middle of a marriage conflict, for instance, right, if you feel like you and your spouse can’t stop tearing each other down, right, it’s been going on forever, and there was that one time after you were totally berated you said, you know, instead of launching into my counterattack, I’m going to write a card of how much I appreciate my spouse. I’m going to leave it on the pillow or something. I’m going to bless and not curse this time. Let’s see what happens. You were hopeful.
And then the next morning you saw your nice little card torn into a bunch of pieces in the trash can. And you said, this doesn’t work! I tried extending the olive branch. It failed. So I’m done with that.
It’s understandable to feel that way, of course, because it is so defeating to turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile with your— with our enemies as Jesus instructs us to and not see any change in the person. That is discouraging. But I’ll point out Paul does not prescribe a certain number of times for us to bless rather than curse. He doesn’t say after we’ve tried it once or twice or 1,000 times we can quit and give up. Paul expects these to be ongoing behaviors.
Where do we find the strength to live like that? How can we over and over and over again proactively encourage, empathize, elevate, feed, provide for even those who are maybe being evil to us? How can we repay evil with good over and over again? I give you 2 helps. The first one is probably surprising, but the strength to take that step is both God’s wrath and God’s mercy.
God’s wrath and God’s mercy. I’m sure it’s surprising to see God’s wrath as a motivation to treat your enemies with love. I’m sure that’s surprising, but Paul says it here, leave room for God’s vengeance. Let God repay, verse 19. And here’s why that works for those of you who are skeptical.
I know I’ve shared this before, but since it’s been a few years, I’ll share it again. And there’s some of you who are new. Here’s why that works. Miroslav Volf, who is currently a professor at Yale, he’s originally from Croatia. He was speaking and writing about severe atrocities, the ethnic cleansing wars which happened in his country in the 1990s.
Severe atrocities. And he’s considering both sides of this conflict who have done terrible harm to each other, and he writes, their cities and villages were first plundered, then burned to the ground and leveled. These are people who have seen their daughters and sisters abused in the worst way. They’ve seen their fathers and brothers tortured and executed. And he’s asking the question, in that severe of a case, like that severe of evil, right?
How do you stop yourself from responding in violence to those who have done that to you? That’s the question. How do we stop cycles of violence? And he says, this is from his own experience, You know, these are people who he has seen suffer. These are his people, right?
He says if someone comes along into that kind of scenario and essentially tells them, you guys need to start being nice.
Don’t you know you’re supposed to be nice to each other? He says that’s not going to work at all because these are people who feel they have a moral justification to crush the enemies who crushed them. And they’re probably right. They probably do. So asking, why can’t you guys get along?
Falls on deaf ears. Volf says the only thing that will stop them from continuing the cycle of violence is what Paul says here in our verses. It’s surprising. It’s counterintuitive. But it’s a belief in God’s vengeance.
Because if you believe there is a God who who will hold accountable, really hold accountable, the people who hurt you, if that God is out there and he will judge and hold them accountable, then you can be released from taking any vengeance yourself. As long as someone is going to hold them accountable, you can let go. You don’t have to attack. But on the other hand, if you don’t believe there is a God, you know, or if you believe God is some kind of squishy marshmallow who never holds anyone accountable, If that’s what you believe, then you’ll think it’s up to you to get justice, and you will attack.
From what he saw, you’ll probably do more than what justice might require. You’ll want to hurt them for what they did, and then they’ll have to make a decision if to return the violence to you again. Paradoxically, perhaps, belief in God’s wrath is part of restraining ourselves from repaying evil with evil. You know, if you can trust God will hold them accountable, then you don’t have to be the one to bear the rod. That’s one thing we need, belief in God’s wrath.
But we need more than that as well, because we’re not only trying to restrain ourselves from attacking, right? That’s step one, that’s important, don’t attack. But we— more than that, we also want to proactively love our enemies. And for the strength to do that, we need an understanding of God’s mercy, specifically God’s mercy to us. That God responded to our evil not with neutrality, not with just not attacking.
He responded to our evil with favor. God responded to our cursings Not with silence, but with blessings. Romans 5, when we were still God’s enemies, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Christ gave His life to save the ungodly, His enemies. When we should have been cursed, He blessed.
He didn’t just refrain from striking us down, He elevated us to the ultimate heights. We’re seated in the heavenly realms with Christ. He honors us to the maximum extent. Extent He showers us with favor, works all things for our good, Romans 8:28. He makes us a part of His family when we were His enemies, when we were doing evil.
And if that— if what God has done for us is real in our hearts, one of the indicators to know if we have actually received God’s mercy, if God’s mercy is really up and running in our souls, One indicator is if we want our enemies to find that same mercy.
If we look at the people who have harmed us and we can say, one, okay, since God is a fair judge, I can trust him to sort it out with them, you know, appropriately. I don’t need to judge my enemies myself. That’s one. But two, more than that, what I really want for my enemies What I want most for them is for them to find the same mercy I found. I’d rather see them redeemed than cast away forever.
Having been redeemed myself, that’s what I want for them.
If we can say that about our enemies, okay, one, it’s a good indicator that we really understand what God did for us, because that is what he did for us. But 2, It might be the very thing that turns our enemies into friends. It might be the very thing they need to find restoration, to see that kind of grace and mercy and forgiveness from you.
So may God give us all the love for others that he has for us. May we be filled with his compassion. May we be peacemakers in this world, healing the outrage that is all around us, whether it’s at home or at work, maybe on the national stage. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for making peace with us, even, even when we’re evil sometimes, even when we’ve cursed you.
Even when we have acted like your enemy and treated you as an enemy, Lord, thank you for loving us and redeeming us, sending Christ to die in our place. Thank you for him who volunteered for that role and loves us so. May what he did for us become so real in our hearts that we can’t not do it for everyone around us. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
