“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the principles kids tend to operate by is that turnabout is fair play. If someone has wronged you in some way, it’s only right, it’s only fair, it’s only just that you get to do it back to them in return. This principle lies at the heart of one of the foundational ideas in the history of jurisprudence: an eye for an eye. The idea that we should respond to others in kind has been baked into the cake of humanity from nearly the start. And then came the Christian worldview to turn that idea on its head. Let’s talk about what Paul, borrowing from Jesus, had to say about it to the church in Rome.

When you preach long enough, you eventually gather a stock of preachable ideas. These are one liners, rooted in Scripture, that summarize a sermon and are strong enough to build a whole message around. One of these ideas I came up with a few years ago ties right into what Paul is saying here. When someone has wronged us in some way, we must never respond in kind, but always with kindness.

It’s a nice-sounding idea (and it does preach well), but the problem is that it so goes against our natural inclination. When someone has hurt us, we instinctively aim to pay them back. Doing this, we tell ourselves, will make us feel better. It will bring about justice. At the very least, it’s the fair thing for us to get to do.

Yet what does responding merely in kind actually accomplish? The frustrating truth is that it doesn’t accomplish anything. Not a single thing. We rarely feel better for longer than a moment when we only respond in kind. The other person we have now wounded by our response certainly doesn’t feel any better. Now they are going to be looking to pay us back for whatever it is we have now done to them. Once they’ve achieved this aim, it will now be our turn to respond, which will only serve to continue the crazy cycle. No one wins here.

But what if there was another way? There is, and we can see it right here in Paul’s next command for living out the Christian life successfully. “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.” When someone does something evil to you, the right response is never more evil in return. That only adds more evil to the world. It’s never right to do what’s not right even if someone else did it to us first.

Okay, but what if someone does something that falls short of the line of evil? Is it okay then to respond in kind since we wouldn’t be adding more evil to the world? That’s a sneaky question, but, no, it’s not okay even then. It’s not okay because what Paul means by “evil” and what comes to mind for us when we hear the word “evil” are likely not the same. For Paul, evil is anything that does not come out of the character of God driven by our faith in Christ. Paul uses the word evil here to cover anything wrong someone may do to us from a simple offense to something much more heinous than that. His point is that if anyone does anything to you that you receive as hurtful in some way, no matter how minor a hurt it is, responding in kind is never okay.

The reason for this for followers of Jesus is ultimately rooted in something Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Someone who does evil to us is by definition our enemy in that moment. The right response to an enemy is love. It is prayer. It is seeking to be a blessing.

This is the case, Jesus says, because it is what our heavenly Father does, and if we are going to be known as His children, we need to look like Him. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” God is good even to those who are not. And this is a really good thing. It is why we are His children now. For once we were part of those who are not. But He demonstrated His goodness to us such that we became His children. As His children, we cannot justify doing anything less than the same thing to our enemies.

And indeed, doing less than this reveals that we are no different from those who don’t follow Him at all. “For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?”

When someone has hurt us, done some evil to us, the only response that is properly reflective of the one we profess to follow is kindness. Responding in kind only extends the problem. Kindness ends it. Kindness breaks the cycle. Love opens the door to a way forward into reconciliation and even restoration. To do anything less than that on our part is to fall far short of the love of God. As His people, we cannot do that.

Of course, one way to avoid having to worry about this at all is to live in such a way that people don’t seek to do evil to us in the first place. The second command Paul gives here points us in this direction. “Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes.” If we seek to live in such a way that pleases the people around us, they won’t be likely to seek to offend us in the first place.

Okay, but does that mean we’re supposed to just become pushovers, bowing to the demands of whoever happens to be in our orbit in a given moment? Not at all. What Paul commands here isn’t passive. We aren’t simply to roll over and be what everyone else demands we should be. Paul’s command is active. We are to give careful thought to this effort, he says, thinking about all the ways we can honor the people around us.

We do this in two different spheres. The first is within the church. This is the important first sphere because these commands, like all the others Paul has given, sit firmly and firstly within the context of the church. Even the last one assumes that context first. Refusing to repay evil for evil helps us live in harmony with one another as we talked about yesterday. In the present case, we seek to live honorable lives toward our fellow church members. This too will help us achieve the kind of harmony that makes the church stronger. And we do it, again, not from a position of weakness, but one of strength. We are actively considering the good we would want them to do to us, and taking the initiative to do it to them first.

The second sphere here is the world. We seek to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes in order that we may gain a hearing for the Gospel with them. If we have offended someone in some way by our behavior toward them, they aren’t likely to want to hear anything about the Gospel from us. When we make ourselves honorable to them, seeking to bless them by meeting them on their own terms, though, they will be far more likely to listen.

This fits perfectly well with Paul’s own description of his efforts toward others with the Gospel in mind in his first letter to the Corinthian church. “Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law. To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law. To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.”

Proclaiming and sharing the Gospel in order to make disciples who make disciples is the most important thing we are to be doing. To belabor the point: people don’t want to hear anything from someone who has hurt or offended them. If you are a jerk, no one cares what you have to say. But if we live in such a way that seeks to honor everyone to the extent of our ability, adapting and changing to meet the demands and expectations of our present environment—all without ever letting go of our first and foremost submission to Christ as King—people will at least give us a hearing, and that’s the ultimate goal.

That’s two more of Paul’s 25 commands down. One more single verse day tomorrow, and then we’ll tackle Paul’s big finish. He’s going to take several of the ideas he’s been introducing in the last few commands we’ve talked about and double down on them in a big way. This last part is one of the things that makes Christianity so different from every other religion and worldview. You won’t want to miss that.