Overcome Evil with Good: A Meditation on Romans 12

Let love be without dissimulation.

Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love;

in honour preferring one another;

 Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;

Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;

 Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice,

and weep with them that weep.

Be of the same mind one toward another.

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.

Be not wise in your own conceits.

Recompense to no man evil for evil.

 Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you,

live peaceably with all men.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves,

 but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written,

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him;

 if he thirst, give him drink:

for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

Be not overcome of evil,

but overcome evil with good.

 

Every verse of Romans 12 is worthy of deep meditation, and each is an elucidation of what St. Paul meant when he started the chapter by telling the Christians in Rome to “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”  His concluding encouragement was that they not be overcome by the evil which swirled all around and inside them, but rather to overcome all that evil with good.  A tall order, indeed, as the violence, corruption, and intrigue of Rome was well known throughout the ancient world.

 

Such an injunction is also contrary to the natural response most people have to injustice, which is probably closer to fighting fire with fire, or as the murderous mobs of our day often phrase it, “no justice, no peace.”  Violent, destructive mobs have often swollen their ranks with people who feel injured, abused, downtrodden, or oppressed, feeding their passion for vengeance to substitute for justice.  This general human inclination burns with intensity when fanned into flame, rationality losing place to bloodlust, and pours out terrible harm onto communities and individuals like a volcanic flood.  One person’s lust for power and destruction feeds another’s until everything around them is in ashes, and inevitably that disordered passion burns within the mob itself, until all is consumed.  Across all the ages of human history this pattern repeats, as if to warn every person against the folly of the lust for vengeance hidden in dark recesses of the fallen human heart.  Far from satisfying the true demands of justice, the lust for vengeance consumes everything in its path, including the one who pursues it.

 

But of course, this is because the darkened mind of fallen man cannot clearly see either justice or truth, nor can it control the murderous appetites of disordered passions.  A wounded person thinks himself wronged, and due a recompense greater than the pain inflicted upon him, all the while ignoring the evil within his own heart and the wrongs he has done to his neighbors.  The one who calls for justice forgets their own guilt before God and man, and the eternity of justice they personally deserve in the fires of hell.  No one living in this world is without sin, and no heart that beats is without offense before its Creator.  We have all wronged our neighbors, been dishonest and deceitful, pursued idols of every kind, harbored thoughts of hatred and malice and lust which on occasion we have brought forth in word and deed—things we’ve done, and things we’ve left undone which were our duty to perform.  Every person stands before God a fallen creature condemned by our own hands, perverse to the very core of our heart, mind, and soul.

 

And this is the insanity of either individuals or mobs who unleash their wicked lusts for vengeance, bathing in the blood and ashes of their victims, while they unwittingly call down upon themselves eternal damnation and temporal destruction.  People often wonder why violent mobs are so fickle, so dangerous, and impossible to reason with, but there is no real mystery here:  the lustful pursuit of vengeance is fundamentally irrational, and the mind set aflame by it loses all sense of logic or perspective.  Such minds forget their own fallen nature, and bring forth a cycle of violence and retribution whose only end is total destruction.  This is the Roman backdrop against which St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, and which seems so familiar in America today, because our fallen human nature is the same in every time and place.  To borrow a bit from the old philosophers, the incidents and accidents may change, but the essence remains the same—people act out their evil inclinations in different ways and dress them up in different language, but the wicked passions which lead to destruction are hauntingly familiar.

 

Thus Paul encourages the Christians of Rome not to be overcome by this evil through yielding to it, but rather by the power of the Holy Spirit given to them by grace through faith in Christ alone, to live in opposition to it.  When the Christian feels the rise of passion for vengeance, he instead recalls the justice he is due for his own sins, the unmerited grace of forgiveness, life, and salvation he has received for Christ’s sake, and offers blessings rather than curses.  The Christian knows by the Eternal Word of Jesus that he has freely received his own forgiveness for crimes against God and man that should land him in hell forever, by the righteous vengeance taken out upon Jesus for the sins of the whole world as He hung upon a Roman cross.  In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the wicked atrocities of every human heart across all the ages of man were paid for, and no person’s sins were left in debt.  So the Christian knows to pray as Jesus has taught him, that he might be forgiven, even as he forgives those who wound, betray, attack, oppress, or in anywise sin against him.

 

The truth to which Christians cling is that vengeance belongs to God, who alone can see clearly through eternity to bring forth true and enduring justice.  Only God could choose to either let individual people bear their own justice both in this world and the next, or take that justice upon Himself and die for the sins of the world.  Only God could be both just and gracious, that He might offer life in place of death, and flourishing instead of destruction.  Only God could execute true vengeance, because only God could execute true justice and thus offer true grace, through the Person and work of Jesus as our High Priest, our atoning Sacrifice, and our Divine Intercessor.  Only Jesus could be both righteous Judge and gracious Savior, and thus to Him alone is given authority to judge the living and the dead.

 

As this age in which we live finds the swirling seas of evil vengeance played out in violence and destruction, we are reminded of our high calling in Christ, that we be not overcome by this evil, but overcome this evil by the good of Jesus’ saving Gospel of faith and repentance.  In this eternal truth we stand unassailable by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, able to calm the destructive impulses both within and without by words of forgiveness for Christ’s sake.  Thus we become the peacemakers of our time and place, the conduits of reconciliation between fallen men and their saving God.  And so the ages will roll on until their fulfilment, until all the saints be gathered in, and every burning heart aflame with destruction is salved by the grace of Jesus.  Here we take our stand with the saints of old, and the saints yet to come, saved by the same grace, through the same faith, in the same Jesus.  Amen.

Of Doctrines, Rocks, and Keys: A Meditation on Matthew 16

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi,

 he asked his disciples, saying,

Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist:

some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said,

Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona:

for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee,

but my Father which is in heaven.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter,

and upon this rock I will build my church;

and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:

and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

 

Matthew 16 begins with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, religious leaders of the people of Israel, haranguing Jesus for a sign to prove that He really was the Christ.  What is revealed across Jesus’ long interaction with these religious leaders is that they had no intention of acknowledging Him at all.  They saw His miracles, heard His teaching, and were continually trying to undermine, trick, and ultimately betray Him to death under false accusation to the Romans.  Their doctrine was one of man and politics, of hypocrisy and power.  They denied Jesus and the Scriptures, creating their own traditions upon which they built their kingdom, and exercised their authority to their own benefit.  Many of them were, in St. John the Baptist’s words, a brood of vipers whose teachings and actions lead to both physical and spiritual death.  To them, Jesus offered a correction that in their blindness which could see the weather better than the signs of their own times, the only sign they would receive was that of Jonah—a cloaked reference to Jesus’ coming three days of death in the belly of the earth, only to emerge triumphant over the grave.

 

This is the context in which Jesus gave His disciples warning to beware the false teachings of the Sadducees and the Pharisee, which like leaven begin small with false words, assumptions, and corruptions, but manage to infect the whole mind and spirit of people.  A religion of power, politics, and personal advantage blinds the eyes to the authentic works of God, and dulls the ears to hear His saving Word.  No greater an example can be made than the situation in which Jesus and His disciples were in, where the very Incarnate Word of the God walked among them, full of grace and truth, inspiring many to follow Him, while others plotted His death.  Jesus put a point on this when He asked His disciples to tell Him who people conjectured Him to be, and they responded with all kinds of whacky answers:  John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or some other heroic prophet of antiquity brought back from the dead.  The religious leaders were blinded to who Jesus really was by their own commitment to false doctrine, and the people were muddled and confused by the influence of that same false religious system.  False teaching not only corrupts the ones who teach it, but those who learn from it.

 

When Jesus asked directly who the disciples knew Him to be, St. Peter responded on behalf of them all by declaring Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God.  This declaration and doctrine Jesus warmly confirmed as having come from God Himself, and noting Peter’s rock solid answer, Jesus told him that it was this rock of confession—this bedrock doctrine of Jesus as the simultaneously divine and human messianic Savior of the world—upon which His unconquerable Church would be built. To Peter would be given the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, the power to forgive sins in Jesus’s Name according to Jesus’ own teaching that all who repent and believe would be saved by grace through faith in Christ alone.  This power would be a power over sin, death, hell, and all the wiles of the devil; a battering ram against which the gates of hell itself could not stand.  The power to forgive sins would change the world, rescuing people from the condemnation of their inherited Original Sin, as well as the sins of their own commission.  These Keys would unlock the gates of heaven for all mankind, that everyone who would repent and believe the Gospel might be unchained and set free from eternal perdition.  These Keys would be the gracious gift of life earned by His Vicarious Atonement upon the Cross, given freely to a world which did not deserve it, nor could ever earn it.  These Keys, to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all who repent and believe in Jesus, or to declare bound in sin all who refuse to repent or believe in the Word of Christ, would be the living and active Word of Jesus among His people until His final return, empowered to accomplish what it says by the omnipotence of His Holy Spirit.

 

And what Jesus promised to St. Peter in Matthew 16 before His crucifixion, He fulfilled in John 20 after His resurrection, where John clearly declares that Jesus breathed on all His disciples, gave them these Keys of the Gospel, and sent them out as His Apostles to bear His saving Word.  Jesus accomplished what He promised, building His unassailable and eternal Church upon His Eternal Word, and the sacrifice of His own body and blood upon the Cross.  What Jesus alone could earn, He gave freely to His disciples, instructing them to give just as freely to others as they themselves had received.  The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus gave to His Church are the living power to forgive the sins of all by grace through faith in Christ alone, and to declare to a fallen world that there is salvation in no other name given under heaven but Jesus.  This is the power of the Keys, of the true doctrine of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and His ultimate return to judge the living and the dead.  This Eternal Word of Law and Gospel, the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, has been, is now, and shall be forever the Rock upon which Jesus’ Church is built.  This is the Rock no storm can shake, no demon can assail, and no brood of vipers can overthrow.  This is the Rock of our Salvation.

 

Let the words of false teachers and the leaven of hypocrites fall away, and hear once again the sounding trumpet of heaven to mankind:  Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit, has come to save sinners like you and me, and calls us all to eternal life by grace through faith in Him alone.  Hear Him today, gather together with His people where His Keys are rightly administered according to His Eternal Word, that repentance and faith might bring to your hearing the declaration that your sins are forgiven for His sake, and that the gates of heaven are open to you.  Amen.

The Election of Grace: A Meditation on Romans 11, for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid.

For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.

God hath not cast away his people which he foreknew.

Wot ye not what the scripture saith of Elias?

how he maketh intercession to God against Israel saying,

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, and digged down thine altars;

and I am left alone, and they seek my life.

But what saith the answer of God unto him?

I have reserved to myself seven thousand men,

who have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.

Even so then at this present time also

there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

 

As we pass the ides of August, and our communities seem stuck in the political vicissitudes of an election season marred by a fanned public panic in the latest pandemic, it is easy for a Christian to feel alone.  In various parts of the country, hostile politicians have attacked the Church with renewed vigor, facilitating mobs which persecute them in their congregations for having the audacity to gather around Christ in His Word and Sacraments.  Worse yet, faithless church leaders have abandoned the faithful to the whims of government, effectively shutting down their churches and taking away from the people their blessed communion.  Insanity has reached a fever pitch in many cities, where elected officials have bowed to Marxist mobs to defund police and deliver over the people’s property and livelihoods to masked marauders.  Such civilizational suicide waxes stronger in some regions than others, but nowhere seems immune from its reach.  There is an infection of unbelief in both the body politic and the Body of Christ which is causing massive suffering both locally and globally, and many there are who despair of our recovery.

 

However, the words of St. Paul to the church at Rome nearly 2000 years ago, help us remain centered and grounded in times such as these.  Lest we forget, the church at Rome was persecuted not only by the government but also by fellow Jews, and not many days hence that vitriolic persecution would become a persecution of blood.  St. Paul reminded the Christians at Rome that they stood in the election of grace by faith, which is how the people of God had always stood—from the ancient Israelites to the current day.  There were times in ancient Israel, hundreds of years before Paul’s writing to the church at Rome, where the faithful thought they were being persecuted into oblivion.  Yet even in Elijah’s time, when he was whisked away in the wilderness, fed by ravens in a secret location to avoid his government execution, he cried out to God in his loneliness, and God told him that He had retained for himself over 7000 people of faith even in that dark time.  St. Paul used this example to remind the Christians in Rome that they stood by grace through faith, grafted into the Root which supported both the faithful Jews of times past, and the people of faith in times present.  Various times of unbelief in the history of Israel caused some of those branches to be broken off in judgment so that others like themselves might be grafted in, but the Lord of the Harvest had power to graft every branch back in again, should they return to Him in faith and repentance.

 

The thrust of Romans 11 is to remind the Gentile Christians of Rome that they stood by grace through faith, and that if the Jews had become the enemy of the Gospel, partnered with a pagan government to persecute them in unbelief, the calling of God was still irrevocable, and everyone who returned to Him in faith would receive grace.  The message to the Church at Rome would strengthen them for the times of trial ahead, knowing that if God did not abandon His people during the time of Elijah, He would not abandon them now.  For in every age, God retains His remnant of faithful people who do not bow their knees to the pagan idols of their age, but remain steadfast in His Word.  And that remnant was strengthened by divine grace through an election which could not be overthrown by any powers of man or devil.  This was true in ancient Israel, in the days of St. Paul, across the 2000 year history of the church, and in our own day, as well.

 

As I shared with some friends this weekend who lamented that they thought they would never live to see such days as ours, the reality born of history shows that every generation has its time of controversy and conflict over the faith.  And while some times and places have greater or lesser persecution of the people of God, it is more likely than not that a Christian will face some form of persecution in their time and place if they seek to abide in the Word of God by faith.  This time in which we have been called and sent, grafted into Jesus like branches to a steadfast and living Root, is our time to live out our faith and resist the forces of despair, unbelief, destruction, and death.  And if we feel alone in our struggles, we can remember the times past when God’s Living Word sealed to Himself by His own power a remnant which would not bow their knees to Baal, just as He has done in our own time.  We are not alone as we stand in the election of grace by faith in Christ alone, but rather we stand together with all those who are sealed by the Holy Spirit in our time, and in the great cloud of saintly witnesses who have been saved and sealed in every generation before us.

 

We stand by grace through faith in our time and place, because God has very intentionally placed us here in this time, and in this place.  We are not accidents of the universe bouncing around with pointlessness and fear toward oblivion, but the called and elect children of God who live forever, forgiven and free.  We are the ones through whom the Lord of Glory has chosen to shine His saving Gospel today, to accomplish in our time and place the works He has ordained for us from before the foundation of the world.  And we do not stand alone.  For we are grafted together into the Body of Christ, born from above by Water and Spirit, receiving our eternal life in this world and the next through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  The Gospel of faith and repentance which we carry by Jesus’ Word is irrevocable, piercing through every darkness in each generation, calling all who will return to Him, to forgiveness and life.

 

Be of good cheer, for we may not have chosen the times in which we live, but we can be sure that we were chosen for our times by Him who holds the whole universe in the palm of His omnipotent and gracious hand.  We stand forever by grace through faith in Christ alone, calling all people to join us in that life, through the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus.  Amen.