Romans 12:14-21
14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. 20On 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.”
21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
In this consumer world everything is sold from toothpaste to politicians – and the way it is sold is by appealing to the dreams and desires of the people. Nothing bad is ever faced and disappointments are completely ruled out.
Selling is a big business today and unfortunately Christianity is also something that is often sold trying to appeal to the world and its ways. The sales pitch at times that is given goes, do you want to be wealthy, healthy and wise all you have to do is pray this magic prayer and make your “love offering” of $1,000 to us and God will give it all to you.
No wonder why so many people turn away from Christianity when these misleading promises do not come true. And when these promises don’t come true these poor people are told that their faith is weak or that their sin is interfering in a way that these blessings are being with held.
The reality is their dreams were shattered not because God was not fulfilling a promise, but because of lies told to them by some so called pastor or preacher looking to just get their own pot of gold any way they could, no matter what the cost. Some poor people giving up all they have, even sacrificing food on the table for their children, just to give that love offering for that deceptive promise that was told to them.
So what is the truth? The truth is that in biblical Christianity Jesus spoke often of the cost of following Him. He said that His followers would be hated, would be rejected and would be persecuted.
There is a sales pitch for a church, come let us help you come to faith in Christ so that you can be hated, rejected and persecuted. How many people do you think you can draw in with that one?
Listen I have talked many times about where our pot of gold is, and when we will get our perfect healthy body, and there is only one guarantee that I know of that is in the Bible and that is that we will receive our treasure and our perfect body when we get to heaven.
Now that does not mean that God can not bless us with these gifts while we are here on earth. God can do anything He chooses, and at times He will do these things in order to bring glory to Himself, and in bringing glory to Himself we may get a blessing from that.
But the guarantee we have is that we will receive these rewards in heaven with no guarantee that we will see these here on earth.
This Christian life is not about what we get while we are here on this earth, but it is about how well we are serving our Lord while we are here on this earth.
This life on this world is short but eternity in heaven is what it is all about.
We must always keep this in mind, sacrifice ourselves to God and to Christ for this short amount of time here on this earth, and then spend the rest of eternity in joyful, loving bliss with God and Christ in heaven.
Imagine if you will, it would be like being a teenager and your parents giving you an option of having a old Yugo to drive around now without needed to do anything, or if you just waited and had faith in your parents and what they were doing, did some chores around the house, and did what you were told, and served them well for a short period of time, then you would get a brand new Lamborghini, or a Ferrari, or maybe a Bentley depending on what your style is.
This Christian life does have the most unimaginable, incredible, eternal treasures, but it comes with a commitment, the commitment is that if you have faith in Christ, and are a loyal servant, that your treasures will be great in heaven. Your abundance of treasures are a reward for your abundance of servant hood here, they work hand in hand.
If you are truly changed through your faith in Christ as the Bible tells us, then you will be a new creation with a new heart, a heart that has a desire to serve the Lord with everything you have.
And part of this servant’s heart we see in verse 15-16 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. It is being a loving caring person to others as Christ was to us; it is treating others as Christ has treated us.
But we are to approach this with a little caution
17-19 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.
It says “if it is possible” and “as far as it depends on us”. There will be times when after all our attempts at being a loving, caring, peaceful people, that we will have no choice but to take a stand against evil, to take a stand against people who are evil. If we don’t then we are allowing evil to rain over good.
Today we see countries like Iran and North Korea, who I feel not only have leaders who are evil and would love to see every American and every Christian dead, but also they have many people within those countries who believe the same thing.
I don’t think there is another country out there that does a better job then us in caring for other countries that are enemies.
Now when we take a stand against such countries we must approach this in a Godly way and we are told here in verse 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.
Revenge is a strong word; it is a person or country that is so filled with rage that it wants to completely destroy the object of which the revenge is focused. In doing this as it says, they are not leaving any room for Gods wrath.
We are to use enough force to be successful but not enough to completely destroy them, thus leaving room for the wrath God to run its course.
Within these verses that we read today I want to look at four things that Paul so graciously points out for us here.
Empathy – Empathy is what Paul is talking about when he says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn.” Empathy is the ability to identify with someone else, to be moved by their pain, to be moved by their joy, to take it on as if it were your own.
This isn’t always easy to do is it, your coworker gets the position you have been trying to get for years and they have only been their half the time as you, hard to be happy with them isn’t it?
We need to stop thinking about ourselves and our own interests all the time, and the only way to we can do this is by a transformation accomplished in us by Jesus himself. Jesus was and is our perfect example.
Amicability – We as Christians should be easy to get along with, this is what Paul is telling us when he says “live in harmony with one another.” Paul here is talking about how we act or conduct ourselves when dealing with others. We are not to act in a way that brings conflict or friction. We are not to be the cause of problems.
Equal association – Christians should “be willing to associate with people of low position” even more than others, because I would say that is where most Christians come from including most of us.
1 Corinthians 26-29 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him.
Christ was the perfect example of this; He would talk to those who were considered to be the lowest of the low, and through this, and the miracles He performed in them, they were the ones who did the greatest works and brought God the most glory.
Why? “So that no one may boast before him” God uses ordinary people to do the most incredible things.
Humility - Paul said “Do not be proud” and “Do not be conceited” back in verse 3 he said “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought” We are to be humble, we have no reason to be any other way. Anything good that is within us or anything that God may have blessed us with, we cannot take credit for any of it. It is God being a gracious merciful God and to take credit for any of it is only taking away the glory God deserves.
Donald Barnhouse wrote:
When the nations were raging and the peoples imagining a vain thing, He did not move to destroy them. He did not destroy Adam when he sinned, but promised a savior and began the long course of history so that man could have opportunity to repent and return to God…He did not destroy us when we were ungodly sinners. He came from heaven to save us. He came into the camp of His enemies and allowed them to do their will against Him in order to establish the foundation for our redemption. When we were without strength, when we were enemies, Christ died for us. Note that He did not save us by demonstrating his mighty power in some miracle. He saved us – He saved us by letting us kill Him. How astonishing this is.
And when He rose from the dead he did not judge those who behaved so wickedly against Him. The Jerusalem to which He held out His arms before He died was still the center of His loving thought. He commanded His disciples to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, but He commanded them to begin at Jerusalem. Was this not heaping coals of fire upon the heads of His enemies? And did it not melt the hearts of many?
