I want you to think of the person in your life who has hurt you the most. This person may be someone who has treated you unfairly; it may be someone who has gossiped about you; it might even be someone in your younger years who abused you either physically, sexually or emotionally. For others, this person might be the one who walked out on you, or the person who you gave your heart to – never dreaming they would betray you. It might be someone you deeply trusted who lied to you, stole your money, hurt someone you loved, or attempted to actually ruin your life. We all have people from our past who have done evil to us. Our tendency is to bury the wounds and never fully deal with the damage or continue to live with a dee0-seated bitterness toward them. Neither option represents God’s will for our lives. If find that most people simply do not know how to respond to the evil aimed at them.
How does a Christian respond to their enemies? What does it look like to allow the Spirit of God to give us the grace to treat those who have unjustly wronged us the way Jesus would treat them? How do we deal with those people we have anger fantasies about in our mind – where they get what they deserve and receive the justice for what they’ve done to us? I know of few things more difficult in life than to deal with those people who have been the source of evil aimed at our lives.
1. Positive Command: Bless your Persecutors (v. 14-16)
What does it mean to bless and not curse? To bless someone means to wish someone well, to desire God’s favor and blessing on their lives. To curse means to pray against, to call down doom, to wish for their disaster, failure, and misfortune. See Matthew 5:43-48. Jesus not only taught this principle, but later modeled this by ding for His enemies on the cross. – conquering evil, sin, and death once and for all.
How to forgive? Stage 1: The Choice – “to forgive” is a choice; an act of the will. You do not need to to feel like forgiving someone to do it. You need to choose to release any desire for retribution and ask God to treat the offending person the same way God has treated you – with mercy. Stage 2: The Process – “forgiving” is a process where your choice to forgive begins over time to align with your emotions. Tis sometimes takes months or even years. The key to this stage is prayer. Stage 3: The Completion – “forgiven” is when the Spirit of God aligns your choice to obey God in forgiving with the emotional experience of feeling genuine joy when blessings occur in that person’s life.
And don’t forget to guard your perception of yourself when dealing with evil people. (v. 16) One of the greatest dangers of applying this passage to your present relationships is a very subtle but self-righteous attitude that we are far better than others. We tend to create a world where we are the good guys and anyone who has ever hurt us becomes the bad guy. We excuse our faults and maximize those of others.
2. Negative Command: Never Pay Back (v. 17-20)
Although everything in us wants to ‘pay back’ God clearly tells us that personal retaliation is a prohibited response for God’s people. It is like fighting a fire with a hose filled with gas – it only adds fuel to the fire. We may think getting back at the other person will be satisfying, but instead it escalates the conflict ha pulls us into the evil itself.
Try to live at peace and harmony with everyone, believers and unbelievers, because our testimony is more important than our rights. Learn to use the phrase “Just let it go.” Yet, ‘if possible’ means that there are times when we need to stand up. It is not peace at any price.
Why not to retaliate? (1) You usurp God’s authority and role as judge when you take retaliation into your own hands (v. 19). (2) Personal retaliation is an ineffective means to accomplish peace (v. 20). Loving our enemies is the most powerful argument for the Gospel. Loving people who don’t deserve to be loved in a way they don’t deserve or expect can break through the hardest hearts and demonstrate the reality of God like few other things in the entire world. Not returning evil for evil does not fulfill our responsibility. We are asked to minister to our enemy which may be even more difficult than not retaliating. To withhold vengeance is one thing. It requires only doing nothing. But to actually return good for evil requires actions that overcome our natural tendencies and feelings. The phrase heap burning coals upon his head may refer to an ancient Egyptian custom. When a person wanted to demonstrate public contrition, he would carry on his head a pan of burning coals to represent the burning pain of his shame and guilt. The point here is that, when we love our enemy and genuinely seek to meet his needs,” his good conscience will shame him for his hatred. Thus God expects us to leave necessary punishment to Him and busy our self in loving our enemies. [MacArthur, p. 203.] The best way to get rid of our enemies is to turn them into friends.
3. Warning: Do not be Overcome by Evil; Overcome Evil with Good (v. 21)
No alternative, no neutrality, no middle way is given us. If we curse (14), repay evil for evil (17) or take revenge (19) then because these are evil responses, we have given in to evil. We must not be sucked into the sphere of evil’s influence and be used by it or be over come by our own evil responses. Our own evil responding is infinitely more detrimental to us that the evil done to us by others. It is evil itself that must be overcome and that can be accomplished only with good.So refuse to give back evil for evil. Refuse to gossip about the one who has gossiped about you. Refuse to use unethical practices to pay back those who have cheated you. Do not take your own revenge, leave that for God. When you bless your persecutor, the person set free is you.
The infamous 19th-century feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys started with a fight over a razorback hog. It turned into a vendetta that continued unabated for several decades. Members of both clans committed brutal murders, “and their fighting brought heartache to every family in the valley of the Tug Fork River, along the border of Kentucky and West Virginia. The men who started this bitter and destructive violence, William Hatfield and Randolph McCoy, were responsible for scores of deaths, but they were never brought to justice in a court of law. Although they both lived long lives, they had to watch the suffering and death of their loved ones.
A little girl one day went to her mother to show some fruit that had been given her. “Your friend,” said the mother, “has been very kind.” “Yes,” said the child. “She gave me more than these; but I have given some away.” The mother inquired to whom she had given them. She answered, “I gave them to a girl who pushes me off the path, and makes faces at me.” When asked why she gave them to her, she replied, “Because I thought it would make her know that I wish to be kind to her, and she will not, perhaps, be so rude and unkind to me again.”
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