Calvary Road Baptist Church
“THE CHRISTIAN’S DIFFERENT RESPONSE”
Romans 12.17a
This message from God’s Word is about how different Christians are from everyone else, and about how differently we are supposed to act from everyone else. I bring this message because there are so many people who profess to be Christians who act just like lost people, and they seem to be okay with that as if Christ makes no difference besides destiny. Christ makes a difference about more than destiny. Let’s quickly survey the Biblical record to see how differently God’s people behaved from other men in the past, how differently God’s people behaved even from those who said they were God’s people.
Consider the first two children born to Adam and Eve. Didn’t Abel behave differently than Cain? Sure, he did. Cain behaved like just about everyone would have behaved under the circumstances he faced. When he offered up a sacrifice unacceptable to God, his countenance fell, and hatred and bitterness rose up against his brother, whose sacrifice was acceptable to God. But Cain reacted the way everyone reacts. Abel was the one who responded differently.
What about Enoch? Jude 14 and 15 tells us that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, preached about the Second Coming of Christ to a rebellious world that lived and died in their sin before the Flood and before the First Coming of Christ. Standing up for God and preaching about the Second Coming more than 2,000 years before the First Coming certainly is different, isn’t it? Not many people who claim to be God’s people stand up for God the way Enoch did, do they?
Not only did Enoch behave differently than everyone else, but Noah behaved differently than everyone else. A preacher of righteousness, just like his ancestor Enoch, Noah went one step further than Enoch did by building an Ark, just as God had commanded him. Imagine the scorn and ridicule he subjected himself and his family to by behaving so differently during that era. Building a huge boat before rain had ever fallen and before seas and oceans covered 75% of the earth’s surface. Noah is a classic example of how God’s people behave differently than everyone else, caring only about pleasing God, not about pleasing man.
Time slips away too fast for us to consider in depth the behavior of Abraham (who was willing to sacrifice his son), the behavior of Job (who did not foolishly sin against God amidst great suffering), the behavior of Rahab the harlot after her conversion, the behavior of Joseph, the behavior of Daniel and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the behavior of John the Baptist, the behavior of the apostles of Jesus Christ, the behavior of the Apostle Paul, the behavior of the deacon Stephen (stoned to death for his dedication to Christ), and the behavior of many unnamed others in the Bible. Friends, God’s people behave differently than other people.
Even in Church history, after the completion of the Bible, we can point to example after example of God’s people behaving differently. There’s the Baptist pastor in England, John Bunyan, suffering years in an English prison rather than seek permission from the crown to preach the Gospel. How can you read about John Bunyan and maintain, as do some evangelical Christians of our era, that believers must always and in every case submit to the authority of government? The Bible does not teach that we are to blindly submit to the rule of man’s law in every case. Daniel was a great example of submission to government when it was God’s will, but he is also a great example of defiance to the sinful use of governmental authority when that was God’s will. The governing criteria is the will of God, not the law of the land.
More recently, there were the Russian Christians who went underground after the Bolshevik Revolution rather than submit to the illegitimate exercise of the communist state’s authority in attempting to dictate what sermons were allowed to be preached in Christ’s Churches, and who would be permitted to attend Church. And, just a couple of decades ago there’s the real reason for the downfall of communism in Romania. It was the preaching of Pastor Laszlo Tokes and his refusal to knuckle under to state domination that brought the dictator Ceausescu down.[1]
I could show you example after example after example after example of how Christians have, and still do, behave differently than do unsaved people. If you’d read Foxe’s Book of Christian Martyrs, for instance, you’d see such testimonies as the two little girls suffering boiling oil rather than denying their precious savior Jesus Christ. They behaved differently unto death.
There are so many more examples. Christians behaved so differently in Paul’s day that onlookers said this about them in Acts 17.6:
“These that have turned the world upside down have come hither also.”
Before we turn to our text, allow me to point out Hebrews 11.32-40:
32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:
33 Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
34 Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.
35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:
36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
39 And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:
40 God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.
What I’ve just read is only a summary of the behavior of Old Testament saints. What I’ve not read about is the behavior of New Testament saints and Christians throughout Church history since Biblical times, that I’ve only briefly touched on.
Can anyone deny that Christians behave differently? Not nominal Christians, perhaps, or people who are just a bit churchy. Not religious people who may attend sound Churches but whose lives give no other evidence of regeneration. Not professors of salvation, but possessors. When you separate the wheat from the chaff, either by persecution or close examination of the life using Biblical criteria, it is obvious that Christians behave differently than unsaved people behave.
We don’t behave differently only in response to persecution. If you carefully examine the Scriptures, you will find good and sufficient evidence, as well as good and sufficient reason, for Christians behaving differently from unsaved people in virtually every area of life.
Do we not behave differently at work? It’s not our people who steal time, who miss Mondays because of hangovers, who sneak out at break time to do drugs, who destroy machinery because of a drug-caused lack of coordination. Do we not behave differently in courting our future spouses and in the way husbands and wives relate to each other? We don’t pick our mates at bars, at the beach, or on the dance floor. We choose our mates from among those who attend Church, or from Christians we work with, where we can see and learn what their lives are like. And we certainly raise our children differently. Amen?
So different is our outlook on the family and on those precious gifts who are our children that our entire outlook on the odious topic of family planning, abortions, and convenience sterilizations radically departs from the mores and values of the Christ-rejecting world out there. So, it’s well-established that Christians do behave differently than lost people. As a matter of fact, so well established is the fact that Christians are different in every way than lost people that the person who claims to be a Christian, but whose values and life habits appear to be the same as everyone else’s, cannot have his claim to be a Christian seriously considered by anyone but the most naive person.
With that in our minds, then, and with that firmly fixed and grasped in the minds of his Roman readers as well, let’s turn to Romans 12.17 to examine one specific way in which Christians behave differently, very differently than non-Christians:
“Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.”
Christians do behave differently than unbelievers. But, notice, a great deal of the differences in our behavior have to do with the choices we make, by God’s grace, to do that which reflects well on the Savior, not that which gives us personal satisfaction. And so it is with that which is before us today.
If ever there is a portion of Scripture which makes me feel particularly like a weak and anemic Christian, it’s this sentence, the first half of the verse. If ever there is a type of behavior that can wrongly be justified in the mind of the sinning Christian, but which is so characteristic of the way lost men live their lives, it’s this human tendency to reward evil back to the person who has done evil toward you. But recompensing evil for evil to a man, to any man, for any reason, is so very unlike the Lord Jesus Christ, is it not? It is so unlike those men and women who have stood tall for Him in centuries past. It is so unlike what Scripture shows us is expected of us.
I trusted Jesus Christ on March 31, 1974. And there has never been a time in my life when I’ve ever thought that I had been granted the power to live in sinless perfection this side of heaven. I am way too flawed. But even though I am a sinful Christian, I do so want people who know me to see that Christ has made a difference in my life. There is no possible way that anyone who knows me would conclude that I am sinless. But I am different because of my Savior. So, when I commit such sins as this one, reward sin back to those who have sinned against me, it’s a crushing blow. Let us, therefore, focus not on so broad a topic as Christians behaving differently than lost people, but on Christians responding differently than lost people when we are sinned against.
Three considerations:
First, THE RECEIPT FROM MEN
You understand, of course, that I refer to human beings here when I say men. I certainly wouldn’t think of excluding women from that pool of humanity who have demonstrated our capacity to do wrong to others of our species. When Paul speaks of recompensing evil for evil he is referring to the Christian’s response when sinned against.
But for evil to be done to you, that evil has to be done to you by someone else. So, implicit in this single sentence is the capacity of human beings to do evil one to another. And virtually everyone recognizes this ability that we have, as well as this tendency we have, to wrong each other terribly. To explain why human beings behave in this fashion, three categories of reasons are advanced as a way of explaining why people do evil to each other:
Category One. If you are of the Freudian psychology school of thought, or the B. F. Skinner school of thought, or of the atheistic humanist school of thought, the explanation is quite simple. It’s wrong, but it’s simple. There is no such thing as evil, per se. It’s all relative. And what do I mean when I say it’s relative? I mean, if it is relatively close to you, it’s wrong and morally repugnant, but if it happens to someone else, it isn’t immoral at all. Seriously, these people don’t believe in moral absolutes. Therefore there really isn’t such a thing as evil in their thinking. They believe man is amoral, without morality.
Category Two. Near the school of thought of these that I’ve mentioned are those who believe that man is essentially good. What’s wrong isn’t man at all. What’s wrong is society. That’s Jean Jacques Rousseau. You can tell who these folks are by their constant haranguing against “the system,” against “structural racism,” and their advocacy of “social justice.” Whoever and whatever “the system” is is what’s at fault. They imagine that if you change “the system,” you’ll solve the problems. Though their beliefs are somewhat different than the atheists such as Freud, and the communists, and Skinner, they will join in with them to change this nebulous “system,” to bring it down by whatever means possible. They seem not to recognize that society, “the system” is composed of people. How can “the system” be so wrong when that which comprises “the system,” which is people, is essentially good? They haven’t answered that question yet, and they never will.
It’s the third explanation of this tendency to commit acts of evil toward each other, which provides the only valid explanation of human behavior. That explanation, our explanation, comes from the infallible Word of God. Only in the Bible is the nature of mankind sufficiently explained, and in great enough detail, that we understand perfectly why men do evil to each other. It’s because men and women, it’s because human beings, it’s because you and I are sinners. We do wrong to each other because we choose to.
Because of our common human father, Adam, every person with a human father was conceived a sinner and is capable of the most heinous crimes and felonies. And while our tendencies to fully act out the desires of our hearts toward each other are influenced and restrained by childhood training (and you’d better hurry because you’re running out of time) and society’s system of rewards and punishments, the heart of man goes on unaffected by external training. The highly sophisticated and highly educated barbarians who teach and who are taught in our schools of higher education attest to this.
Therefore, we who are Christians, who have trusted Jesus Christ to the saving of our soul, who believe the Bible as God’s infallible guide, see mankind’s proclivity to sin and fully expect to be sinned against by others. We live in a world populated by people who are described by God in this way in Jeremiah 17.9:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
People do wicked things because people have wicked hearts.
Additionally, we fully recognize that because we are identified with our Savior (we who are believers in Christ), this world of men who are in rebellion against Him, who hate and ridicule Him, feel the same way toward us. The Lord Jesus said, in John 15.18-19, that the world that hates Him (and the world does hate the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the real Jesus Christ) also hates us. So, in addition to expecting evil from men simply because they are men, we also expect evil from men because they hate what we stand for and they despise who we represent.
But, sadly, we must also recognize that we receive evil also from our brothers and sisters who are also Christians. Why do such terrible things happen? Because we who are Christians are still sinful. Because we who are sinful can behave carnally, as Paul declared in First Corinthians chapter 3, even spiritually mature men and women are capable of terribly wicked behavior, as King David showed when he lapsed into his sin of adultery and murder. Simon Peter also serves as an example, when he denied the Lord three times, and though I am not nearly as mature or spiritual as those two men, as I have shown you, folks, too many times to remember.
So, what we receive from men is evil. Thus has it been since the Garden. Let me tell you something, sir. You find miss perfect, and you marry her, guess what she’s going to do to you someday? She’s going to do evil to you. And no matter how much you profess to her that you love her, you’re going to do evil to her. So, you’d better get this down right before you get married. You’re going to do wrong to the person you sleep with, and the person you sleep with is going to do wrong to you. You’d better learn how to deal with that now, because if you wait until after you get married, you may find your marriage blows up right in front of you before you learn how to deal with it. I’m just saying.
THERE IS A SECOND CONSIDERATION. AFTER THE EVIL RECEIPT FROM MEN THERE IS THE NORMAL AND HUMAN EVIL RESPONSE TO MEN
If evil is what can be expected from every human being you’ve ever encountered, is not retaliation the expected norm of behavior to every man from whom evil is received? Sure it is. Genesis 4.23-24:
23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt.
24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.
“Anybody messes with me, and am going to mess with him.” Lamech was not only a bigamist. You know what a bigamist is, don’t you? He’s a man who has found two stupid women and has persuaded both of them to marry him ... at the same time. Lamech was a bigamist who gloried in his retaliation against a man who hurt him in some way. And how did he retaliate? How did he recompense evil for evil? He killed the man, the young man. He didn’t correct him; he didn’t rebuke him. He killed him.
That was just the beginning of man’s recompensing evil for evi1. Throughout history, we have seen individuals and clans, societies and nations, seeking to recompense evil for evil. Let me give you just a very few examples:
First, the Irish Republican Army. The Irish have most of the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland, that small portion still controlled by Great Britain, has a Protestant majority. But since the IRA felt they were wronged by the British (and they were wronged), they bombed and killed and maimed to the last man for decades, until peace was finally imposed upon them. Recompensing evil for evi1.
Second, Bosnia-Herzegovina. You may be too young to realize that the bloodshed and the so-called ethnic cleansing that took place then was nothing less than a Serbian reaction to Muslim offenses of more than one hundred years earlier. Sure, the Turks and their Ottoman Empire ruthlessly oppressed the Greek Orthodox Serbs. But the Bible says (and the Serbs claim to be Christians), “Recompense to no man evil for evil.”
Third, dueling with swords or pistols for honor. Was this not the prideful folly of vain men who sought to recompense evil for evil who felt their honor had been besmirched by another? Sure it was. Dueling to the death over matters of honor is stupid and childish. But do not gang bangers still behave this way, justifying their actions with their twisted code of honor? “He dissed me, so he needs to die.”
Finally, the present conflict in the Middle East. Arabs against Jews. Jews against Arabs. Each side trying to get in one last, good, shot at the one for wrongs done by the other. And each has done the other wrong. So they retaliate and strike back, killing and maiming, widowing and orphaning, crippling and brutalizing, until one side just stops. I believe one side is worse than the other, but neither side is innocent.
You may be sitting in your seat and agreeing with everything I’ve said thus far. But here is where some of you part company with me. You agree, in principle that Christians should not recompense evil for evil. But anyone who rapes your wife is dead. Somebody messes with your woman, and he’s going to die. Catch ‘em, some think, and kill ’em. Isn’t that a well-established justification? It is one thing to seek to prevent wrongdoing aggressively, but it is another thing to seek vengeance after a wicked crime has been committed. Remember the 24-year old father who beat a ranch hand to death with his bare hands, after finding the man abusing his daughter behind a barn?[2] And how about the Los Angeles riots? Remember them? Though we know that the great majority of those rioting were thugs and criminals, some were ordinary citizens who justified their behavior. To them, the riot was recompensing evil for past evils committed against them. “They’re just getting what coming to them.”
And you dads. How many of you dads spend time teaching your sons how to punch out a kid’s lights for picking on your boy? I do not argue with training someone how to defend himself. I think people ought to be able to defend themselves. But in light of our text, wouldn’t it also be wise to train your child how to respond with a soft answer to turn away the bully’s wrath? Wouldn’t it be in your son’s long term best interest to blister his bottom every single time you see him throw a punch at anyone, for any reason, except as a last resort for self-defense to keep from being brutally beaten? I hope that if I had a boy, I would tell him, in no uncertain terms, that I would rather see him with a bloody nose or two, in response to trying to learn how to turn away wrath with a soft answer, than to come home proud that he had recompensed evil for evil. It takes far greater manliness to do the former than the latter.
Moms? You don’t train your sons to throw punches. But some of you unconsciously train your children to return evil for evil in this way: Someone says something unkind to you, and your automatic response is a guilt-motivating crying spree. It’s a defense mechanism that you’ve developed that allows you to recompense evil for evil in a more socially acceptable way for a female than throwing a punch.
So you see, even Christians recompense evil for evil so much of the time. The problem is, recompensing evil for evil is so widespread, so common among the lost and the saved that we rarely distinguish ourselves from unsaved people by behaving differently than they do when we are sinned against.
You might be thinking in your mind, “Pastor, if everyone does this, if everyone rewards evil for evil, what’s wrong with it?” What’s wrong with it? If everyone does it, including me and including you, then Christ hasn’t made as much of a difference in our lives as we claim He has. Has He? If everyone does it, it can’t be distinctively Christian behavior. Can it? And Christian conduct is distinctive.
Those of us who know Christ are not supposed to recompense evil for evil. We are supposed to respond differently. And because sin no longer has dominion over us, Romans 6.14, we don’t have to react and respond as lost people do. We don’t have to respond as do those who have never claimed Christ made a difference in their lives. We can do right. Amen?
THE RECEIPT FROM MEN, EVIL. THE RESPONSE TO MEN, EVIL FOR EVIL. Finally, THE REASONING BY MEN THAT WRONGLY JUSTIFIES SUCH A RESPONSE
Four possible faults result in recompensing evil for evil:
First, you are a human being. Though Jesus Christ makes the most profound kind of difference in the Christian’s life, His plan for His own does not include sinlessness in this lifetime. It cannot so long as we abide in these sinful and unredeemed bodies. That means, among other things, you and I will sin against our fellow men by rewarding evil for evil. When we do that, regardless of the provocation, we are wrong; we need to ask forgiveness of those we so wrong humbly, and we need to make restitution.
Second, you may recompense evil for evil because you are an untrained Christian. As children, most of us were trained to retaliate. Understand, that’s not an excuse by any means. But it’s a fact of life that needs to be dealt with. Some of you husbands were trained to be babies in big men’s bodies who blow up when you don’t get your way. Some of you wives were trained to be mouthy and sassy little snots, who run down your man when you get mad at him. With those kinds of problems or any other problem that results in habitually rewarding evil for evil, we need to employ First Timothy 4.7 and exercise yourself, literally train yourself, unto godliness. Right behavior for the born-again person is often the result of developing the right habits, and you and I need to get on that right away. Isn’t that correct? You bet it is.
Third, you may be a carnal Christian. First Corinthians 3.1-3 shows us that Christians who are backslidden and who behave in an unspiritual manner act in many ways just like unsaved men. Manifesting pride and retaliating against those who do you wrong is an example of carnality. Though this can happen to Christians, it is not a lifelong characteristic of truly born-again people. Only the immature or the temporarily carnal exhibit this in a repeated fashion, and that over a rather short period. So, if your carnality appears to be a lifelong condition, you’re just plain lost. With maturity, and with the realization that your life is hidden in Christ, Christian, recompensing evil for evil ought to occur less and less frequently.
Finally, perhaps you are lost. Oh, you claim to know Christ as your savior, but you don’t really. You’ve never really trusted Jesus as your savior, not really. So, you can’t behave differently than do lost men and women because you’re no different than lost men and women. Religious? Yes. Truly born-again? No. And it’s the genuine Christians who are commanded to behave differently, who are expected to behave differently, who are empowered to behave differently, and who do behave differently ... as a rule.
“Recompense to no man evil for evil.”
It is never an acceptable response to wrongdoing to retaliate for revenge. It’s the principle that my mother tried to teach me, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Does this mean that you never strike a person who strikes you? Not at all. But it does mean that when someone strikes you your response should not automatically be retaliation, and certainly should never be revenge.
Rather, it ought to be a quickly thought out spiritual decision to attack someone to stop a further attack that may lead to greater harm. It may be a spiritual decision to act quickly to bring an offender to the law. Or it may be the spiritual decision to do absolutely nothing. But it will never be the decision to retaliate for revenge, returning evil for evil.
For most of us, our good old American upbringing trained us to seek vigilante justice, to be one lone Arnold Schwarzenegger or Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis against the forces of evil, to decide to kill those caught violating the sanctity of our homes. But that kind of thinking is simply is not God’s way of responding to evil.
Because our lives are hid in Christ, because we have been crucified with Christ, because Christ has made a difference, our response to evil is supposed to be different. Let’s make sure Second Corinthians 5.17 describes our lives:
“Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
This is reality for us, brothers and sisters. God help us to live out this new reality. If you are a new Christian, or an untrained Christian, or a carnal Christian, who has been caught up in a cycle of recompensing evil for evil, blowing your stack when your wife makes you mad, yelling at the kids when you’re tired and irritable (whatever it is), contact the Church office and let’s get together.
Perhaps your difficulty is something that can quickly be remedied by obeying a portion of God’s Word that is very straightforward and rather easy to implement. Or perhaps I can arrange a series of sessions to show you how God can bring about some really dramatic changes in your way of responding to things being done to you. Just understand, when you call me, you’ll not be considered a victim. And why not? Because you’re not a victim, you’re a Christian. A Christian can’t be a victim. You can’t be a victim and a victor at the same time.
You may be a lost person. You can hardly be described as a victor. You see, you’re dead in trespasses and sins. And the reason you don’t behave differently than anyone else in responding to sin is that everyone else out there is dead in trespasses and sins, as well. My unsaved friend, let me introduce you to this One Who will make such a difference in your life as to not only change the way you react and respond when people do you wrong but Who will also forgive you of your sins and change your eternal destiny from Hellfire to heaven.
One final remark directed to you wives who are Christians. I urge you to make something very clear to your husband and the father of your children. Let your man know that while you expect him to do everything possible to protect you and your children from harm, even at the risk of his life, you are unwaveringly opposed to him seeking vengeance against anyone, for any reason, after a wrong deed has been done. Let your man know that he is morally obligated to let God seek vengeance, and to reward no man’s evil toward you or your children with evil.
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[1] https://www.crossmap.com/blogs/the-pastor-who-brought-down-a-dictator.html
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/us/charges-texas-father-beat-death-daughters-molester/story?id=16612071
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