HABITS OF A TRANSFORMING LOVE (Part 3)
God’s Invitation to Grace ❧ Part 57
Romans 12:17-21 ❧ Pastor, Dr. John Denney
I believe that the greatest test of our Christianity is not loving other Christians, or simply loving the loveable. Rather, it is loving and forgiving those who purposely inflict pain and difficulty in our lives. Eugene Peterson captures the heart this kind of love in his modern translation of Jesus words in Matthew, I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out your true selves, your God-created selves…if all you do is love the loveable, do you expect bonus? Anybody can do that… In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow Up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously toward others, the way God lives toward you(Matt. 5:44,46-48 TM). If we’re really taking Jesus’ words seriously, they will bring us to the end of ourselves. Let’s face it, loving our enemies the way Jesus commands us to is impossible. Remember Jesus’ words? Apart from Me you can do nothing(John 15:5). Paul agreed. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me(Philippians 4:13). I havedecided to stick with love, wrote Martin Luther King Jr., Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Without the strength of Christ in you cannot have complete love in our life where there is incomplete forgiveness for those who have wronged you. You cannot have complete love in your family, in your marriage, in your friendships, in your church family if you are unwilling to forgive. Many years ago I remember sitting down with a leading family in a church in Oregon of whom the husband was a longstanding elder. They had not taken communion literally for months simply because of their refusal to forgive another family in the church. I don’t remember what the offense was, but I do remember being surprised how they handled it. The moment the names of the other family entered our conversation I watched the expression on their faces instantly transform from pleasant to ugly as the very thought of their bitterness flooded their minds. And these were fellow believers!
In verses 17-21 Paul shifts from how to love believers now to loving unbelievers – those outside the family of Christ (v.17 anyone, all men; v.18 all men; v.20 your enemy), specifically those who bring pain and difficulty into our lives. Paul had dealt with more than his fare share of those who hated him and flooded his life with a great deal of pain and hardship because he was a follower of Christ. all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12). No church leader of the first century church suffered more at the hands of others than the Apostle Paul. If anyone understood the need for and the power of God’s grace to love others, it was Paul. I read about an advertisement on the side of a plumber’s van in South Africa: There is no place too deep, too dark or too dirty for us to handle.What a wonderful explanation of God’s healing grace! How do you relate to people who hurt and wrong you? What does Loving Those Who Wrong You look like? Paul says, here’s what I’ve learned.
- Resist the desire to get even. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the
sight of all men (Romans 12:17). Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable(v.17, NLT). The idea of resisting the overwhelming drive to get even when someone has hurt me, or someone I care about, is quite honestly one of the most difficult lessons to comprehend, let alone apply. To restrain from getting even leaves us with the feeling that the arbitrator is getting away with injustice. It leaves us feeling weak, defenseless, enraged. Our natural instinct is to strike back, to retaliate – eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.
Were these words left to stand alone without the rest of the Bible, or separated from what Paul has already said in Romans, they would carry very little conviction to be taken seriously. They only make sense because we believe in a holy and just God. There is a better answer. If everyone followed ‘eye for an eye’ principle of justice, noted Gandhi, eventually the whole world would go blind. The one deceptive and illusive flaw of revenge is that it is never satisfied, but adds fuel to the fire of hatred. There is a very good reason Paul says don’t pay back evil for evil – resist the desire to get even. One of the primary reasons many people struggle in their mental and physical health is because of the inability to know how to handle their anger and desire for revenge. How many people struggle with ulcers, depression, chronic illness because they struggle to know what to do with their internal sense of unsatisfied desire to get even for all the wrongs they have experienced. He who seeks revenge digs two graves. Observes the Chinese proverb.
It is not enough though to simply resist getting even, instead, we’re to Respect what is right in the sight of all men. NLTDo things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. But Paul has more than appearances in mind here, he is talking about what is taking place on the inside. You can be nice on outside but bitter on the inside.
I once read about some officers during the Korean War who rented a house for themselves and hired a Korean houseboy to work for them. He was a cheerful, happy soul and they were young and had a lot of fun playing tricks on him. They would nail his shoes to the floor, put water over the door in a bucket so that when he pushed it open the water would fall on him. They played all kinds of tricks, but he always appeared to respond with such kindness and good humor, they finally began to be ashamed of themselves. They called him in and said, We’ve been doing all these mean things to you and you have taken it so beautifully. We want to apologize to you and tell you we’re never going to do these things again. The young Korean boy said, You mean no more nail shoes to floor? You mean no more water on door? They responded, No more. He said, “OK then, no more spit in soup.” The moral of that story is it is possible to take silent revenge! It doesn’t have to be overt. God says don’t even do that. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone.
- Recognize your limitations. There are some people you’re simply not going to be at peace with
– no matter what you say or do. They’re not going to let you live at peace with them. So, how do you handle these kinds of folks? Recognize your limitations. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men(Romans 12:18). We often expect that when we go through the hard work of trying to get along with someone, make peace with them, everything will work out. Even if we do everything right, it doesn’t guarantee peace. But, neither does it give us a reason to stop pursuing peace.
In his book ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’ Phillip Yancey relates the story of a man by the name of Walter Winks. Winks tells about of two peacemakers who visited a group of Polish Christians ten years after WWII. “Would you be willing to meet with other Christians from West Germany?” the peacemakers asked. “They want to ask for forgiveness for what Germany did to Poland during the war and begin to build a new relationship.” At first there was silence. Then one Pole spoke up. “What you are asking is impossible. Each stone of Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood! We cannot forgive!” Before the group parted, though, they said the Lord’s prayer together. When they came to the words, forgive our sins as we forgive…, everyone stopped praying. Tension swelled in the room. The Pole who had spoken so intensely said, “I must say yes to you. I could no more pray the ‘Our Father,’ I could no longer call myself a Christian, if I refuse to forgive. Humanly speaking, I could not do it, but God will give us His strength!” Recognize your limitations.
- Refuse to give into your obsession. Once you make the choice to resist your desire to get even, stick with it. Forgiveness is a choice we keep making even though the hurt feelings are still there. They don’t go away quickly. When those feelings return, which they will, we need to refuse to give into them. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord(Romans 12:19).
While we were in graduate school in Portland, Oregon my wife and I were on our way to church one Sunday, and we passed a cemetery. Many of the headstones had been recently decorated with a colorful array of attractive flowers. But one of the headstones immediately caught our attention. Rather than being adorned with loving flowers, someone had attached a balloon in the shape of a shark. I had to take a second look just to make sure I saw what I thought I’d seen. Somehow, I doubted that this shark balloon was an expression of someone’s love and adoration. I wondered if it was not a hate-filled expression of someone’s obsession of hatred for the deceased. I don’t know for sure, but it reminded me that even death itself cannot satisfy or quench an unforgiving spirit.
An unforgiving spirit is the result of unresolved bitterness and desire for vengeance. Our obsession to get back at the person who hurt us is as highly addictive as it is deceptive. Here’s what happens: While we try to hold someone in the prison we created in our anger, we fail to realize that in order to hold them captive we too must stand guard in the very place of torment we have created for our enemies. We deceive ourselves thinking we’re holding them in the prison of our anger, when all we’re really doing is holding ourselves captive! And worse still, in our rage of revenge we blindly threw away the key to forgiveness. Then one day, the dreaded realization slowly dawns on us that we threw away the only key for our own release. Vengeance cannot heal our wounds, only God’s grace in us can do that.
Instead of being obsessed with revenge, Paul says if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head(Romans 12:20). There’s a lot of speculation about what this means. Based on what Paul is saying, I think he means that when we do good toward those who’ve wronged us, it begins to bother them. They begin to feel the heat of shame and guilt. It melts their hate. It may not though. What’s important is our choice to love them with a supernatural love strengthens our resolve and ability to love them even though they don’t deserve it. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King Jr. Refuse to give into your obsession.
- Return love for hate. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21). I like the words of J B Phillips, Don’t allow yourself to be overpowered by evil. Take the offensive – overpower evil with good!(v. 21, JBP). It is easy to love those who are lovable, but not those who are unloving toward us. One of the keys to dealing with unlovable people is to try and understand why they are unlovable, and you’ll usually find that it is because they have been hurt along the way and they are still hurting. Revenge is a confession of pain. Wrote Seneca. Hurt people hurt people.
In Running Empty, Jill Briscoe tells the story of a lady she met at a conference who’d been sexually abused by her father as a young child. She grew up and overcame the emotional damage and married a missionary. Years later, when her children were grown, she received a letter from her father telling her he’d become a Christian and asked God for forgiveness and realized that he had terribly wronged her and asked for her forgiveness as well. Suddenly, feelings surfaced in her heart she didn’t know were there. It wasn’t fair! He should pay for what he had done! She thought bitterly. It was all too easy. He was getting off the hook. And now he was going to be a part of the family?! Then she had a dream. She saw her father on an empty stage. Above him appeared the hands of God holding a white robe of righteousness. She recognized it at once, for she was wearing one just like it. As the robe descended toward her father, she woke up crying, No, it isn’t fair! What about me?! The only way she could finally find joy was to realize the cost that God had willingly paid for both robes. She began to understand the healing power of unmerited love.
