Good day and good Tuesday. I hope all is well in your world and your lens of perspective through which you view the world is firmly based in God’s Word. God’s Words allows us to view the world differently. We all see our own worlds through a lens that has either been learned, taught or achieved through some level of life experience. Usually what the world teaches us is not in congruence with the Word of God. We need the scriptures as a starting point or ‘true North’ that everything else in our life can rest upon. Otherwise what are we basing our life decisions on? God’s Word is the ‘true North.’ It’s truth, it’s fundamental, it’s foundational, it’s useful and most importantly it’s full of God’s blessings.
This morning we’re in Romans chapter 12 and it starts the last of the three division in the book. This third division deals with duty and the daily practical applications of the theological arguments that Paul has placed before us in the first 11 chapters. This chapter deals specifically with Christian conduct, the outward display of our lives that the world sees. This is also the fist mention of the body of Christ from Paul. He will go on to further this discussion of the body in the books of Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians. Good stuff.
There’s so much in this great chapter that when I opened it up this morning it is literally almost solid red from underlinings from my previous reading sessions. So much wisdom from God here, we won’t be able to touch on it all, so we’ll hit some of the highlights.
There’s a great quote that says, “preach the gospel to all that you come into contact with everyday and if necessary use words.” I love that quote. As we are looking to Jesus as a model to live our lives by, rest assured that someone else is looking to you as an example. What do they see when they look at your life? Do they see truth and integrity? Do they see love? Do they see God’s principles being used? This is really what the Christian walk boils down to. Most people will either be attracted or repelled to the Christian faith by the ‘Christians’ that they know. This is the Paul’s point here in chapter 12, live like this and not only will you be full of joy, but others will see your joy and be attracted to the light of Christ that is in you.
Paul starts of with a solid foundation in chapter 12, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2. This world is full of evil. It’s full of sin. Don’t be conformed or comply with its habits and desires, it’s the opposite of God. But let your mind be transformed or completely changed in form, renewing your mind, making it new. By doing this you will be able to discern God’s will, that is find out what God’s plan for your life is. As your will aligns with God’s throughout your life it will move from good to acceptable to perfect. Wow, what a promise. Be set aside from this world, keep your mind on God, seek His will and through this process you will be able to move ever closer to God and the perfect plan He has for your life. Thank you Lord for this promise.
As Paul moves into the conduct of the believer, the first thing he hits on is a foundational principle that every single believer must seriously address in order to really be a true servant of God. Pride. “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgement.” Romans 12:3. Think of the word servant. A person who performs duties for another; a devoted and helpful follower or supporter. How can you serve another if lack the ability to consider yourself a servant? Pride keeps us from this. If you think too highly of yourself, you will not be able to truly serve God or any another. I see pride as the single biggest problem in the world today. It was also the reason for the fall of man in the garden, as Eve wanted to be able to think like God, to be on the same plane as He was. Pride. We want and we tell ourselves we DESERVE what we want, when we want it. It’s the way of the world and Paul confronts this first. In order to be an effective servant of God you will have to have a humble heart and not put yourself above others.
Next Paul gets into the body of Christ. This is the first mention of the body of Christ and its many members that serve in different capacities in the Word of God. This is a beautiful image that Paul has and is still a perfect image of a local church. God makes us all specifically for a purpose and that purpose plays out in specific services to him. No matter what you may think, you were built by God to serve God and you do that through a local church. I could spend hours writing on this beautiful principle but today we’ll have to move on.
As much as it pains me, I’m going to have to skip through some ground shaking stuff and move onto 12:19-21 for something we all need to be constantly reminded of. But please do me this HUGE favor. Go to God’s Word TODAY and read the entire chapter of Romans 12. I’m not kidding in that I think every follower of Christ should read this chapter once a week. It’s just that important to how we should be living our lives as lights of Christ to a dark world.
Let’s look a little closer at Romans 12:19-21, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good.”
There could not possibly be a verse that is much more anti-world than this one. We live in a world that is so based on vengeance, revenge and retaliation. You can barely turn around without seeing a movie based on some angry father out to get vengeance on the mean guys that hurt his family somehow. We love to sit in the theater and cheer when he finally finds the bad guys and kills them. Oh, how we love to see revenge dished out. But notice carefully what God says here. Don’t do it, it’s not your place, its not your job, its mine, He says. You see we covered not judging one another back in Romans 14 and in order to execute revenge or vengeance, you’ll first have to judge. I remember the Sylvester Stallone movie called Judge Dredd. It was based on a comic and it was set in a future where crime was so rampant that the government could not properly process it with due diligence, so they made the police the judges as well. The tag line was “Judge Dredd, he’s the judge, jury and executioner.” You see if we’re not careful we put ourselves into this same role. We judge if someone has wronged us and then we will see that they get the proper sentence for the crimes against us. We can make ourselves the judge, the jury and the executioner.
Now not only does God say not to do this but he takes it about a million steps further. When people wrong us, not only are we NOT to avenge ourselves and leave it to God but we are to bless them! WHAT? But the world is clear on this right? If someone is mean to me, I am to immediately be even meaner right back to them. Isn’t this basically what we see in the world today? Maybe so but God says, not even close.
My friends, this is one of the greatest principles you will find in the word of God.
Think of how different the world would be if we adhered to this amazing principle. If every time someone wronged us, we blessed them instead of cursing them and simply turned it over to God to let Him handle it as the perfect judge that He is. You see this ties right back into the first principle that Paul started off with, thinking too much of ourselves. The ugly face of Pride. I’m too important or too special to be treated like this. Don’t they know who I am? I’ll show them! I see it every day and in fact I was just getting gas the other day and there was a woman on her phone and boy was she seeking her own vengeance on someone that she thought had wronged her. The foul language and anger she was spewing made me blush with shame for her. Paul is telling us that pride starts it all. When we are stuck on ourselves and the world revolves around us, bad things will follow.
The last verse, verse 21, to me is the most powerful. “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” Can we be overcome with evil? Absolutely. For Paul to tell us not to be overcome by it means that we are in danger of being overcome by it. Don’t let that happen. And oh, how easily we can be overcome by evil. If someone stands in front of me and cusses me out I can instantly get right back in their face. Sometimes it scares me how instantly my nature is ready to repay evil with evil. My nature is so ready to be overcome with evil. I hate that I’m made this way but its true. So how do I fight this nature that’s within me that is so ready to be overcome by evil? There’s only way, use the good. “but overcome evil with good.” You see God provides us righteousness through the Holy Spirit, the ability to do good that comes form Him. But we have to consciously choose good. Our nature automatically reverts to evil but because as children of God, we have the Holy Spirit living within us and it is the good. We are new creatures in Christ and we have a choice now. Choose good over evil. We now have a glorious choice to yield this good to overcome evil. The million dollar question is, will we use it and how often.
Thanks for reading along today, I hope and pray that your own personal time in God’s Word today was as challenging and uplifting as mine was. Oh, how I treasure the glory of God’s Word that it can both enrichen and challenge me on such a deep level.
Have a blessed day and may God’s good flow through you today to the world!
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