In the Face of Evil
Romans 12:9-21[1]
Our world is a beautiful one. The presence of
God’s love shines through so much of our world. Focusing on the beauty of the
earth helps us find joy in the goodness of creation. But our world also
includes a disturbing presence. We have word for it. We call it “evil.” I’m not
sure we even know what that word means any longer, to be honest. Many of us
live our lives without really having to come face-to-face with evil on a
day-to-day basis. We know it’s there but may not even recognize evil in our
very own community. On the other hand, some of us have been so deeply affected
by evil that it has always defined our lives. That’s a tragedy. Most of the
people I know who live with the lingering effects of evil are doing everything
in their power to set themselves free from it. And that’s a good thing. But
make no mistake, we live in a world that includes evil.
To some extent, “evil” is a matter of
perspective these days. Is it “evil” to take unfair advantage of someone in a
business deal? Sadly, I think the answer these days depends on which side of
the deal you’re on! Most people will say that it’s “evil” to deprive a person
of their life savings simply to ensure a “win” in the stock market. Most people
also agree that the violence that takes innocent lives is “evil.” Especially
when it’s “murder.” But when it’s “collateral damage” in the context of war, we
may not take it so seriously. It may take the violence of war touching your
life directly for you to use the word “evil” for the violence of war. I guess I
would say any violence that takes innocent lives is always evil in my opinion!
In our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans
for today, he addresses the issue of how we as followers of Jesus Christ should
respond to the evil in our world. It’s one of the more difficult teachings of
the Bible: in effect Paul says, “don’t repay evil with evil but rather with
good”! Perhaps the first step for us to try to live out this principle is to
become aware of what is truly evil in our world. Unfortunately, I think things
have gotten pretty confused here. We tend to see the “evil” that is far away
from us. We may not even know the people we’re pointing the finger at, but we
label them “evil,” whether rightly or wrongly. But when it comes to the “evil”
that lies at our front door, or lies within us, we tend to turn a blind eye. We
do that because it feels safer that way, I think. It’s certainly more
convenient for us.
Jesus took a different approach: he called
“evil” out where he saw it. And he saw it not in the failings of the people who
were labelled “sinners” or “outcasts” or “other.” He called out “evil” when he
saw people with power and privilege using that power and privilege to take advantage
of others in such a way that they were doing real harm to them. I would say
things haven’t changed much on that score. All too often, the “evil” that Jesus
called out was being perpetrated by the leaders of his day, including the
religious leaders. It’s hard for us to swallow, but I know for a fact that
there are religious leaders who have so abused their position that they have
done real harm. And all too often, they have done it in Jesus’ name!
One of the reasons why Paul’s teaching about
how to respond to evil is so difficult for us is because Paul is following
Jesus! He’s most certainly referring to Jesus’ teaching when he says, “Bless
those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them” (Rom
12:14, NLT). Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to
love their “enemies” and to pray for those who mistreated them (Mt 5:44; Lk
6:27-28). But there’s more to it. When Paul says, “Never pay back evil with
more evil,” he’s not only following Jesus’ explicit teaching not to “resist an
evildoer” (Mt 5:39), even when they strike you, even when they try to take away
your most basic necessities! Paul’s going back to the original command to “love
your neighbor as yourself” in Leviticus. The beginning of that verse in the
original Old Testament context says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a
grudge … but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18)! The Bible
is full of passages that resound with the same approach: don’t repay evil with
evil, but rather with good!
I’ll be the first to admit that goes against
the grain for most of us. Our tendency is to resist evil; we want to take the
side of the victims and rush to their protection. But Paul follows Jesus and
the witness of Scripture when he tells us not to resist evil, but to seek to redeem
evil. I think his words reflect the wisdom that when we respond to evil with
force, we only give it more power. It’s impossible to avoid the truth that
“fighting fire with fire” leads inevitably to the point where we become what
we’re fighting.[2] When that happens we’ve abandoned the love that God wants us to practice in the
world so that we can take part in his work of redeeming the world!
I think one of the hard truths that Jesus and
Paul are trying to get across to us is that only a love that is willing to
suffer has the power to truly overcome evil and redeem it.[3] That’s hard to take in. But that is precisely the response God made to evil in
Jesus Christ. As Frederick Buechner says, “Christianity … ultimately offers no
theoretical solution [to the problem of evil]. It merely points to the cross
and says that, practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so
obscene—not even this—but that God can turn it to good.”[4] We may not like it, it’s hard for us to hear, but one of the lessons of the
cross is that there really is no other way to solve the problem of evil in this
world! Only the willingness to respond to hostility with peace, to respond to
hatred with forgiveness, to respond to violence with love, can redeem evil.[5]
That all sounds fine and good, but the
question has practical dimensions that we all have to face. When someone breaks
into my home and threatens to harm me or my family, what am I supposed to do?
It’s a difficult question. I probably can’t answer that question for anyone but
myself. But what I know is that when it comes to facing these difficult
decisions, asking “What would Jesus do?” always leads me in the right
direction. For myself, I would say that I would consult with home safety
experts about finding ways to protect myself or my loved ones without resorting
to violence. But that’s my answer to a question that’s a very personal one. At
the end of the day we all have to come up with our own answers to those very
personal and practical questions about how we’re going to respond to evil in
our world. But we must remind ourselves that the whole Bible, from Moses to the
Psalms to Jesus to the Apostles, teaches us not to repay evil with evil, but
rather to respond to evil in a way that can turn it to good.
[1] © 2026b Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm PhD on 8/30/2026 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the
Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 477, where he says that the one
who “attempts to overcome evil with evil, may perhaps surpass his enemy in
doing injury, but it is to his own ruin.”
[3] Jürgen Moltmann, “Love and Sorrow,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 74-75; cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 284, where he refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ideal of a "religionless Christianity" that eschews the "religious" tendency many Christians have had to look to God for "magical" intervention (like a deus ex machina), and therefore tends to be so "otherworldly" as to neglect God's redemptive purpose for the world. Instead, he advocates for a "godly worldliness" in which the effort to "seek first the kingdom of God" leads to a love that shares the sufferings of this world as "God's suffering over the world." Moltmann concludes, "the way of life in the messianic era is stamped by messianic suffering. It is hardly ever recognizable in any other way, for "dying, and behold we live" (alluding to 2 Cor 4:10). See further Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 204: “Anyone who participates in ‘Christ’s sufferings’” becomes a witness “to the coming truth against the ruling lie, to coming justice and righteousness against the prevailing injustice, and to coming life against the tyranny of death.”
[4] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, 24.
[5] Cf. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in New Interpreters Bible 10: 715, where he says that God’s people are
to meet the evil in the world “in the way that even God met it: with love and
generous goodness.”
