Overcoming Evil Personally and Governmentally
Romans 12:19-21 · Roger Henderson · Mar 16, 2025
Romans (2022-25), No. 115
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261938448163

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right. So today's lesson, we're going to finish up chapter 12 and start into 13. And actually, you know, looking at that, you think, boy, they seem like such diverse areas. One's talking about personal kind of stuff and one's talking about governmental stuff and how they kind of fit together.

And actually in preparing for it, I noticed that Chester McCauley kind of had a great overview, which I'm going to share in a minute here, but basically we're going to see that the, you know, the point here is that the believer has encountered wrongdoing.

He's been done wrong, right? The song, She Done Me Wrong, or whatever, if you're into that kind of stuff. So the believer's undergone wrongdoing. The first in, that's the 12, is personal wrongdoing. And how should we respond that way? Then we get to 13 and it's wrongdoing, but in this case, it's how is God controlling wrongdoing?

And actually, boy, I had to, in studying for this, I kind of came to the conclusion, this is no great thing, but maybe interesting, but you think about that, you know, The prince in power of the air, God has given over to him the control of this world system, right?

And we see it daily, hourly, second by second, moment by moment. I was thinking, without God's, just like with Job, he's sovereign control of what Satan is doing. Well, his control of government, I think, is a huge part of that, which we kind of miss, I think. I think because we see such awful governments, and we see very few good governments, that we think, well, But God's in control, and we're going to see that a lot here. Okay, so let's go on. So here's the contrast from Macaulay.

So we start off, in the last several verses of 12 we have talks about the believers being related to other men in terms of wrongdoing. And then in 1 through 8 in chapter 13 it talks about how civil authorities will control man, keep man in control. And without that man would go off the rails. And those last verses in 12 talk about wrongdoing on a personal level. And it talks about between believer to believer, to other men.

And then in 13 it's going to talk about civil authority controlling the wrongdoing at a public level, not private. So the two passages, there's quite a contrast, but it's the same goal. How do we control evil? How is evil to be controlled? So the theme of 12, the last of the verses in 12, is personal, it's private, and it's individual. And God gives us what we should be doing when we encounter wrongdoing. In 13 we see in contrast, so in 13 we have it's judicial, it's public, it's governmental. So quite a contrast but the same goal, how do we control evil?

So from last week I'm going to share one verse repeat and then we're going to go into two new verses and we're going to answer Courtney's question about his favorite thing. this heaping of coals under the head. What's that all about? I have two answers for that, especially for Courtney. I'm joking a little bit, but anyway.

Okay, so we see in verse 19, it's a statement, man cannot properly be vengeful. When something terrible happens, our first Our first reaction, even believers, is to, well, that needs to be put right. It's not right that happened. But the Lord says, don't do that. He says, I'm the only one appropriately can do revenge or vengeance. He will do it righteously. Man cannot do that.

Then 20, it says, and this is one of the hard ones, let's go meet your enemy's needs. What are you talking about? I'm going to meet my enemy's needs? I want to punch him in the nose. I don't want to meet his needs, but we have a verse about that, so we'll talk about that. And then 21, this is kind of a sleeper verse.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So are we to, if a little evil happens, we do a good deed? We help a lady cross the street to counteract that evil? Is that what it's talking about? Not. Well, we'll see. Okay. So let's go on here. Let's get into it here.

So from last week, so what's cool is here, it's interesting that this verse starts off, it says, It's actually, it says, stop avenging yourselves, beloved ones, or beloved. So it assumes, probably because believers have an old nature, we want to avenge it, and he assumes it's going on. So it's going on, Paul believes, or says it's going on. That's to make something, it's what's to proceed from justice, we want to make it right. And Zodiaty kind of shares that, he says don't, Don't be executing justice yourself.

Don't defend one cause. Don't maintain one's right. That's what the Christian life is about. But without Christ being your life, it's impossible. But in strong contrast, he says, don't be doing that. But in strong contrast, leave room. You leave room.

The idea is to give place to it once. for the wrath of God. So you step aside and let the wrath of God take over, so to speak. So the idea is to give place to God's wrath means to leave room for it, not to take God's proper work out of His hands. It's kind of like we're giving it over to the Lord where you stand back and say, Lord, if I do that, I'll do it unrighteously. You will do it righteously. Then the last comment here is the idea is that instead of of executing vengeance ourselves, this is what we says, we abandon the offender to the more tremendous vengeance of God. I'm not sure, in our mind, if we have a situation, we wanna really be vengeful. I think God will do it righteously, which may not be more, it may be less. God is righteous, he will do it exactly for the situation as it's appropriate. OK, so that's a very personal thing, as you see. We're going to see the more public thing later. OK, so let's go on to the next part of this.

So vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I will repay. So vengeance here is a noun, not a verb from before. Vengeance is mine. So it belongs. Vengeance has no place in the believer's life, in a sense. That's what it's saying. It's mine, the Lord says. It's punishment. And we can't say, if you look at God's character, holy, righteous, and just, God cannot be said to be vengeful in the sense that a person may have vengeance. I will repay, says the Lord, I will repay his debt to give back, or to requite.

And here's a verse, kind of maybe a parallel idea here, from 1 Thessalonians 4-6. And no man transgressed and defrauded his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all things. That's kind of what I picked up on. I searched for another verse for God avenging. It says, the Lord is the avenger of all things, just as we also told you before and solemnly warned you. So God is the avenger of all things. So that's the takeaway from verse 19. We're to leave it in his hands.

Now let's go on to 20. So here comes the interesting part. So now we have, if you notice, there's a couple of buts. This is the second but. The first but was let God, vengeance is God. This is the second but. The second but says, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him a drink. Seems totally contrary to what we would do. Now Paul is saying, meeting the needs of your enemy rather than taking your own revenge. So you trade in revenge for meeting his needs. And as mentioned, as Jim mentioned, 20A is a quote from Proverbs. And just as Jim observed, so basically you say, very much the same, if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he's thirsty, give him water to drink. For you'll be heaping burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

So that's one idea. So Paul's gonna, he's not gonna talk about that part. He's gonna get a little bit different, excluding that part here. So what he says now here is about the idea of, same from Proverbs, he says, for in doing so you will heap burning coals on his head. Okay, so I have two slides on this.

So here we go. Okay, one is gonna be, The culture of the time, so Weiss took it, this gentleman I look a lot, Kenneth Weiss from Moody Bible Institute, been around for a few years, back in the 30s and 40s and 50s. Anyway, he presents a cultural explanation for burning coals on your head. Then another gentleman's gonna present maybe some scriptures to talk to us. So let's look at the Weiss one first.

So I found this, I got able to take a picture of my cell phone of this guy going across with the burning coals. Anyway, heaping coals on your head. So the thought is here that in biblical times everyone needed to have a fire going. It was not warm all the time, it was cold. The fire needed to be going and the coals needed to be doing their thing and you needed that for heat as well as cooking. But what happens if Your fire goes out, you know? Your wife forgot to keep it going, right? You went to sleep. It's that woman you gave me. She didn't keep the fire going. Okay, so what do you do? So you, you know, the idea was you would go to your neighbor, right?

You go to your neighbor and you have a box and they put these coals in that. I didn't do a long deep dive into this to see how accurate, this is what we said, I took it verbatim for what he said. So you go to get some coals. So the idea is, it's a quantity, it kind of seems to be the issue here. So the person would put these live coals, seems kind of dangerous in this box that you take on your head, and that would be showing a great kindness for you. But the key part of this is that if he just heaped it on, he piled it up really high, he'd give you extra coals so in case some went out by the time you got home, you'd still have a few left.

So that's the cultural explanation. Okay, that's interesting, okay. So now, explanation number two. So another interpretation is that burning coals are a figure of God's judgment that will come on the enemies if he persists in his antagonism. And so this gentleman offered some verses here. So some of the verses, let me just read you a couple of those. I didn't find it, and I didn't do a deep dive on this either, I didn't find these verses super strong, but they do talk about God's judgment. So let's take the Psalm 11, sixth passage.

Upon the wicked he will rain snares, fire and brimstone, and burning winds will be his portion of his cup. Then the Psalm 140, 9 and 10. As for the heads of those who surround me, may their mischief of their lips cover them. May burning coals fall upon them. May they be cast into the fire, deep into the pits from which they cannot rise. So he makes his case. He says, well, there's scripture that talk about these burning coals as judgment. So his summary pointed here is that thus the meaning appears to be that Christians can return good for evil in assurance that God will eventually punish their enemies.

So in some ways, I'm not sure they conflict the two approaches, conflict with one another. So the heaping coal seems to be, I don't know, I like the context that it's, you're doing the opposite of what they would expect. You're doing the very opposite of what man would expect. You show kindness when you might show harshness. That seems to fit better with the context. Okay, hopefully that satisfies a few thoughts here. Alright, so let's go on. So here's our sleeper verse, I'm going to call it. A couple of charts on this.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So, thank the Lord for Wiest and other helps. So it's actually, once again, it's an action that is presumed to already be going on. So the idea is this action is ongoing. Stop being overcome by, there's a definite article, this is so important here, the evil. Stop being overcome by the evil.

So your mind's already kind of, if you're a good student, it's already kind of rolling, the evil, the evil, what's he talking about here? Okay, let's go on. Overcome is nikel, meaning to overcome, conquer. That's a Nike word, right? It's present tense, continuous action, so you're continually being overcome by the evil, is what it's saying here. Passive voice, it's acting upon you. And so here we come, it's the evil. So you can render it the evil one. And as soon as you see that, the lights only go off like bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Where have I seen that before? 1 John 5, 19. We know that we are of God, that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. So what I believe is happening in this first part of the verse is Paul saying, you know what's happening? This world system, I don't think Satan is directly zapping on you. It's just his whole system is constantly going on 24-7. You're being overcome by that. And he says, stop letting that happen. Don't do that. Don't let the world system driven by Satan overcome you. That's what he's saying.

So what's his remedy for that? Part 2 of the verse, right? But be overcoming the evil by means of the good. And so you say, the good, what's the good? We'll find out. So the remainder of the verse tells us how we're to stop being overcome by the evil one. It's the same word as before. It's now, it's by means of, by means of the good, the good one. So who's the good?

And Cheryl's the only one that would remember this. Some would be. Jim Hazen, a guy from where I work for many years, he'd always walk up and when I said, good morning, he'd say, Roger, you said good morning? There's only one that's good, Roger, you know that. And here's the verse.

Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. So I believe this is talking about God, the Lord Jesus. So what's cool about this is, it's not about a deed, it's about a person. He's saying overcome the evil by the good one, the Lord Jesus Christ. In the verse I go to, we had this morning in a Galatians class as an overview. This is, you know, this is so cool about Bible study. It's a person. Bible study is about a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the solution to being overcome by the evil of this world, driven by Satan, is by the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in you. That's how you overcome, not by a good deed, but by a person, your Savior.

Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. It's Christ in me that can overcome the evil.

You're abiding in him, walking with him. That's how you overcome the evil one. So I call it the sleeper verse. You look at it, you read through it, and you think, oh, OK, I'll do a good deed. No, it's not that at all. It's about the person of our Savior. OK, today's verse. other part of today's verse. Verse 13, so now we're going to transition from the personal to the public if you will.

Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those who exist, authorities, are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and he who opposes authority will receive condemnation upon them." Notice that Paul mentions authority five times, either indirectly or directly. So I'm going to look at all five statements about that, just an incredible amount. I mean, we all have heard these verses before, but it just kind of hit me again. God is in control of the authorities.

And you say, well, wait a minute, Roger. Think of all the bad authorities through time, right? You go back as far as you want. They're just terrible, right? You know, how about Nero? How about, you know, you keep going. How about Hitler? How about so-and-so? How about some former presidents? And, you know, you may have opinions about different presidents, whatever.

But He's going to say, I'm in control, believer. There's a purpose in every authority out there. Okay, so let's get into it here. Okay, every person, it means pas, it means none excluded. So this passage is talking to all mankind, but not all mankind is going to read this passage, right? Only a few or only a portion of society will read this passage. But he's going to say, every person is to be in subjection, none excluded. Person here is actually a word for soul or psyche, breath of life, psuche rather, I'm sorry. The word every soul is a Hebraism for every man. To be in subjection, it's actually this cool word in the Greek, hupotasso, and I made the hupo bolder because I want to compare it later on to another word like that.

So it's to line up under, and it's a military term. In the military, you line up under, you're a commanding officer, right? You're subject to his orders. So that's what he's saying, where every person, believer included, is to be in subjection to government authorities.

OK, let's go on. And it's present tense, continuous action then. It's God's will imperative. And you're intensely involved in that. It's for your benefit that you're lining up under the authority of God. So we surrenders that little section to put himself habitually in subjection. OK, so that's the A part. More in the A part here. Governing authorities, the idea to have over. It's actually a word that can be rendered superior.

Zodiates says in the New Testament, figuratively meaning to hold one above, superior or better. So you could say, rather than governing authorities, you could say superior authorities. So that's how God's looking at authorities. Authorities, exousia, so it's a ruler, magistrates, et cetera. So governing authority is literally authorities which have themselves over, that is authorities who are over citizens. So we have authorities over us, right? So God's saying, this is how I want you to interact with this authority.

He doesn't talk about whether you think they're good, bad, or indifferent. You may think they're the greatest person ever or the worst person ever. That's not the issue. There's another issue which Mike is going to totally resolve next week. about, well, what happens when they ask you to do evil things or ask you something that's against God's law? What do you do then? That's another topic.

But for today's lesson, it's just going to be, this is God's plan. He established these authorities and he expects you to line up under them. So the first point here, and this is Weiss' translation, let every soul put himself, and taking all the verb tense and the whole works, let every soul put himself habitually, 24-7, in subjection to authorities who hold the position over them. All these are not easy to do, right? Especially when you have a bad authority. So that's the first of the five statements of governing authorities.

So let's go on to the next one here. for there is not authority except by God." So he's going to answer all, Paul's so detailed, he's going to answer all the objections, right? He's going to say, couldn't the one slip in somehow? We're going to find out. There's never been an authority, this blows my mind, there's never been an authority ever that God didn't put in place. Well, how can that be? For there's not an authority except God. So first of all, there's no authority except God.

There is not as a negative of this word, the state of being verb here. Something continuously exists. Present tense, continuous action, statement of fact. God's performing the action. And it's by means of, it's by means of God. There is not an authority except by means of God. So forget about finding any other authority, there's not. And so Wyss kind of expands and explains a little bit better maybe. By God, hupotheos, literally by means of God, that which is constituted such by God.

God has constituted all authority. And it struck me, most leaders throughout all of history never realize this, never And if they did realize it, they didn't want to talk about it. They saw themselves as God, right? They saw themselves as being authorities. We're going to see some verses that back that up in a second here. But I want to finish the last part of 1B here. OK, hold that thought. Let's go on to part three here.

Three is, so he said, first of all, the ones, and I said, and the existing ones, the ones that are already in operation right now, have been appointed by God. This really blows your mind. creates, he not only ordains the authority, it's appointed by him. That's his plan. The existing ones, the existing authorities have been appointed, means set in order, constitute, obtain.

It's perfect passive, which means it's permanent. This is perfect, having been ordained as a result and remains to be ordained. It doesn't change, it's unchangeable. Past completed action has authority and continues up into the present and the future. By God, by means of God. So Weiss kind of summarizes this. That is, human government is a permanent institution brought into being by God for the regulation of human affairs. So this is what got me thinking.

If this wasn't the case, and Satan is the prince and power of the air, you'd think things are bad. They would just, besides the ministry of the Holy Spirit in believers and in the world, we'd be run off the rails in days. It wouldn't take too long. Remember the verses about every man that was right in his own eyes in the Old Testament? It never turned out good. When man just went his own way, it never turned out good.

So here are my verses to kind of back some of this up. So a couple of gentlemen you'll recognize. Pharaoh and Pilate, your two favorite buddies, right? So let's look at first a comment by Macaulay. And this is back to, I mentioned this before. Submission to governing authorities is not rooted in the character of the leader, but in the sovereignty of God. Don't look for a good character in the leader to say that I'll follow him then. That's not the case. God says don't do that. Trust in me for what I've done. So here's my first one.

Let's look at Pharaoh, Exodus 9.15.

For by now, the Lord said, and this is when Moses went to Pharaoh, and he said, for by now, I, the Lord, could have put forth my hand and struck you, Pharaoh, and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. So his first statement to Pharaoh here is, and this is in the, I'm not sure this fits in the plagues, but he says, Pharaoh, I could have wiped you out. He said, my people are going to leave you, the Israelites are going to leave you, I could just wipe totally out and they could just march right out the door, so to speak. He said, no, I didn't do that.

Verse 16, but for this purpose I let you live, that I might show my power, that my name might be declared through all the earth. So here's God working in Pharaoh, not a righteous man, not a believer, For his purpose, he let him live, and he eventually died when he was chasing out the Israelites, but he let him live for a purpose, for his name to be glorified. Okay, number two, Pilate. This is the best one. I love this one. This is just like authority today, right? They think they've attained such a high place, right? So here's Pilate.

He's talking to the Lord Jesus. He says, you do not speak to me. You do not speak to me. Do you not know I have the authority to release you? I have the authority to crucify you? And then what Christ said, Jesus answered, you would have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above. For this reason, he who delivered me to you has a greater sin. Just a tremendous statement. He says, no, you may think you have the authority, Pharaoh, but you do not. Only if God grants it to you will you have the authority.

Very interesting. Those are a couple verses or more, but those are the best two I found. Okay, let's carry on. So now we're down to verse two. This is the fourth of these authority verses, if you will. So from the interlinear it says, therefore the one opposing the authority has opposed the ordinance of God. So here we're going to see, here's what happens. Verse one was stating about how God is in authority over all things and it's unchanging, permanent, 24-7. Now he says, oh by the way, if you resist that, if you go against that, here's what's going to happen. He's going to give you two things that are going to happen. This is the first.

He said, therefore the one opposing the authority has opposed the ordinances of God. So therefore, it's kind of summing it up as a result of so that. The one is actually a different article here, the one opposing. So here we have our antitaso, and this is actually to do the opposite of lining up under is to line up against, if you will, to resist. He says, you're opposing, present tense, continuous action, middle voice, literally the one setting himself against, So he said, the one setting myself against, authority, the ruler magistrate.

So here we have this play on words. I didn't, McCauley picked this out, mentioned this. Earlier we had hupotasso to be under authority. Now we have antitasso to be against authority. So what he's saying here, Don't be against the authority, antitaso, be under the authority, hupotaso. Hopefully that wasn't too, a tongue twister, but antitaso, or not to be antitaso, but to be hupotaso, to be lining up under God's authority.

Okay, so the last part of point four is, therefore the one opposing the authority has opposed the ordinances of God. So this is the results. Has opposed. You're setting yourself against authority. Perfect tense. So it's a permanent state. You permanently set yourself against this authority, the ordinances of God. So, a summary of that is, the one who sets himself in array against the aforementioned authority, against the ordinance of God, has set himself. With the result that he's in a permanent state of antagonism against the ordinance. He says, Paul's telling us, don't go there, don't do that.

The verb tenses are interesting, it's kind of interesting here. So let's go on to the next one, maybe we'll make it a little clearer here. So this is additional consequence, if you will. And, the one having opposed will receive judgment to themselves. So additional, additional, so basically you will receive, the one will receive, receive judgment, he's receiving the judgment to themselves.

It's judgment upon men by God. So here's two comments by Constable. Refusal to submit to one's government is tantamount to refusing to submit to God. We need to view the government that he's established, that's under God's authority. So we respond to him as long as it's not sinful as to God. The one who resists the ordinances, one who resists God's ordained authority has to expect to suffer the condemnation by the government.

Okay, so to kind of close it out here, so actually these points by Constable I kind of already mentioned in a way. So you go back into 12 and you see, we saw forbidding Christians to take their own vengeance and allowing God to exercise his right might lead one to think that God was letting the evildoers get away.

But no, God has not forgotten about the evildoer. He's going to control the evildoer as we get into 13. And we'll see a lot more of that as we get through these verses. So God, through governing authority, is even now inflicting wrath on the evildoers.

So that transition between 12 to 13 is actually a lot smoother than you might think. All right, hopefully a lot of food for thought here. Mike's going to clear it all up next week. Actually, there's a lot of cool stuff. We have a lot of stuff to share with this one.

Okay, let's close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have. We thank you that you are in control, Lord. We look at our governing authorities. Sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad. Sometimes we We're excited about the authorities, many times we're not, but we praise you that you say that you're in control of all governing authorities and we trust you for that, Lord. Help us to be wise as we walk through this world and be walking with our Savior as we overcome the evilness of this world. In Christ's name, amen.