Good and Evil

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. (Romans 12:9)

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. (Romans 12:17)

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God.... (Romans 12:19)

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.... If you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. (Romans 13:3-4)

It looks to me like I need to draw out of this passage its own definitions of what is viewed as good and what is truly evil. Part of the problem with properly understanding the Bible is our nasty little habit of assuming that we already know the definitions to the terms used when really those definitions are seriously skewed by our culture and upbringing and often are not close at all to heaven's view of things. Defining good and evil is maybe one of the most distorted areas of definition in life and most people tend to approach these words from the external arena far more than in relation to the condition of the spirit within us.

So while I write I am looking over the contextual passage here to find clues of what it teaches within itself about what is meant by good and evil. The list could very quickly get enormously long just from chapter 12 so I am not sure how to put it down in a condensed form. But I do believe that it hinges on the difference laid out in 12:2 between conformity and transformation. Conformity generally focuses on external behavior and performance but transformation requires a radical new way of life emerging from a heart transplant and lived in the spirit.

Chapter 12 seems to focus more on what the transformed life will look like within the body of believers while chapter 13 moves on to describe what it will look like outside of that body. It reminds us that it is not only within the company of others learning to become like Christ that we should strive to imitate His example ourselves, but we are also to display the spirit and actions of Jesus in the presence of authorities that quite often are deeply contaminated with evil. Romans 13:5 gives the means for being able to do this – co-perception. That is what the meaning of the Greek word for conscience means. It is only through the eyes of heaven, through co-perceiving reality by accessing heaven's better perspective joined with our own that we will ever be able to live out the radical Christianity described in this passage.

So let me attempt to compile a few of the clues that I see so far as to the meaning of these two words as I look over these two chapters.

Evil is conformity to this world, thinking more highly myself than I ought to think, trying to appear to be loving without a transformed heart (hypocrisy), cursing those who persecute me, having a haughty mind, being wise in my own estimation, reflecting the evil of others back onto them. Evil is taking, or even desiring to take, revenge – taking things into my own hands instead of leaving it all up to God. Along with all these things from chapter 12 evil would also include failing to do all the good things described there that I will include in the next list.

Evil is failing to be properly subject to authority from heaven's perspective; it is resistance to authority which brings into my soul a sense of condemnation. Evil includes fear which is both a cause and a result of being out of line in my relationship to God-ordained authority. Evil brings wrath and a perception of wrath which distorts our concept of God as well. Initially God may use that perception of wrath to move us toward a right relationship with Him and with authority, but He wants to grow us far past that stage to live life in co-perception with His Spirit.

So, what about good? This may be a much longer list but that is good itself. Too often we dwell on evil so much that we are left thinking that good is simply the absence of doing bad things. I know that is the assumption I was lead to feel many times in my life. But goodness is really only a reflection of the only One who is really good if we believe the words of Jesus. And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mark 10:18 and Luke 18:19) We are creatures designed in the image of God so it only makes sense that good is to be like the original that we were modeled after.

Good is presenting our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is an act of worship. Good is being transformed by the renewing of our mind and proving the will of God – what is good, acceptable and perfect. It is thinking with sound judgment using the measure of faith given to us by God.

Good is learning to utilize the gifts we have received from God within the body of Christ to develop and help each other mature and bond with each other. It is doing this according to the grace we have been given, according to our proportion of faith. Good is selflessly loving without faking it, being devoted to one another in family-like love preferring others with honor. Good includes being fervent in spirit while serving our Lord, the head of our body.

Good is rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoting ourselves to prayer, contributing to the needs of other believers and practicing hospitality. Beyond that, it is blessing those who persecute us. It is rejoicing with those who rejoice as well as weeping with those who weep with the emphasis on with. Good is have a balanced mind with others in the body, having synchronization with them. Good causes us to not feel ashamed to associate with those others view as lowly.

Good will raise us above paying back evil to those who do evil to us. Good respects what is right in the sight of all men and strives as much as possible to live at peace with everyone. Good releases our rights for justice into God's hands when we are abused or hurt by others and instead, receiving the Spirit of Jesus so that we can treat our enemies with the revenge of kindness.

Good looks past the corruption of earthly authorities to see the bigger picture of where all authority originates. From that co-perspective it can give us rest with inner peace and without resistance in the face of unreasonable force and even abuse from authorities contaminated by evil. Good will allow us to become free of inner condemnation and fear. Good will lift our hearts above the fear that makes us think we are seeing wrath everywhere to instead, seeing God's passionate, relentless love for us behind the scenes. Only thus can we avoid being overcome by evil but will overcome evil with good.

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Revenge or Recovery

As I look at Romans 13 today I am seeing more and more connections to the context from chapter 12. I think these instructions on how to relate to authority are an expansion of what it looks like to overcome evil with good. They are also unpacking what it means to never take your own revenge or pay back evil for evil, for it is often likely that most causes inducing a desire for revenge will come from those in authority.

And now that I think of it the same has been quite true in my own life. Most, if not all, of my rebellious attitude came from abuse of authority when I was growing up. My inability to defend myself created an intense sense of injustice inside my heart and a desire to settle accounts or get even with those bigger and stronger than me. I can remember incidents where brute force was used to suppress me and attempt to subdue my anger but it tended to only increase my anger. But because I was powerless to act out my increasing desire for revenge I learned to internalize and hide it to avoid further abuse and pain.

As a consequence my heart was trained to hide my emotions, for emotions displayed almost always got me into trouble with authorities such as parents and teachers. I early learned to become an image manager although I never mastered the technique of projecting effectively a different emotion than what I was feeling inside. I only learned to mask them enough to keep them from becoming very obvious to most people. I also learned that rationalization and creating misleading manipulations of facts were effective tools to keep people from knowing what I was really feeling inside. But all of this was primarily because my heart did not know how to deal with the pain inflicted on it by those in authority over me.

What I am starting to see more clearly now is that most of my life could easily be described as being afraid of authorities. Along with that has been cultivated deep-rooted desires for revenge and because revenge conflicted with being a “good Christian” it transformed into roots of bitterness. The suggestions that I should treat my enemies with kindness, respect and unselfish love in this context has always sounded very repulsive to me, at least at the emotional level especially since these notions often came from the same authorities that were using abusive methods to try to control my life and suppress my emotions.

It is now easier for me to understand why I have had such an aversion to Romans 13. Besides it being used to justify unquestioned abuse by authorities I always reacted strongly to the idea that I had to submit to that abuse willingly. I suppose that was because to do so would be to give up the desires for revenge that naturally ensued from many of the actions of those authorities.

Revenge is the secret hope that many people carry inside somehow believing that revenge would alleviate the pain in their heart caused by abuse. We believe the lie that if we could just make others suffer at least to the same degree that they have caused us to suffer that justice would be “served” and we could then be free to return to what we felt like before the abuse or maybe even better. But that is another illusion of Satan's philosophy designed to destroy the image of God in our soul. A desire for revenge does not represent justice like we think it does but is actually a surrender to the spirit of hatred and bitterness that motivates those who have abused us. Abusers generate the same spirit in their victims as they have in their own heart which in turn was received from a previous abuser themselves.

So what I am beginning to see here is a sharp contrast between the natural reaction that the human heart will have toward abusive authority by desiring revenge and wishing evil on my abusers, and the way to freedom outlined by God which looks very different than my natural way of reacting to these things. For everything that I read here conflicts sharply with what my natural flesh wants to do to protect my heart. And to complicate things some of the abusers themselves have used these passages to try to control and manipulate me into compliance with their selfish desires. So I have to disconnect these passages from the spirit of my abusers that use this to justify themselves and try to see them in the light of the Spirit of heaven.

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Co-perception

Therefore it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. (Romans 13:5)

I know that I am jumping around in these verses a little bit, but I find that to be very helpful to perceive and grasp more of the important connections that make up the context for these instructions. It is only in properly understanding the context and carefully examining the fabric and its composition that I can come to a correct view of what this passage is really teaching. Of course it is also important to keep my spirit open to the impressions from God who is the one that inspired this to be written in the first place.

I just looked up the Greek for this word conscience and got a real surprise. I found this word quite different than what I had expected and actually very exciting. It literally means co-perception with lots of subtle nuances underlying that. The implications of this are stunning and enlightening.

First of all I discovered this means that conscience is a part of me that accesses another perception not of my own to join with mine to make it more complete. In fact, as I went deeper into the roots of this word I found that it is a combination of two things. First is coming to understand something with the assistance of the other consciousness that makes up the co part. Conscience is the uniting of my perception with God's perception. Then the word includes the idea of receiving clandestine information or to be privy to important missing information that makes my perceptions much more complete.

This act of uniting is also an important aspect of the meaning of this word. The union is a very close union that denotes companionship, resemblance, possession, becoming an instrumentality and all of this to create completeness. This apparently is primarily for the purpose of having a more perfect understanding or perception that would be impossible of myself.

This is a rather different view of conscience than what I am used to hearing. And in this verse Paul is saying that we need to be motivated by much more than just fear which is often one of the first emotions to get us to act or be motivated to change something in our life. It seems evident that fear is certainly one of the primary motivations used by earthly authorities to induce compliance, but that is not really the relationship that God desires to have with us. Just as we crave a much deeper relationship of love and companionship with our children that goes far beyond outward conformance to our rules out of fear of punishment, so God intensely desires us to move past the simplistic, cowering motivations of fear that is sometimes needed to get our attention initially, and move far beyond that into a relationship of co-perception with Him.

This is rather interesting when placed together with the declaration in verse 1, there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. What Paul is really describing in these verses is our proper relationship to God, not just to the poor demonstrations of authority that we see here on earth. When we perceive, or better yet co-perceive, that any and all true authority is in some essence an demonstration of God, albeit very confusing or distorted at times, then we will be able to enter into the position of having no fear of authority. (v. 3) Given this thought, maybe fear is an indicator or symptom of how much I do not yet have heaven's perspective merged with my perspective.

This ability to be free of fear is not dependent on the inferior authorities we have to deal with being proper demonstrations of God's authority. They may be very corrupt and abusive and unjust; the authorities in Jesus day certainly fit that description. But Jesus was never afraid of authorities and that is because He demonstrated this principle of co-perception with His Father just as we are invited to do. Jesus was the ultimate demonstration of how to be in subjection to authorities while not surrendering His integrity or rupturing His relationship with His Father in the slightest degree. He was continuously perceiving everything through the vantage point of Heaven's perspective using the co-perception of the Holy Spirit so that He would even say about those abusive authorities, Father, forgive them for they don't really know what they are doing.

It is very often the case that authorities do not really know what they are doing. We are all living with the severe mental handicap of sin and separation from God's perspective. But anyone alive has the option of listening to the inner voice of a greater Mind who can see what we can never see with our own perceptive abilities. And if we will choose to submit our perceptions to be corrected and enhanced supernaturally by the mind of the Holy Spirit, especially in our dealings with authority according to this passage, then we will finally be able to become free of fear and will be able to move far beyond that into a much deeper relationship of intimacy and co-perception with the perfect Source behind all authority. And when we do this we can then be empowered to experience the very presence of God in new dimensions never before imagined.

God, this is very fascinating and intriguing to me, but I want it to go much deeper than that and become a reality in my heart. I don't want to just know about this wonderful insight but far more importantly I want it to be a description of my own experience. I ask You to mentor me in how to have co-perception with Your mind and heart. Help me to listen more carefully and accurately and willingly to the perceptions that Your Spirit is offering me all through the day and not lean on my own understanding. Dwell in my heart today and bring me into right relationship and attitudes toward authorities so that my life can be completely free of all fear of them. Do this for Your glory and for Your reputation.

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Resistance and Forgiveness

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

Evil is more powerful than us and if we resist it we will be overcome. But though evil is more powerful than us, it is not more powerful than real goodness. Therefore, we must not attempt to overcome evil ourselves through resistance but need to seek a clearer perception and connection with the Source of all goodness so that His goodness will flow through us as its channels and overcome evil.

But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. (Matthew 5:39)

Jesus tells us very plainly not to resist an evil person. If we do not want to be overcome by evil, it will not be accomplished by resisting evil people but by showing them the goodness of God who is living in us.

Unforgiveness is the poison of bitterness that contaminates many with cynicism and resentment and the desire for vengeance. On the other hand, true forgiving is releasing our resistance with those who have hurt us or may even be presently hurting us. Resisting authority then, can indicate a failure to forgive them.

Resistance always produces heat and pain and ultimately death. Romans 13 says that authority is a minister of God to teach us that resistance is painful and leads to death. The authorities may not act like God or be very righteous, but when we learn to not resist evil and live in proper relationship to authority, we also learn not to resist love which is an even more fatal problem.

This suddenly makes more sense. The shell that I build around my heart to protect me from pain is a wall of resistance in an attempt to not be hurt again. But that same wall blocks love from flowing in and out of my heart. This involves resistance, and resistance is one of the biggest problems we have as well as being our greatest liability in hell.

While not resisting, it does not follow that we need to surrender our spirit to be controlled by abusers. That would be to surrender to evil inwardly as well as externally. That is breaking the spirit. In fact, that is being overcome by evil, the very thing we are told here not to do. We can be overcome by evil by giving up our following after God because of hopelessness, and allowing evil to destroy us that way, or we can be overcome by evil by believing and indulging in its enticements and deceptions. We can also be overcome by evil when we choose to cling to our desire for vengeance and by not releasing our pain to Jesus who offers to exchange it for peace and a spirit of forgiveness.

Our spirit belongs to God and God alone. He is the one it was made for and for whom it really yearns for. But in our daily life we must be careful to not become entangled or trapped by resistance and thereby poison our spirit with bitterness.

One of the greatest faults or dangerous choices of resistance is to resist forgiving someone. When we resist forgiving someone we actually give them authority over our spirit and heart and allow them to hold us hostage in our mind. We often secretly, or not so secretly, want to see them suffer at least as much as we have and we deeply desire some arbitrary punishment for them. We somehow believe that we are justified in our unforgiveness until we think they have suffered or repented sufficiently.

But that is a lying illusion that will never bring us peace or satisfaction no matter how we feel. To make them suffer or enjoy watching their pain if that is possible, only amplifies the fleshly desires of our own heart and increases our thirst for vengeance and our sense of emptiness, but it never brings peaceful satisfaction like we hope it will. To refuse to forgive is to deface the true image of God from our souls and take on the character of Satan, the accuser.

Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. (Romans 13:5 NIV)

We must move beyond fear of punishment as our motivation for submitting to authority and see things through heaven's perspective. And from that perspective we begin to see the danger of resistance itself. Conscience is the voice of the Spirit reminding us of our need to own and then pass along to God the pain others have inflicted on us instead of reflecting it back to them or onto someone else. That is what is entailed in genuine forgiveness.

As I ponder these verses in Romans 13, willing subjection looks like a close cousin to forgiveness. We do not resist the pain or the evil but neither do we reflect it in a desire for vengeance; we pass it on to Jesus who takes it into the tomb where it can die with Him. As we choose to do this we receive resurrection power and life back from Him to pass on to those who are abusing or hurting us instead of the bitterness and pain and resentment that we would normally reflects back on them.

When we let down our resistant defensiveness as our shield of choice to protect our heart, and instead we take up the shield of faith – faith in Jesus' ability to handle any and all death-tipped missiles coming into our heart, we then will not suffer the ill effects of resistance but will instead began growing and maturing and thriving and become life-giving as we function more consistently as a channel for God's resurrection life. This is the abundant life Jesus offers.

Some have taught that it is very important that we spend at least an hour every day meditating on the life of Jesus and especially on the closing scenes of His early ministry. As I think about these things today I begin to realize that the reason this is such valid advice is because the closing scenes of Jesus life on earth are probably the best example known to humankind of what it looks like to forgive without conditions and in real time. Jesus portrayed the ultimate example of how God wants His children to respond to abuse, free of all resistance. To forgive while abuse is being carried out without any resentment or bitterness is truly a miracle of God.

But this is a miracle that must begin take place in every one of our hearts if we are ever to be prepared to respond positively when we all arrive in hell on the day of Judgment. And if we want to be found among those who glow with glory instead of sizzling from insanity, we must begin to practice today the skill of the heart we so much need to learn, that of complete release of all resistance to evil people. It is becoming more and more clear that our greatest danger is resistance itself.

Fear is a symptom as well as a form of resistance. That is why Churchhill during World War II proclaimed that the greatest thing we had to fear was fear itself. Fear is debilitating and that is one reason Satan is so intent on making us more and more afraid. Fear often also leads us to engage in more resistance as well as resentment. But these things will not bring us to freedom but will only tend to mire us even deeper into slavery of our spirit.

In God's kingdom we overcome by abandoning resistance itself and instead, trusting in the One who showed us how to do that by His own example and has promised to be our Justifier. By refusing to defend ourselves through resistance we open the way for our Covenant Partner and our Heavenly Father to justify us in His way and also bring great glory to His reputation. By overcoming evil with the goodness of God we also become the overcomers referenced in the book of Revelation.

He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. (Revelation 3:21)

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