Evening folks, good to be with you. If you’ve got your Bible handy, it’d be great to have that open at Romans chapter 12. We’re going to read from God’s words as our introduction to this subject, ‘Is there’s still room for justice’ as we think about the wider subject of forgiveness.

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So let’s hear God’s word together, Romans chapter 12, starting at verse 17. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.

(0:37 – 2:55)

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord.

On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This is the word of God. Last April, I attended a conference on spiritual abuse.

Some of you might be familiar with that term. It’s the misuse of spiritual or pastoral authority in order to manipulate or exploit someone. And at one of the sessions, some research was shared on how churches have often mishandled abuse situations of all types.

So for example, the misuse or misapplication of biblical truths. Texts on obeying husbands being used to excuse bullying and coercion. Texts on divorce being used to pressurise partners to stay in abusive marriages.

Texts about sacrifice and supporting gospel work used to exploit people financially. But perhaps the most shocking of all, texts about forgiveness being used to silence victims and allow perpetrators of serious offences to be excused. It’s a reminder that such as the corruption of the human heart, that even precious and beautiful truths like forgiveness can be, if we’re not very careful, sinfully twisted, which is why this part of our series on forgiveness is really important.

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The question of how do we both hold forgiveness and justice together in an appropriate and God honouring way? Because as we’ve observed from the start of this series, our current culture uses justice to stamp in forgiveness, but equally we don’t want a church where forgiveness just stamps out justice. It’s very important to state that the Bible never uses forgiveness to undermine civic or civil justice. Paul is very clear in places like Romans 13, that government is a gift of God given to keep order in the world.

Indeed, one of the primary functions of government, to paraphrase the authorised version of Romans, you’ll see the verse on the screen in a moment, but just to paraphrase to, “Do what is right and you will be commended,” Paul says, but “for the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason”. Or to put it as the AV used to put it, which I always quite liked, “Authorities and governments are there to be a praise to them that do good and a terror to evildoers”.

In other words, if you’ve committed a crime, you should take the medicine. Paul in Acts 25, when he was being accused of various crimes like sedition said, if he was guilty of doing anything deserving of death, he refused not to die. In other words, Paul was quite clear, if I’ve committed a crime, then I’ll take the consequences.

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So if you get a fine on the way home tonight for speeding, cough up. That means that if a crime is committed, it should be reported and dealt with by the God ordained authorities. Apart from anything else, not to do so would just be to create a lawless society.

And of course the people who suffer most in a lawless society are the weak and vulnerable, the people who can’t defend themselves. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that if you’re a victim of crime, that you can’t still forgive the person who has sinned against you at a personal level. We can recognise, can’t we, we can hold these things together, that while there are rightly functional consequences to sin, we don’t want our hearts to become bitter and grudging towards others.

A personal example that I’ve used before in Greenview, years ago when I was working in the co-op at the old Pollock Centre, now Silverburn, I was stabbed by a shoplifter. So if I ever do two truths and a lie, and one of them is I was stabbed trying to get a bottle of gin off somebody, that is actually true. And he stabbed me, ran off, later it went to court, and he got two and a half years in prison.

And those were the days, I don’t think they would do that now, but they printed the guy’s name and address in the Evening Times, because there was a little article about it when it went to court. And so I wrote to him, and I didn’t put my own address on it, I put my own name on it, because he knew who that would be. But I just said, you know, I didn’t bear any grudge against him, I was sorry that whatever his life had been, it led him to that point of desperation, and I prayed that he would find new life and forgiveness and a new start in Christ, and I enclosed a little copy of John’s Gospel.

What became of that, I don’t know. But while that was, to be honest, relatively easy for me to do, there are other offences that people have been the victim of that will be a lot harder. And even in church life, as we’ve already highlighted, sin can still have consequences.

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There are sins and patterns of sin that ought to be challenged and confronted, which in some cases might require a measure of formal church discipline. So a person might need to be excluded from certain activities or asked to make amends, none of which is to be vindictive or is being incompatible with personal compassion, but it recognises that such is the severity of some kind of sins within the church, that a more formal accountability is appropriate. But moving down to perhaps where a lot of these issues hit the ground for us, moving down from those kind of disciplinary or those kind of statutory offences, what about those unfairnesses, grievances, insults, mistreatments, and little injustices that have broken no laws, but nonetheless have left us deeply wounded, that can often gnaw away at us and cause ongoing anger, poor, selfish words and behaviour against us, perhaps all the more upsetting when they’ve come from fellow Christians.

Is there any justice there? Or is forgiveness just a big brush to sweep them all under the carpet? Well, that’s why it’s been helpful to read Romans 12 this evening, because there I think we do find some help and guidance. Just to put that passage in its context, Paul, of course, is writing about a whole range of practical issues to do with Christian living. He’s come out of his great kind of exposition of the gospel, and in chapter 12, famously, he bumps it down to earth in terms of, well, what does that mean for everyday life? And crucially in verse 1, he wants us to live in the light in view of God’s mercy.

And he goes through various implications of that. And then in verses 14 to 16, just immediately before our reading, he talks about how we are to interact with other people in godly and other person-centred ways. So rejoice with the rejoicing, mourn with the mourning, seek harmony, verse 16, be humble, put other people first above yourself, even to the extent, verse 14, of blessing those who persecute you.

And of course, when Paul talks about persecution, that’s not a glib line. In first century Rome, as in 21st century Nigeria or Iran or China, persecution could be pretty fierce and pretty nasty. Personal assault, discrimination, exclusion, slander, threats.

And so Paul expands on verse 17 on what blessing your persecutors might actually look like. Firstly then, don’t repay evil for evil, verse 17. That is, don’t get into a cycle of tit for tat.

In the first century, that might mean don’t go and burn your persecutor’s house down because they might have done that to you. In our context, that might more realistically mean don’t knock their bins over or block their parking space. It means not gossiping or trashing people that you feel aggrieved by.

No, your responsibility, verse 17, is to do what is right, to treat others well, to try and live at peace with others, verse 18. You can’t control the behaviour of others, but you can control your own. So don’t make the situation worse.

Don’t add to the sin. Verse 19, do not take revenge. Now, I guess we all know this stuff, don’t we? In many ways, it’s kind of Christianity 101.

It’s the golden rule. Treat other people the way you would want to be treated. But it’s no less tough and challenging for that.

Indeed, restraining ourselves in those kind of situations is one of the hardest things that we’re called to do in practise. Sometimes I think we read this stuff, don’t we, and we think, thanks Paul, so basically I have to become a human doormat. But Paul doesn’t stop there.

Indeed, he says something that today, for many people, would probably sound quite unchristian in verse 19. He says, do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. It is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

You see, it’s not that we are to forget about justice, or that there is no justice, but that we are to leave justice in the hands of God. If people have sinned against us, they will give an account of that sin to God. I guess it’s a bit analogous to civic or civil justice.

That’s why we don’t become vigilantes. We don’t appoint ourselves as judge and juries when a crime has been committed against us. We let the police and the courts do their job.

One of the reasons, of course, that we leave civic justice in the hands of the state and those authorities is that generally they will be better resourced and able to ensure that the outcome is fair and proportionate. It’s actually why leaving justice in the hands of God is a blessing. Because what if we’re wrong? What if I got the wrong end of the stick? What if I’ve misunderstood the situation? What if I’ve jumped to conclusions that aren’t entirely fair? Or maybe another side for some of us, maybe we’ve been too trusting and too naive about another person’s behaviour.

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Well, either way, God knows the truth. He will call sin to account and He will judge it with the absolute fairness and exactly as it deserves to be. Trusting God with justice is a kind of safety valve, isn’t it? It actually protects us from overreaction, but also from regret.

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Perhaps that we were too naive. But of course, you might be thinking, but hold on a minute, what if my adversary is a Christian? They’re not going to be judged. So does that mean that Christians can behave any old way? Behave poorly and just they walk away scot-free? Well, I think it’s helpful to consider what kind of justice are we looking for? One of my responsibilities in FIEC is to oversee, for want of a better word, the complaints team.

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When complaints come in, complaints of a non-criminal nature, because if they were for a criminal nature any allegations of statutory breaches, we say contact the police, contact the appropriate authorities. We’re not a substitute for them. Let them do their job.

But complaints that come in that aren’t criminal but are perhaps to do with poor behaviour, either by leaders or that it’s felt that leaders aren’t dealing with adequately, then those come to a little team that I’m involved in. And of course, people only come to FIEC with those kind of complaints if they feel pretty strongly about them. But by and large, the complainants aren’t looking to punish people.

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What they want is generally just an acknowledgement, a recognition of the harm they feel that has been done to them. They just want the offender to take responsibility to realise, ideally apologise for the wrong they feel that they have suffered. They just want the truth to be known.

And we can trust God with that too. Because in the day of Christ Jesus, all will be revealed, the good and the bad. Jesus said this in Luke chapter 12, there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed or hidden that will not be made known.

What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight and what you have whispered in the ear and the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roof. The truth will out. Leaving justice in the hands of God is a mark of faith, but also a blessing.

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Rather, on the contrary, says Paul, you’re to respond with proactive kindness. Verse 20, push towards those who persecute you, who have done you wrong. Verse 21, don’t just refrain from knocking over their bins, pick them up.

(17:21 – 18:14)

Because in doing so, you will heap burning coals on their heads. In other words, your kindness in that situation, your better behaviour, your godliness will expose their unkindness. It will put them to shame.

But I take it the point of that is not that that is some kind of backdoor to punishment and vindictiveness, but that the people might be convicted of their sin and seek forgiveness themselves. We know, don’t we, that just battering somebody rarely changes a heart? But undeserved kindness and grace is an incredibly powerful thing. Paul highlights this in Romans chapter 2. Again, it’ll be on the screen.

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Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? God is so merciful and so giving, He sends the rain both on the righteous and the wicked. He gives so many good gifts to those who reject Him. His kindness is there that they might, Romans chapter 12, be put to shame.

But in doing so, seek His mercy, seek His forgiveness. A while back, I read the book Betrayal.

I think there’ll be a picture of it on the screen. It’s the book that was subsequently made into the film Spotlight. It’s about the Boston Globe investigation into what was the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of historic child abuse in the United States.

Very important to say that lots of churches and groups have failed in similar ways. It’s a pretty tough read. I partly read it because of my wider responsibilities, but be advised if you read it, it is pretty tough.

But in it, I’m not sure if this is in the film, I haven’t seen the film, one of the people who had been abused gets his story and testimony as outlined. A man called Tom Blanchett. He had been sexually abused, or as the book maybe just more honestly puts it, molested by a priest on several occasions as a child, as an 11-year-old boy.

Amazingly, Tom Blanchett found faith later on in the Episcopalian Church. But he struggled with the effects of what had happened to him into his adult life. He writes at one point, my cup was always 95% filled with anger.

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And in 1998, 25 years after these offences had taken place, he went to see the priest who had abused him. And after introducing himself, he said he wanted to talk to the priest about what the priest had done to him. And the priest, Father Birmingham, response initially was very defensive and self-justifying.

Let me read directly from the book. Tom pressed on. What you did to us, and to me specifically, was wrong, and you had no right to do that.

The priest stared unblinkingly into Tom’s eyes, waiting but unprepared for what came next. Having said that, said Tom, it brings me to the real reason I’ve come here. The real reason I’ve come here is to ask you to forgive me for the hatred and resentment that I felt towards you for the last 25 years.

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When I said that, he stood up. And then in what I would describe as a demonic voice, he said, why are you asking me to forgive you? And through tears, I said, because the Bible tells me to love my enemies and to pray for those who persecute me. Tom said the priest collapsed as if he’d been punched in the chest.

The priest dissolved into tears, and soon Tom too was crying. Tom asked if he could visit again. The priest explained that he was under tight restrictions at the rectory.

He was not allowed to leave the grounds except in the company of an adult. Tom would not see the priest again until a year later, just hours before his death. He was now an 80-pound skeleton with skin, dying of cancer.

I knelt down next to him and held his hand and began to pray. Dear Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, I ask you to heal Father Birmingham’s body, mind, and soul. I put my hand over his heart and said, Father, forgive him all his sins.

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He died the next morning. It’s only the gospel that can enable that, because only the cross enables forgiveness while not blinking at justice. It shouts out, this is because of your sin, and it says here also is God’s love for sinners.

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It’s a very precious and Christ-like thing to bless those who curse you, because it costs. It’s painful to be sinned against, to absorb selfishness and mistreatment, but to do so is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus himself. Jesus, of course, is our supreme model in all this, as Peter wrote in his first letter.

Jesus, who when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we want to thank you for the gospel, and we want to thank you for Jesus who in himself was made all that obnoxious, hateful, destructive, vile sin, who took the punishment, the consequences upon whose head justice fell, that the guilty might be rescued, restored, given a second chance to go free. Father, very aware that we have touched on some very sensitive, potentially painful, personal things tonight.

Father, we pray that all of us in this place might know your grace, and those for whom perhaps what has been said tonight is particularly painful, and personal, and near, might find the support, and the help, and the love, and the care that they need even as they wrestle with all that your word would call us to do. Father, we commit ourselves into your hands. We pray that we would be those who by grace would be able to extend goodness in the face of evil, to bless those who persecute us, to walk in the footsteps of Jesus himself.

Father, have mercy on us, and hear our prayers we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post Is There Still Room For Justice – Romans 12v17–21 appeared first on Greenview Church.