Duty to Criminals and their Victims – Romans 12:14-21

 I thought about borrowing some words from Charles Dickens to use as our title this morning: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I ran into that quote a few days ago, in a short article about the best sentences ever written. Of course, as many of you know, and all of you should know, it comes from “Tale of Two Cities.” Actually, that was not the entire sentence, and the rest of the sentence is just as powerful. Would you like to hear it again? Of course you would. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” Or as Dickens would have said, “It was the Epoch of belief, it was the Epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Why would I want to choose that sentence for our title? Because of the last part of that long sentence as much as for the first part. Despite being surrounded by unparalleled prosperity, our society is just as self-destructive as were the days of the French Revolution and the reverberations that it had around the world. Just because some people today are enjoying excessive prosperity, many, many people are not. The world is filled with as many criminals as ever before, or even perhaps more, and there are as many victims as there have ever been.

As I was reviewing this very practical scripture this morning, looking for a way to open it up to our minds, it appeared to me that we could consider it under two headings along with a couple of extra thoughts: Those two points are: our duty toward criminals, and our duty towards their victims. And the perfect illustration of these things is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins according to the scriptures, and who rose again as prophesied according to the scriptures. This may not be the perfect resurrection morning message, but the fact is, every Christian sermon ought to return to that most pivotal event.

But first, what is our DUTY TOWARD THOSE CRIMINALS in these best of times and worst of times?Remember, first of all, that Jehovah is still on the throne, and that He is still God in every way. Just because Satan is the de facto god of this world and the prince of the power of the air, that does not mean that the Creator has given up His sovereignty and His veto privileges. As I keep repeating and keep repeating, Jehovah is not falling back on his heels, reeling from the body punches of the Wicked One. The Lord is not being surprised by the wicked, nor by people choosing to repent and believe on Christ. God is in over-all control of all things, even though men and Satan may think to disagree. It is not exactly the same thing, but there are similarities between the Lord and Satan and Joshua and the huge army of the Canaanites. With every apparently victory that the Lord permits to the Devil, the wicked one is sucked in closer to his eventual destruction. At the Battle of Ai, the Canaanites believed that they had a great victory, but they were being led into a trap of their own destruction. And that same general statement can be said of Satan and all the children of the Devil.

So what are some of the sinful things that the wicked have done against you? Have they stolen something – your job; cheated you out of something precious; destroyed your marriage? Have you been physically beaten or abused? Have you been emotionally abused? Has your neighbor been vicious? Does he have a vicious dog which killed your cat? Has a drunken driver taken away the love of your life? Has a drug pusher stolen a family member? I suppose that in the flesh, we have a great many options and paths of response to such things. We could sulk, pout, mope and brood. We could take up drinking or drugs or some other self-destructive vise. We could become a rabble-rouser, a social activist, galvanizing the neighbors into an army of fighters. We could become angry with the Lord, protesting against His apparent lack of wisdom. We could buy a pistol and kill that neighbor, that dog, or that criminal, becoming just like him. Or we could take that evil situation and strive to become more like our Saviour.

“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” – verse 19. Our theology ought to produce practical results in our lives. In this case, the theology is that Jehovah is still Elohim, the sovereign God over all things. He is the God who judges all beings and all actions. And despite being gracious & merciful, these two things are vitally connected to the sacrifice of Christ. In other words, no sin will go unpunished, no wrong will not be righted, no wickedness will not be conquered by righteousness in one way or another. And, therefore, the practical effect of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty should be patience on our part, awaiting the perfect timing of God.

I confess to having had a misunderstanding of a portion of this verse, until I studied it for a while. Let’s say that your car was damaged by a neighbor, just as mine was several years go. I have no proof, but that is the only logical conclusion to make under the circumstances. The way that it was parked and the kind of damage meant that it had to have been broad-sided. So you feel that you have every right to be angry towards that neighbor. But this scripture seems to say, set aside that wrath of yours and wait for the Lord. But that is not what this scripture is saying. Paul tells us to step aside, whether we are angry or not; make some room. Give God some space, because He is coming with His wrath with which to judge the wicked. There is absolutely no reason for you to exact revenge upon that wicked neighbor, because God will take care of that in His good time. He won’t do it for you, but He will do it for justice and righteousness. The Lord, He is God; He is even an angry and wrathful God, and He shall judge all wickedness.

There is principle number one, but what are some its corollaries? Well, there is verse 18 – “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” It will always be impossible for the Christian to be a real friend of the wicked man and yet to maintain his true Christian nature. There is a difference between being an acquaintance and being a genuine friend. The differences between wickedness and righteousness run so deep that genuine friendship cannot be achieved. Because friendship involves a special kind of love which is impossible between enemies of this kind. II Corinthians 6:14 – “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord…” I don’t believe that this “separateness” means becoming a hermit or a monk cloistered away in a cave. It means, “love not the world, neither the things that are in world.” We cannot be the Christians that the Lord intended us to be, if we lock ourselves away from the lost world and cease to be ambassadors for Christ.

Even though we cannot ever be friends with the world & the worldling, we can live peaceably to some degree. Perhaps we cannot control that person’s emotions and actions toward us, but we can control our own. As much as lieth in you, be a blessing to the lost, as Christ was a blessing during His earthly ministry. When the Lord Jesus fed the 4,000 and then again the 5,000 were all those people children of God? Did all the people that Jesus healed become Christians, and what about their families? Wasn’t He not only living peaceably with those folk, but actually being a blessing to them? Wasn’t the Lord living what Paul teaches us to live in verse 20? “Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.”

Let’s say that there was a man, who because of the pleading of his wife, follows the crowd one day and ended up on a grassy slope listening to Christ. He snickers and scoffs at what the Lord is saying about sin, righteousness and judgment. He says to himself that because he has always been faithful in attending the synagogue, and because he is a better man than the son of the local rabbi, he doesn’t need any change in his religion. Ah, but then when the sermon is finished, Christ satisfies the hunger of every person in that crowd. This man can’t figure out how He did it, but he hears the word “miracle” being whispered about. Some time later he hears that Jesus is back in the neighborhood, and he goes again, because he wants to figure out how He fed all those people. Still, despite being convicted about sin, the Holy Spirit doesn’t break his heart, & he laughs at the sermon. But shortly after that day, he is killed in an accident, and in hell he lifts up his eyes. Immediately, he realizes that his sins have put him in an awful predicament, and there is no escape. And as he reflects on the opportunities that he has had – his nearness to the Saviour, and the miraculous blessings which he had received – his remorse becomes a part of the pain that he is experiencing in hell. The Lord’s goodness to him, heaps coals of fire, so to speak, upon his head.

Whether we enjoy Paul’s instruction or not, we have the command to be as much a blessing to the wicked as we possibly can be. It shouldn’t be with the intention of dumping coals of fire upon their heads, but that is a result nevertheless. “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.”

One more point before moving on – make sure that you don’t become as wicked as the wicked are. “Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” I suppose that there are two kinds of victims. There are those who are hurt by wickedness, injustice and sin. And there are those who react to wickedness by becoming wicked themselves. Sometimes it is impossible to avoid the sinful trouble that others might bring our way. But the exhortation“be not overcome of evil,” isn’t talking about the results of that evil. The exhortation involves the evil itself. Don’t you become evil in your reaction to their evil. Yes, that bully may deserve to be cornered in a dark alley and be beaten just as he has beaten you. But, the one who inflicts that punishment commits a crime and becomes a criminal himself. The victim has joined the wicked; the innocent has joined his heart to the sinner. Leave these matters in the hands of the Lord who has promised judgment.

Now point two – What is our duty toward the victims in this wicked society of ours?First, “rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” Remember that it is still “the best of times, it is the worst of times.” Which is the easier of Paul’s two injunctions – to rejoice or to weep? Which is the more needful? In some ways it far easier to weep with the sorrowful than to praise God for His blessings on others, and to rejoice with them. There is something in most of us which makes us respond with tears to someone else’s tears. And if that person is remotely related to us, it becomes even easier still. But even though we may automatically smile at the smile of another person, to actually rejoice with them in God’s blessings is not an automatic response. It is something which we need to learn and learn to implement. After all, those happy people don’t need our agreement, because they have God’s blessings. Whether directly or not, we think – “They should be thinking about us while we are still in our needs.” Couldn’t we summarize this thought with the word “unselfishness?” Forget about your sorrow and focus on the sorrows of the other person. And forget about those things in your life which you lack, and give joy in those things which your neighbor has gained. When done properly, these things can be a great means of magnifying the name of the Lord, because the real strength to obey this injunction comes from God, not from ourselves.

Secondly, verse 16 – don’t let society dictate your life. Blaze your own paths when it comes to helping others – blessing the victimized. “Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.” The first part of this verse means: think of others as highly as you think of yourself – or perhaps even better. Not only is it a part of modern philosophy to put ourselves first in everything, it is also a part of our fallen nature. Even for the Christian, it is a natural thing to do because we are still in the flesh. But remember that if the Lord Jesus had lived like that, there would be no hope for any of us. Furthermore, don’t let the standards of world be your standard for evaluating other’s worth or worthiness. Choose who to bless, and who to befriend, from among those who appear to need friends the most. Turn to those whose who are in the greatest need of help. Swim against the current and choose not the men of high estate. And when given the offer to sit next to the man of high degree, choose the lower seats at the table.

And then finally, “provide things honest in the sight of all men.” Don’t give the wicked any reason to think that you might be one of them. These are the best of times; these are the worst of times. And the only way that we can make a positive difference in this world is to be more like our Master.

And then speaking of Christ – He is the perfect example of these things.This message may be entirely different from most of the sermons which are being preached this Sunday. But we come back to the common theme right now. This is the one day of the year that millions of professing Christians, think about the resurrection of Christ. While they should be thinking of the resurrected Christ every day or every Lord’s Day, most do not. And unfortunately, neither do they think very little about the death of Christ or the reason for that death. But even when some of them do, it is not with a Biblical perspective.

The point is that when we were enemies, Christ died for His elect. While we grew up in love with sin and in enmity against God, the Lord Jesus was dying for our salvation. He blessed us and bore our curse, while, many times, we were persecuting His people. Saul, the Apostle Paul, of course, is the most notable example. There is a sense in which we were both victims of the evils of sin and the perpetrators of that sin. But the Lord Jesus did not recompense evil toward us for our evil and sin. He is the only being in the universe who has the right to cast the first, last and most crushing stone. But He has fed us with the bread of heaven and given us to drink of the water of life. And to be almost precise, he bore in his own body coals of fire and judgment so that we could be spared.

For three days and nights – 72 hours – his body lay silently in borrowed the tomb of Joseph. But then on Saturday night shortly after sunset He exited that grave, putting the capstone on the salvation of hundreds of thousands of sinners. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord” – said God the Father. And that is exactly what He did when He poured out His wrath against us upon His only begotten Son. If God the Father and God the Son had not lived the principles described in these verses there would be no hope or salvation for any of us.

In some very weak way, we are supposed to be like the Saviour when it comes to the sinners around us. We cannot save them from their sins, but we can take pity upon them and point them to the Saviour. And we can bear some of the characteristics of the Redeemer – we can live as redeemed people. This is what Paul is teaching us in these verses.

Are you a child of the cross and product of Jesus’ empty tomb? Repent of your sins before God; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.