As most of us know, 21 years ago today, our country experienced the worst act of terrorism that we have ever faced. It seems hard for me to imagine, and I expect anyone else that lived through that day struggles to imagine it too, but there are people sitting in this room today that were not born when that occurred. It's hard to believe that it's been that many years because that's one of those events that is indelibly stamped on our minds. If we live through it, we remember the details of where we were when we heard about the attack on the World Trade Center. I remember vividly being told that a plane had struck the first tower, and then shortly after, the second plane struck the second tower. And the place where I was working, I was in a large corporate office building, and pretty soon it seemed like everyone in that building made their way to a massive auditorium where we had a floor-to-ceiling screen that was tuned to news channels showing the events in New York City. I remember sitting next to my boss as she frantically tried to call her sister who had an office in one of the trade towers. And she could not get through, of course, because the cell towers were all knocked out by the attack. So when the tower came down, I remember the fear that she felt, not having any idea what happened to her sister. Now, we learned later on that her sister was actually across town, had a meeting that morning, was not there, but at that moment she had no idea. I remember watching that massive dust cloud roll through the streets of New York and just feeling the fear of my boss, along with many others, as we were just devastated by what was transpiring. learn more collectively about the people who had launched this attack on our country. It wasn't long before we had the war on terror underway. That war was unlike anything else our country had ever faced. We were not fighting a nation state. We were fighting a group of people that had an ideology that led them to seek the destruction of our country, but they themselves were not a country. As you all know, much of the leadership was taking refuge in the mountains of Afghanistan, so as our country mobilized to fight the terrorists, we found ourselves going into Afghanistan, but yet we were not fighting the Afghan people. What developed in the ensuing months was a war like nothing we'd ever faced before. We were fighting an enemy that hid among innocent, virtually innocent, or imprisoned people, basically, in the villages there in Afghanistan. We were fighting an enemy that thought nothing of committing great acts of evil, beginning with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Then later, using even school children as human shields, they thought nothing about these kinds of acts of evil. We were fighting this kind of enemy. But thankfully, the leaders of our nation refused to fight in kind. We refused to indiscriminately sacrifice the lives of innocent people as we attacked and sought to deal with those who had attacked us. Now, I'm not denying that there were innocents who were killed in the messiness of the battles. We all understand such things happen. But the policy of our nation was that we would do everything we could to protect the lives of the innocent people while we sought those who were behind the attacks, the terrorists We refuse to go to the same level as the terrorists. We recognize that to indiscriminately kill those who were in our way would be an evil on the same level as that which was launched against us. And our country refused to return evil for evil. On this anniversary day of those dreadful events of 9-11, we can rejoice that our country took that stance. We can be thankful that our leadership refused to follow evil with evil, that the policy of our country was such. We would not return evil for evil because it was the right thing to do. Frankly, whether our leaders knew it or not, Their response is the response that reflects the character of God. By God's common grace, our country followed his character in decisions surrounding our response to the terrorists. Yet, as we'll see this morning, we should not only thank God that our country responded to the challenge in this fashion. We, believers in Jesus Christ, we personally should respond in the similar way every day of our lives. This morning we are continuing our series on developing genuine love. This series has run for several months now. We've been looking at the idea of love as God defines it. The series has been based on the list of characteristics of love that Paul gives in Romans 12. And we're taking this list item by item, using it to examine our lives, evaluate our love, and verify, is our love genuine love? So I would invite you turning your Bibles to Romans 12 once more. If you've been with us through a whole series, it probably just kind of plops open now if you're using a physical Bible. Even your electronic version may be automatically pulling itself up by now to Romans 12. I don't know. We've been here quite a while. Look at verse 9 where Paul begins his list. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. That's how far we've gotten in Paul's list. By this point we know that these are difficult things to do. We know that in many ways our love does not match up to this list. We know that our love does not match up because as we've looked at all of these characteristics so far, we've come to understand these are not natural characteristics. These are supernatural. These are supernatural things that the Spirit of God produces in the lives of those who know Jesus Christ as Savior. I've said many times, and I'll mention it again, this really is a series for those who know Jesus Christ as Savior. I'm quite confident in a room this size, with this many people this morning, that there are some here that that is not the case in your life. You do not know Jesus Christ as Savior. You know of Jesus. You may even pretend to believe in Jesus, but you do not. You believe that you do not need a Savior. You believe in yourself. You're wrong. I can't say it any more simple than that. You're wrong. That's as clear as I can state it. You need a Savior, and the only Savior God accepts is Jesus Christ. If you need to know more about accepting Jesus, talk to me. Send me an email. I'd love to sit down and talk with you and help you understand how you can know Jesus as your Savior. But this series is a series for believers, for those who have Jesus as Savior, that has the Holy Spirit that God imparts the moment we accept Christ as our Savior, the Holy Spirit that allows us to do these supernatural things. This is for us to work out our salvation. This morning we're only going to consider the next phrase in Paul's list. The phrase that is found at the very beginning of verse 17. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Or as the English Standard Version or the New King James Version translates it, repay no one evil for evil. Starting with this phrase, and really through the rest of Paul's list here, the characteristics he gives us are dealing with us as believers interacting with non-believers. How should we interact with those who do not know Jesus Christ? As with most of the characteristics, the basic idea in this phrase is not too hard to understand. It's not hard to understand what Paul is saying. The challenge comes in the implications that what Paul says carries for our lives. That's where the challenge comes. This morning, in the time remaining, I want to bring out three implications that Paul's admonition here, where he says, never pay back evil for evil to anyone, three implications that that phrase carries for us. The first implication is that we must, first of all, anticipate being wronged. We must anticipate being wronged. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Implicit in that phrase is the idea that we will experience evil. We can expect as much. The word that Paul uses for evil is the common word for things that are bad or incorrect in this world, but not just bad or incorrect in the sense that they do not function as designed. Specifically, this word carries moral connotations. It refers things that are morally wrong, even reprehensible. It's the word that's used to indicate something that violates God's moral standards and character. Our English word evil carries a similar moral overtone when we use it. For example, we would not call a pencil that has broken lead evil. pick up a pencil and we see the lead is broken, we wouldn't call that evil. Even though the pencil is not able to function as it's designed, we wouldn't say this is an evil pencil. By contrast, we would call the act of someone who grabbed a pencil out of our hand and intentionally broke the lead, we'd call that evil. We would call that evil because there's a moral element now in the broken lead. There's a moral element that's brought by the act that the person undertook. That person was striving to inflict, in this case, minor harm, but they were striving to inflict harm on another, on us. It's the moral element that makes the lead evil, the broken lead. Well, we live in a world that's clearly broken by sin. We will suffer many things in our lives because this world is broken by sin. It's under the curse of sin. We will grow old. We will develop diseases. We will drop things on our toes and experience pain. We will even endure mosquitoes. There's a lot of things in this world that are there because this world is broken by sin. We'll face all sorts of things because our world groans under the curse. These things are not directly evil. Rather, they're the extended consequences of a world broken by evil. At the same time, we are surrounded by people who are enslaved to sin. At the very core of people's beings, they are depraved. They worship self rather than God. They serve self rather than God. That's self-worship from a sinful heart. It moves people to do whatever it takes to try to bring maximum pleasure to the object of their worship, self. Thankfully, God, through His common grace, mitigates much of the impact of billions of people simultaneously trying to worship self. If God, in His common grace, did not do that, we could not survive on this planet. Still, God's mitigation is not the same as his removal of the self-worship of billions of people. It takes the new life of Christ in faith, in Jesus, that new life that comes through salvation, it takes that for God to begin to remove our self-worship. Aside from salvation, all God does is mitigate the impact to some level. So here we are, living in this world surrounded by billions of people who've rejected God and replaced the worship of God with worship of self. They are at the center of their lives. And whenever we get in the way of someone's self-worship, whenever we get in the way of their self-centered goal of pleasing self, we can expect trouble. We may not even know that we've interfered with their self-worship goal when we've done something. We may have no idea that we've gotten in the way of this self-desire that they have. We have no desire until the lashing out comes. The first clue we have is when we are wronged by the other person. I have a friend from seminary who has several young children, I think it's six, and they're all elementary age and younger. He's had significant problems with his neighbor because his kids apparently make too much noise playing in their own yard. Now my friend, he wants to be a good testimony to his neighbor, so he tries very hard to not allow his kids to play early or late. They're never there early or late when the neighbor might be resting. He's very careful to make sure his kids never step foot in the neighbor's yard. Still, the neighbors yelled at his kids many times, simply because when they're in their yard playing in their childish fun, they're making too much noise. The children has interfered with the neighbor's self-worship, his love of quiet. Now, I'm sure we've all had people yell at us. Maybe because we drove too slow in front of them. Maybe we took too long in the checkout line. Whatever. In the workplace, we maybe have experienced our co-workers being angry at us because our boss promoted us over them. We were promoted because of our diligent work. They were not as diligent, but they were still mad enough that we got the promotion. As we've discussed before, there are numerous social issues. Abortion, euthanasia, marriage, sexuality, all these different kinds of social issues that all we have to do is take the stance of God's truth and say, this is what is right. And we'll find ourselves reaping accusations, and anger from people around us. The thing that is common in all of these examples is that we do not have to do anything wrong ourselves to bring problems into our lives. We can do everything right. We can live consistently with what God has told us to do in his word. We can live rightly still face incredible animosity from the people around us. We can experience countless wrongs coming our way. Oftentimes the animosity comes in words, but other times it comes in forms that are much more significant. People will do things to us. They will seek to harm our reputation. They will seek to cost us financially. They will seek to bring various hurts into our lives. They will wrong us. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. The first implication is that we must anticipate being wronged. We must anticipate it. We will be wronged. The second implication also is a direct application. We must not retaliate against wrongs. We must not retaliate against wrongs. Now, the Greek phrase, the way Paul puts in the original, it's not too hard to reflect in English, but it's hard to make English smooth as we reflect what Paul has said, so we tend to lose a little bit of Paul's emphasis in the original. In the original, the word that the New American Standard translates as anyone is the word no one. Plus, that that word is actually placed first in the phrase, not last. The significance of these is that Paul is giving a special emphasis to this word, no one. And by using the word no one, he's making this idea universal. We must not retaliate against anyone at all. We must not retaliate against anyone for any evil that is done. No one. We must not retaliate, period. Now, before I tease this out a little bit, let me clarify one thing. Paul is discussing retaliation here. He's referring to returning evil for evil. He's not discussing defending ourselves against evil. The issue of self-defense is a very complex topic. It is one that I'm not going to take the time to chase out this morning. But I will say in passing that I am convinced that the Bible grants us the right to defend ourselves and others against evil. God clearly states many times that he is the defender of the weak and the vulnerable. God calls Israel to represent his character by defending the weak and the vulnerable. As we continue to reflect God's character, there is a place for us to defend the weak and the vulnerable. I do not see any contradiction at all between Paul's admonition here to not retaliate against evil and actively defending against evil. What Paul adds here in his list of developing love, this genuine love that we are to develop, what he adds here is that we are not to retaliate against wrongs that are committed against us. Retaliation is the idea of paying back what has been done. Retaliation is an offensive activity, not a defensive one. It's the idea of getting even for something that's already happened, not stopping something as it happens. It's mounting a campaign of retribution. There's something in our nature that wants to get even, isn't there? Or actually, I think there's something in our nature that wants to make sure that we're always slightly ahead. We don't want to just be even. We want to be slightly on top. Our instinctive desire is to respond. If someone causes us pain, we want them to hurt just a little bit more. If we suffer a hardship, we want the person inflicting that hardship to suffer a little bit more. That's our natural response. But we're dealing with the supernatural. Paul is not calling us to do what comes naturally. Paul is calling us to do what we can only do through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Not retaliating against wrongs is one of those supernatural things. To turn the matter of justice and injustice over to God rather than to attempt to accomplish an evening of the score on her own. That is supernatural. And we're to do this with all wrongs. There are no exceptions. Think about when a child has been wronged. Mom comes into the room because there's been some kind of dustup between two kids. Mom comes in, and as soon as she's spotted, one of the children will begin pleading his case. Of course, the second child usually joins in because the second child probably feels wronged as well in his pleading case. And mom hears enough to determine that there are mutual issues here and declares, this case is closed. We're not doing anything else. Immediately, the child who feels most wrong begins to sputter, but, but, but, but, but, but mom! Sadly, I fear oftentimes we respond to God that way. But God, this person's done something to me. We agree that we should turn wrongs over to God when we suffer them. We agree intellectually because that's what the Bible says. But when God does not immediately retaliate on our behalf, when God does not settle things the way that we think, They should be settled. We find ourselves mentally responding, at least to God, maybe not verbally, but mentally, but God so and so deserves pain. After all, they've made me, your child, experience pain. They deserve pain. And then we feel the urge to take the matter back into our own hands. We want to become God's tool for inflicting that just pain. God calls us to a higher response. God calls us to a different response. God calls us to not retaliate against wrongs. In fact, God, through Peter in 1 Peter 3.9, takes this challenge even a step higher. He says, we are to be a blessing to people who wrong us rather than retaliate in kind. We're called to do this because in Christ, we are called to be different than those who wrong us. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. The second implication is that we must not retaliate against wrongs. We must, one, anticipate being wronged, but secondly, we must not retaliate against wrongs, which brings us to our third implication. We must not retaliate even in our minds. Even in our minds. In our minds. You know, even if we do not take a single act of retaliation against someone who wrongs us, if we imagine the pleasure that might come in doing so, then we have not truly fulfilled this requirement of genuine love. If we fixate on vengeance, even if we don't act on it, we've not responded in a loving manner. If we wish we could get even, we reveal that we have a retaliatory spirit, a spirit that is not the spirit of genuine love. This is where things get really hard. I mean, it's hard already not to act on what we feel naturally, but this is where it gets really hard, because our thoughts are private. We know that no one can see what is going on in our minds. It's easy to believe that as long as our actions are proper, then God is pleased. We're doing the right things. But God, we need to remember, God is concerned about our attitudes as much as he is about our actions. God is concerned about our hearts, and our attitudes reveal ultimately what's in our hearts. They reveal what our heart is yearning after. Our attitudes reveal our deepest objects of worship. We can look like we're worshiping God with our actions when we're still worshiping ourselves deep within. We want to retaliate because the object of our worship, ourselves, that object of worship has been hurt. As believers, we are to be like Christ. Christ, our Savior. Well, Philippians 2.5, there Paul tells us specifically that we are to have an attitude that matches the attitude of Christ. Let this attitude be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. And then Paul goes on in that passage to explain that he's referring to the fact that Christ was willing to leave heaven's glory to set all that glory aside and come to earth for the sole purpose of dying the most horrible, humble death imaginable, the death on the cross. Christ's attitude is an attitude that's willing to die for those who hate him. those who were in rebellion against him. Let's not fool ourselves to think that we looked really lovely and that's why Christ came, because he saw these good, lovely people. We were rebels. We hated Christ and he died for us. This is the attitude of love, genuine love. Let's take a moment, and I would like you to turn with me to another verse. Turn to Ephesians 4, verse 32. This is a well-known verse. It's one that I know you know, but I want you to look at it this morning. Ephesians 4, verse 32. It begins, be kind to one another, tender-hearted. That's well and good, be kind, be tender-hearted. But look at the rest of it. forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Now, I recognize that the one another in this verse means that Paul is specifically talking about relationships within the church, where our Romans 12, 17 is talking about our interactions as believers with unbelievers. Still, look at the standard of forgiveness that we have been called to here in Ephesians. We are to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us. How much have we wronged Christ? How deep of debt did we accumulate through our wronging of Christ? Well, enough that we deserved for Christ to ban us from His presence for all eternity. We wronged Him enough that we deserve for Christ to consign us to hell for eternal punishment. That the wages of sin, that the just desert of sin, is death. That is how much we wrong Christ. And what did Christ do? Look at that verse. What did he do? Huh? He forgave us. I don't care how severely someone else wrongs us. The wrongs that we suffer will never measure up to the level of our wrongdoing against Christ. Yes, people can do horrible things to us. There is no doubt about that. It is possible that some people here have suffered great betrayal. Some here may have endured abuse, physical and emotional abuse. Some here have been mocked and ridiculed, backstabbed and tricked by those that we thought were friends. Some so-called friends, maybe even family members, have stolen from some of you. The wrongs that you have suffered from the hands of others may be greater than what anyone else here has suffered. After all, in a group like this, someone has to be the most suffering person. Maybe that's you. I don't know what wrongs you have suffered, but I do know that the wrongs that you have suffered are less than the wrongs that you have committed against Christ. and Christ has forgiven you and me. He forgave us the moment we asked him in humble faith to be our Savior. And for that reason alone, Christ is calling all of us, you and me, to forgive others. We have not forgiven others if we harbor a spirit of retaliation. If we're still holding on to that wrong that they've done to us, even in our minds, we are not forgiving. We may look like we are not returning evil for evil, but if we are wishing that we could, we are failing to forgive, we are failing to obey, we are failing to live out genuine love. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. The third implication is that we must not retaliate even in our minds. Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Three implications. We must anticipate being wronged. We must not retaliate against wrongs. We must not retaliate even in our minds. We must live by these three implications because that is when we put this command to work. When we put this command into our context, the point that Paul is making is this. Genuine love requires that we avoid a spirit of retaliation. Not just that we don't act on it, we avoid the whole spirit of retaliation. That is genuine love. Genuine love requires that we avoid the spirit of retaliation. As I said at the outset, 21 years ago, our nation rose to the challenge of 9-11. But as we rose to that challenge, the nation responded without a retaliatory spirit in the sense of returning evil for evil. We responded to the terrorist attacks. We conducted a war. But we did not return evil for evil. We can praise God that our leaders took such a policy. The terrorists were pursued, but we did all we could to protect innocent lives, the very people among whom the terrorists oftentimes were hiding. Our nation did not return evil for evil, but how about you? And how about me in our daily lives? How are we doing with this characteristic of genuine love? When that person cuts you off on the highway, do you speed up so that you can cut in front of them? When someone makes you the butt of a cruel joke, do you look for the chance to get back? When someone kicks the chair out from under you, so to speak, emotionally, physically, or any other fashion, they kick the chair out from under you, do you look forward to the time when you can return the favor? Genuine love requires that we avoid a spirit of retaliation. Not retaliating when we have been wronged is unnatural. It is Christ-like. It is Christ-like. And we are to strive for Christ-likeness. We are to show Christ to others around us. Genuine love requires a spirit of non... I'll say it over. You can read it, I'll say it. Genuine love requires that we avoid a spirit of retaliation. Let's pray. Father, I pray today that once again your spirit would examine us. That you would do the work that only your spirit can do within us and show us where we are failing to live out this aspect of genuine love. where we are harboring that which we should be avoiding, a spirit of retaliation. So Father, I pray that as your spirit reveals that to us, that you would allow us to cast it far from us so that we can display Christ to the world around us. We want to joyfully magnify Christ because we are his. We are bought with his blood. Father, I pray that you would do this work within us so that Christ would be magnified. It's in his name we pray, amen.