INTRODUCTION
The church's mission and calling is loving its local community. As representatives of Christ on earth, the church exists to worship God and reflect His love to the world around it. This begins with the immediate community, those who live, work, and struggle right outside the church's doors. When the church loves its local community, it becomes a tangible expression of God’s grace and compassion. This love creates bridges, fosters unity, and meets real needs, both spiritual and practical. It also deepens the church's witness, showing that the Gospel is more than just words; it is active and alive, bringing healing and hope. By loving its local community, the church lives out Jesus’ command to love our neighbors, transforming the community and allowing God’s kingdom to flourish right where they are planted.
In Romans 12, we encounter one of the most challenging and profound passages in Scripture regarding how Christians should respond to the world around them. In this scripture, the Apostle Paul provides clear, practical instructions on how we, as followers of Christ, are called to love not just our friends, neighbors, or those who treat us well but even those who oppose or mistreat us. It's how we are called to love the entire community. This passage asks us to look beyond our natural responses and embrace a radical, Christ-like love that can transform our hearts and our communities.
Paul calls us to bless those who persecute us, a command that runs counter to the natural human instinct for revenge or retribution. Instead of returning evil for evil, we are called to be peacemakers, empathizing with others in their joy and pain, living humbly, and fostering harmony. This isn’t easy work, then or especially now. It requires us to set aside our pride and desires for personal justice and trust God as the ultimate judge. But Paul’s message is clear: our response to God’s grace should be reflected in how we love our communities—without reservation, without judgment, without conditions, and without seeking vengeance.
As we dive into this text today, we will explore what it truly means to live out the gospel in our community. How can we love those who are difficult to love? How can we overcome evil with good in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and everyday encounters? Let this passage challenge us to be genuine agents of God’s love, carrying His grace into every corner of our lives. This passage highlights the radical nature of Christian love, which transcends natural instincts for self-preservation and retaliation. It calls believers to extend kindness even to those who wrong them, embodying Christ’s love through acts of forgiveness, peace, and generosity. The church should reflect God’s grace and have the power to disarm hostility and foster reconciliation within their communities. Ultimately, Romans 12:14-21 challenges the church to be agents of God's love, actively promoting peace and goodwill in a broken, hurting, and dark world.
Romans 12:14–21 ESV
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
SCRIPTURAL ANALYSIS
Verses 14-16
In the chapters leading up to these verses in Romans, Paul referenced the persecution of the new church. Now comes the hard evidence that believers in the church were being persecuted, and with it, the need for evidence that these believers were responding as living sacrifices. Paul paraphrases Jesus’ words to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” and “bless those who curse you.” Jesus himself was the chief example of blessing the enemy when he prayed for those who were torturing and crucifying him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Often, Paul was very intentional in echoing Jesus’ teaching. Here, he’s referencing a few of Jesus’ teachings in Luke. It was common to repeat the sayings of famous teachers, and Jewish teachers always cited their own teachers and the law. Paul constantly refers back to Jesus and Old Testament teachings to ensure he spoke God’s Words and not his own.
Despite the persecution of the church, verses 14–16 call for a caring heart that is vulnerable to the world. A Christian who is elitist, who only associates with people of the same intellectual, academic, or professional interests, is not living up to what the Scripture mandates. We are to have a heart open to the world. We are to pray for those who persecute us, to enter others’ joys and sorrows, and to associate with everyone regardless of their station in life. What a way to go after the world!
As a new faith, this church was a tiny segment, vulnerable to the edicts of pagan emperors and persecution by any who disagreed with them. Aware of these realities, Paul counsels believers to avoid trouble by refusing to retaliate when persecuted and to respond with good when they are treated with evil, as Jesus had also instructed (Matthew 5:44).
Christians should be happy with others, with no hint of jealousy, and they should share the sorrow of others, offering kindness, concern, compassion, and a shoulder to cry on if needed.
Following Jesus means that believers will experience a kaleidoscope of life experiences. Christianity is neither denying life’s hardships nor dulling life’s excitements. Our perspective of eternity in Christ can free us to enter into the full variety of living. Both laughter and tears are appropriate before God. Each has an important place in representing our feelings. Identifying with the joys and heartaches of others is also an important way to show them our love.
Verses 17-20
Paul begins the conclusion of the chapter with the most lengthy and perhaps the most difficult challenge of being a living sacrifice: loving when wronged. The clear command is, Do not repay anyone evil for evil, whether a fellow believer or an unbeliever outside the church. There are at least two reasons for not taking revenge into one’s own hands. First, it puts an individual, a part of the creation, in the place of a judge over another part of the creation. God has made it abundantly clear in Scripture, as Paul attests with his quote of Deuteronomy 32, that it is God’s prerogative and responsibility to avenge sin and that he will do it. Ecclesiastes 12: “For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether good or evil.” Paul reminds us that we may want to avenge ourselves, but we must leave that to God. Refusing to take revenge avoids grudges and feuds and all the emotional and physical detrimental effects that follow. God will ensure that justice will be given.
The second reason not to seek revenge is that it could bring disrepute and harm to the cause of the gospel. When Paul told Timothy to lead the church in Ephesus in prayers for “kings and all those in authority,” it was so that those same subjects of prayer would not bring trouble to the church and so that believers could live “peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” Since “God wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” according to 1 Timothy 2, any disruption of a quiet and peaceful society would hinder the spread of the gospel.
When Paul quotes Proverbs 25 as he speaks of caring for an enemy’s needs, which heaps coals of fire on that enemy’s head, he does not advise on a better way to get back at one’s enemies. Rather, such treatment is intended to get the enemy to turn from enmity to friendship. Gracious deeds thus burn away the hate within. Such treatment of opponents has as its goal reconciliation and peace, not another’s defeat and suffering. That is the way God dealt with us when we were his enemies. That is the way God deals through us with those who continue to oppose him.
Verses 21
Do not give in to your desire to take revenge or retaliate against evil; instead, act in a positive way. To hate evil is to conquer it by doing good. When we hang on for dear life to those things that are good and to God, we will overcome evil. All of this will be accomplished to the degree that we allow God to create in us sincere love.
The point of this last section is to do toward others what God has done toward us: forgive as we have been forgiven. God loved us when we were enemies. Though the religious leaders of Israel are enemies of the gospel at this time, God still loves them. We are to love those who are our enemies. We are not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good.
TODAY’S KEY TRUTH
The Church’s Response To God’s Grace is to Love and Serve its Local Community Unconditionally.
APPLICATION
The most striking feature of this final paragraph of chapter 12 is that it contains four resounding negative imperatives:
‘Do not curse’ (v14).
‘Do not repay anyone evil for evil’ (v17).
‘Do not take revenge’ (v19).
‘Do not be overcome by evil’ (v21).
All four prohibitions say the same thing in different words. Retaliation and revenge are absolutely forbidden to the followers of Jesus. He never hit back in either word or deed. And despite our inborn retributive tendency, ranging from the child’s tit-for-tat to the adult’s more sophisticated determination to get even with an opponent, Jesus calls us instead to imitate him. To be sure, there is a place for the punishment of evildoers in the law courts, and Paul will come to this in Romans 13. But we are never to get our own back by injuring those who have injured us. Non-retaliation was a very early feature of the Christian ethical tradition, going back to the teaching of Jesus and beyond this to the Old Testament Wisdom literature.
However, the Christian ethic is never purely negative, and a positive counterpart accompanies each of Paul’s four negative imperatives. Thus, we are not to curse but to bless (14); we are not to retaliate but to do what is right and to live at peace (17–18); we are not to take revenge but to leave this to God, and meanwhile to serve our enemies (19–20); and we are not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good (21).
Keeping the negative and positive counterparts together is essential in all our thinking and living. Both are good. It is good never to retaliate because if we repay evil for evil, we double it, adding a second evil to the first and so increasing the tally of evil in the world. It is even better to be positive, to bless, to do good, to seek peace, and to serve and convert our enemy because if we thus repay good for evil, we reduce the tally of evil in the world while at the same time increasing the tally of good. To repay evil for evil is to be overcome by it; to repay good for evil is to overcome evil with good. This is the way of the cross. ‘Such is the masterpiece of love.’
The quotation in Romans 12:20 is from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament book Proverbs. In these love passages, Paul quoted Jesus, the Law, and the wisdom literature in shared concern for the poor and needy, even if they are enemies. This is God’s wisdom. To “heap burning coals on his head” is drawing upon an Egyptian practice of placing a pan of burning charcoal on one’s head, indicating penitence. Paul is saying that we may lead the person to repentance through love. Let the enemy realize it is God he is fighting, not us. We do not want to defeat our human enemies; we wish to win them to the Lord! The warfare is between the evil and the good. We can conquer evil only with the good.
The Greek word for peaceably includes the ideas of harmony, health, wholeness, and well-being. In relationships, we are to live at peace with all men (Rom. 12:18). God is not a God of disorder, but of peace, according to Paul 1 Corinthians 14, and in the church, we are to strive to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace in Ephesians 4. Peace is foundational to moving ahead in unity. When we realize the need for each other to overcome this dark and painful word, it teaches us to be tender to one another and seek the greater good of all.
The Church’s Response To God’s Grace is to Love and Serve its Local Community Unconditionally.
CONCLUSION
In Romans 12, we have a whole lot of statements. They’re great. There’s more here than I can cover, but I want to pull out the important things we will learn about community from the passages. The importance of Christians in the community is often masked in the mist when we read the Scripture. Why? Because, as Americans, in many cases, we’re individualistic, we tend to read the Bible through individual lenses. Also, the English language doesn’t have a second-person plural pronoun unless you’re from the South, y’all. So when you read, for example, the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says you must do this, you must do this, you must do this, we read it, and we tend to think of it as just the way God wants “me” to behave. It's for the individual and for all of us and how we live as a church in the community. We are called to live in the church community mindset, so all of these teachings apply to the church and the individual. Paul says, “I want you to be part of a community like this. I want you to form a community like this.” That's the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount. Both Paul and Jesus address the importance of the Christian community in its local community.
Paul says, “We’ve stopped selecting and auditioning people like we do in every other area in life. We’ve stopped scrutinizing people before we love and serve them. You don’t choose to love and serve just who you like. We’re all God’s children and on the journey together. Build a community on who Jesus is, not who you and everyone else is. Love and serve everyone, including your enemies.”
We should want a community whose beliefs lead them not to demonize the opposition but to love and respect the people on the other side. “Bless those who curse you. Bless and curse not.” He doesn’t just say we don’t seek revenge. Don’t hurt them. Love and serve them. He says bless them. What does that mean? Wish them well. Love them. Respect them. Help them in their need. Let the enemy realize it is God he is fighting, not us. We do not want to defeat our human enemies; we wish to win them to the Lord! We must not succumb to the world’s ways of revenge and defeating our opposition. We can conquer evil only with the good.
If you believe they need judgment, leave it to God (verse 19). If you believe they need great conviction for their sins and need to see the error of their ways, they need to have burning coals put on their heads to wake them up and convict them of their sins. Then, convict them through your loving behavior and servant's heart. Convict them through your doing good to them as a response. Fight against our natural urge to seek revenge and love like Christ did. What makes a Christian community unique is the family nature of those inside and the absolute love and respect you show the people outside.
The Church’s Response To God’s Grace is to Love and Serve its Local Community Unconditionally.
Jesus calls Christians to live in harmony with others, responding to hostility and adversity with love and grace. Paul emphasizes the importance of overcoming evil with good, seeking peace, and not repaying wrongs with vengeance. We are urged as believers to extend compassion and kindness even to those who may oppose us religiously or politically, those who are different, and those from other places.
Christians are called to be a light in their community, blessing rather than cursing and working for the betterment of all. This means engaging with diverse populations, addressing local challenges with understanding and service, and striving to foster unity. As followers of Christ, showing love through tangible actions, whether helping the needy, promoting peace, or offering forgiveness, embodies the heart of the Gospel and contributes to building a community grounded in Christ’s love.
The Church’s Response To God’s Grace is to Love and Serve its Local Community Unconditionally.
Loving the local community is essential for the church because it reflects the very nature of Christ’s love and fulfills its mission worldwide. When the church demonstrates genuine care, compassion, and service to those around it, it becomes a beacon of hope and light, embodying the gospel message. This love goes beyond words and doctrine; it is a tangible expression of God’s grace and mercy. By loving the local community, the church meets its neighbors' physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, helping to create a thriving, supportive environment. It also fosters unity and trust, breaking down barriers and building bridges across diverse groups. Ultimately, when the church loves its community, it mirrors God’s love for all humanity, drawing people closer to Him and creating life opportunities to be transformed. Love for the local community is an obligation and a powerful testimony of the church's faith in action.