Love Overcomes Evil With Good

The deep revelation and mystery of the gospel is not just that “God so loved the world,” (John 3:16), but that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8). Love is not merely what God has or does or shows; love is what God is within God’s own being.

We can see what this divine love looks like in God’s act of giving his only begotten Son for the sake of the world. Love is self-giving and other-centered. Love is cross-shaped. The apostle Paul gives us a profound description of divine love in 1 Corinthians: 

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

Now, notice that retribution has no place in this description. It is not merely indifferent to love, it is antithetical to love. Love is not self-seeking; retribution is. Love keeps no record of wrongs, is not resentful; retribution takes careful note in order to pay back, to take revenge. Love seeks what is good for the sake of the other; retribution seeks vengeance for one’s own sake. 

God is love, and love is simply not retributive. Yes, there is divine wrath and divine judgment, but these are not for the purpose of retribution; they have a very different end in view. In the hands of angry men, wrath and judgment are destructive, but in the hands of divine love, their ultimate purpose is not destruction but restoration. And, yes, there is divine vengeance, but the way God — the way Love — pays back is very different from the way of the world.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 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. (Romans 12:17-21)

Paul instructs us here on how we should live. He is not telling us to be different from our heavenly Father, or from our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the express manifestation of the Father. No, he is showing us what God is like. God does not pay back evil with evil, but overcomes evil with good.

The Greek word for “revenge” and “avenge” in this passage are not about settling old scores — as least not in hands of God — but about putting things right, with nothing missing or broken. So, God repays evil with good, for as Paul says earlier in this letter, it is the goodness of God that leads to repentance (Romans 2:4).

God overcomes evil with good, just as Paul instructs us to do. Though there is yet much evil in the world, God has already acted to overcome it all by the Cross and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The expectation of the Christian faith is that we shall see the full manifestation of that great victory.

For more on this, see The Surprising Vengeance of God.

The More We Know the Lord

The more we know the Lord,
the more obedience to the Lord
flows naturally from us,
not as duty but as delight,
doing things with Papa. 

The obedience of our
Lord Jesus Christ to the Father
was nothing more nor less
than intimacy with the Father.

Theology Must Be Lived

St. John the Theologian said:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
 
Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:7-21)

Understanding Scripture With the Church

The best way to understand the Scriptures is in the context of what has been handed down in the Church from the beginning. The whole Church has been given the Holy Spirit, to teach us and lead us into all truth (John 14:26, John 16:13). This does not mean that each individual may come up with his own private interpretation with which to judge everyone else. It means precisely the opposite; we must learn to read and understand the Scriptures together, as one body, the body of Christ, the Church, being of one heart and mind.

The Church is not above the Scriptures, but the Church interprets the Scriptures. Without interpretation, the Scriptures yield no meaning to us. Even if we should say, “The Holy Spirit showed me this meaning,” it is an interpretation nonetheless. The Holy Spirit certainly reveals the meaning of Scripture to the Church, but to the whole Church, and not with contradictory interpretations to contradictory people. The Scriptures are multivalent, capable of many interpretations, but not mutually incongruous ones.

There are many new and varied interpretations that have arisen over the years, and they abound today. But where they are out of sync with how the Church has consistently understood Scripture from the beginning, they should be left to the side. They are independent voices that do not reflect the mind of the Church, the mind of the Holy Spirit who guides the Church. It is important, then, to pay careful attention to how the early Church understood the Scriptures. It is the safest and best way to proceed, and will help keep us from error.

Sin is the Soul Rejecting Itself

Sin is often thought of as the infraction of a law, the breaking of a commandment. But it is really the brokenness of a relationship. When Adam turned away from God to his own way, he turned away from the very source of his life and being — he turned away from his true self, toward non-being.

From the beginning, we are created in the image of God, to be like God. That is our true self, yet we continually resist it. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, in whom all the fullness of divinity dwells in bodily form, and in whom we are made complete and become partakers of the divine nature. This is the Incarnation, and it includes us all, for Jesus Christ is the image of God we were created to be. The good news of the gospel is that God is transforming us, conforming us to the image of Christ. In turning to Christ, through repentance and faith, we become reoriented to our true self, what God intended for us from the beginning.

The Gospel of Deliverance

Christ did not come to save us from God
but to deliver us from the power of death
and the darkness of sin.

“Therefore, since the children share in blood and flesh, Christ also in like manner shared in these same things , in order that through death he could destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and could set free these who through fear of death were subject to slavery throughout all their lives.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17) 

Divine Being and Human Being

There is Divine Being
and there is Human Being.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is both,
and in Him we are all united,
with God and with each other.
This is the Incarnation
and this is the Gospel.

Christ Crucified and Risen is the Incarnate One.
The Incarnate One is Crucified and Risen.

Who Can Forever Resist the Love of God?

If there were a being who was eternally impervious to God, forever able to resist the Love of God, would not such a being be greater than God? Indeed, would not that being then be God? But we are created by God to be the image of God, which is to say, the image of Love, for God is Love. We were made by Love and for Love, to be loved and to love. It is inherent to our true nature, what it means to be human. The evil that has invaded the human heart cannot change that but can only obscure it.

Yet, our Lord Jesus Christ has come to deliver us from this darkness of heart, this depravity of mind, this enmity of the will against Love, which is to say, against God. This is the truth of the Incarnation, in which Christ has united divinity with humanity, God with humankind, Love with the human heart. And it is the truth of the Cross and Resurrection, by which Christ has defeated death and the devil (who held the power of death), and all of the powers that blind us and pull us away from Love. 

In self-giving, other-centered, cross-shaped love, our Lord Jesus submitted himself to shameful death by the wickedness of our own darkened hearts. And by that one death defeated death for all, for Love is stronger than death. Who, then, could forever resist the love of God?

There is no heart so hard
that the Love of Christ
cannot soften it,
No mind so darkened
that the Light of Christ
cannot enlighten it,
No will so bound
that the Truth of Christ
cannot set it free.
And so shall God
be All in All.

The Fullness of Him Who Fills All in All

And God put all things under Christ’s feet, and gave him to the Church as head over all things. Now the Church is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23 NET).

This passage is packed with stunning revelation. Not only that God has placed all things under the feet of Christ crucified, risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father. Not only that God has given Christ as head of the Church, and that the Church is, consequently, the body of Christ. Not only that Christ fills everything in every way. But this: The Church is the fullness of Christ.

Earlier in Ephesians 1, Paul tells us what God’s mysterious will and good pleasure is, which he purposed in himself and which is perfectly accomplished in Jesus Christ:

In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace  which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth — in Him. (Ephesians 1:7-10)

Christ has not merely come at the end of time, he is himself the end of time, the fullness of time, the meaning and purpose of time. In him, God gathers together all in heaven and on earth — everyone and everything — bringing all into union, with Christ as head (anakephalaiomai). At the end of the chapter, we see Christ placed far above every rule, authority, power and dominion, far above every name that could ever be invoked. This is the Ascension. 

God has given Christ to the Church as the head (kephale) over all things. Paul specifically has in mind the relationship of head and body. He speaks of Christ as the head of the church, and of the Church as the body of Christ. Likewise, since Christ is the head of all things, what does that say about all things in heaven and on earth but that all is, in this way, the body of Christ.

Christ fills all things, in every way, with himself, and Paul declares that the Church, the Body of Christ, is that fullness which fills all in all. Being filled with Christ in every way, everything in creation is finally revealed to be the body of Christ, which is to say, the Church. This is what the end of time looks like. Fr. John Behr puts it very well for me:

I can no longer see the Church as a select group of people called out from unbelievers. Rather, the Church is the whole of Creation seen eschatologically; from which we already see islands in the present, called out from “the world” (in the negative sense).

Christ Has Ascended — And We With Him

Forty days after our Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and in the fullness of his humanity and his divinity, he ascended into heaven. Paul speaks of this in the wonderful prayer he makes for the Church in Ephesians 1: that we may know the wonderful anticipation to which God has called us, that we may know the riches of the glorious inheritance God has in us, and that we may know the unfathomable greatness of his power for us. He tells, here and elsewhere, about that great power, and we see the glory of our Ascended Lord Jesus:

That Same Power,
The Mighty Strength
God exercised when He
Raised Christ from the dead
And seated him at the
Right hand of the Father
In the heavenly realms,
Far above all rule,
Far above all authority,
Far above all power,
Far above all dominion,
Far above every name—
The Name above All Names.

God has placed
All Things under his feet
And given him to the Church
To be head over All Things
In Heaven and on Earth,
To the Church,
Which is His Body,
The Fullness of Him
Who Fills All Things
Everywhere.

Through the Incarnation, Christ united divinity with humanity, God with humankind, and became Human Being, of which we all partake and by which we are all now defined. Because of the Incarnation, the death of Christ has become our death, too. The resurrection of Christ has become our resurrection, too. And the ascension of Christ has become our ascension, too, the ascension of All Humankind. 

Only a few verses later, in Ephesians 2:6, Paul declares, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Christ has ascended into heaven, and we have ascended with him. This is not future promise but accomplished act and present reality. It is the good news of the gospel.

Unconditional Love, Justice and Mercy

Unless we understand the
unconditional love of God,
we understand neither the
justice nor mercy of God,
for God is One.

God is Love. (1 John 4:8)

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

Let us first understand this: God is love. Love is not merely something God does; love is what God is. God loves because it is God’s nature to love. For God to ever do otherwise would be to cease to be God.

We must also understand that God is not a being of parts, each of which must be balanced out by the others. No, God is one. God’s attributes are one, not many. They are not held in tension, in competition with each other. With God, love, justice and mercy are not three different things but three different ways of speaking of the same thing. If we do not understand the divine simplicity, the oneness of God, we will fail to properly understand the divine love, justice and mercy.

God is love, so the justice of God is not retributive, because love is not retributive. Rather, the justice of God is redemptive, restorative. It is not opposite to mercy but is the very manifestation of mercy, and mercy is the manifestation of justice. The divine justice puts things right, which is exactly what love does. The Love/Justice/Mercy of God releases what has been bound, redeems what has been lost, restores what has been broken, heals what has been wounded.

The Pattern of All Creation

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. (John 1:1-3)

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Word, the Logos of God. Which is to say, Christ is the Logic, the Reason, the Purpose, the Plan of God. He is the Will and the Way of God, the meaning and pattern of all that is. All things are made through him, by him, for him and in him, and in him all things consist, cohere and hold together (Colossians 1:16-17). Everything that exists receives its being from him and in him.

The good news of the gospel is that he who is the Logos of God became human being (John 1:14), in whom all humankind participates. Jesus Christ defines human being, what it is to be human. He is at once the full revelation of humanity and the full revelation and glory of divinity.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth ... No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. (John 1:14,18)

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. (Hebrews 1:1-3)

The Cross and Resurrection is the full revelation of God and the divine glory. There we see not only what it means to be human but also what it means to be God. We understand what it means that God is love (1 John 4:8), that love is self-giving, other-centered and cross-shaped.

Christ Crucified and Risen is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. Indeed, through the Cross and Resurrection, he is the foundation of the world. For he who is the firstborn from the dead is the firstborn of creation (Colossians 1). In this way, he is the paradigm of the whole universe; in his self-giving, other-centered, cross-shaped love, all things find their reason and meaning. And so he is the fractal reality of all Creation, the recurring pattern, at every layer and level of everything that is.

The Fall and Transfiguration of Time

The Biblical Fall
is not an event in time.
Time itself is a fallen state,
in which everything tends
toward decay and death.
But in the Incarnation,
divinity is united with humanity,
God with humankind,
and eternity is united with time,
so that time itself is transfigured
and the world is healed.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” as the book Revelation tells us. He is at once the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (Revelation 1). He who is the firstborn from the dead is the firstborn of creation (Colossians 1). Indeed, Christ Crucified and Risen is the foundation of the world, the beginning and completion of all creation. Lord Jesus, seated on the Throne of Heaven and Earth, declares, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). And that includes us.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

The transfiguration of time takes place within time, from the inside out, through the mutual indwelling of time in eternity and eternity in time. John the Elder tells us, “The darkness is passing and the true light is already shining” (1 John 2:8). 

We presently find ourselves in that curious transition of what is coming to pass into what is eternally so, and all of creation waits in eager anticipation together with us.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)

The Light Who Makes Us Divine

You are the Light of the World,
O Christ, in Whom we become
Partakers of the Divine Nature.

In the Gospel of John, the Logos, the Word who has always been with God and is God, is “the True Light which gives light to everyone coming into the world” (John 1:1,9). And it is of him that the psalm writer sings, “With You is the fountain of life; in Your Light we see light” (Psalm 36:9).

Paul exclaims and exhorts, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8-10). And, “When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him” (Colossians 3:4). Other New Testament letters speak similarly:

His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (1 John 3:2)

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the True Light who gives Light to everyone who comes into the world. In His Light, we see light and become light, participating in his Glory, and in him we become partakers of his divine nature.

God is Both Willing and Able

Christian universalism
is the belief that God
is both willing and able,
that God can and will save
all in heaven and on earth,
through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Jesus Christ, God has shown both the willingness and the ability to save all in heaven and on earth. This does not require that God in any way ignore or override the will of anyone — that is contrary to the way of Love. But it does require that the human will be set free from ignorance, deceit, darkness, and bondage to sin — all of which render human will defective, and anything but free.

Freedom of will is the ability to live according to one’s true and inherent nature. The true and inherent nature of human being is to be like God, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), in whom all the fullness of divinity of dwells in bodily form, and in whom we are made complete (Colossians 2:9-10). 

By the Incarnation, Jesus Christ has become human being, the humanity of which we all now partake. He defines what it means to be human. It means that all who once were headed up in Adam are now headed up in Jesus Christ. It means that Christ is not only God’s faithfulness toward all humankind, but he is also our faithfulness toward God. It means that we are inextricably united with the One who is the Image of God. Through this union, we become transformed, conformed to the image of God (Romans 8:29). And in Christ, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22). And so, whatever happens in the meantime, in the end, God will be “All in All” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Salvation is an Ontological Reality

Salvation is not
a juridical determination
but an ontological reality,
through the faithfulness of
Christ in the Incarnation
and the Cross.

Salvation is not a proposition but a Person, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ, from whom and in whom we receive life, being and personhood. Faith is not a contractual agreement concerning propositions about Christ but a dynamic relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Eternal life is not only in Jesus Christ, but he himself is eternal life. And it is in him that we live and move and have our being, both by the Creation and the Incarnation. It cannot finally be lost because the Incarnation cannot finally be undone.

The Only God the Gospel Knows

The only God
the Gospel knows
is the One revealed
in the Incarnation,
the Cross and the Creation,
as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Colossians 2:9-10)

The Continuity of All Things

Though the world be in chaos, Jesus Christ is the continuity of all things. For in Him all things consist and hold together — in Him who is the same yesterday, today and forever. And He is making all things new.

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:16-17)

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8)

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” (Revelation 21:5)

They Speak of Him

If we find something in the Scriptures but we do not find it in Jesus Christ, then we are not reading them correctly, for they speak of Him. Lord Jesus taught that the Scriptures are about him. If we read them as being about anything other than Christ, we are not reading them as Scripture.

One thing this means is that any interpretation of Scripture that is contrary to what Lord Jesus did and taught is an interpretation we should reject. Likewise, any interpretation of Scripture that portrays God in any way contradictory to how he is revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ is an interpretation we should reject. For Jesus Christ is the full and perfect revelation of God, the image of the invisible God.

Where We Encounter Christ

Christ is clothed with the Scriptures,
embodied in them and truly present in them,
that there we may encounter him.

So he said to them, “You foolish people – how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.”

So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:27-32)

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus encountered the Risen Lord not only by his physical presence with them but also as he opened up the Scriptures to them. Their hearts burned within them, though it was only later that they realized why, when the Lord opened their eyes and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Notice that there was a double action of unveiling. 

First, there was the opening of all the Scriptures, of what Moses and all the Prophets said, revealing that they are about him and the things it was necessary for him to suffer as he entered into his glory. The Greek word for “opened” here is dianoigo and means to open up thoroughly. Christ opened up the Scriptures to them, thoroughly expounding and explaining their meaning — which is Christ himself, his suffering and his glory. This unveiling of Christ in the Scriptures was so stunning and unexpected, and yet so thoroughly coherent, the hearts of the two disciples were ignited by it.

Second, there was the opening of their own eyes. Again, the Greek word is dianoigo. It happened when Jesus took the bread, blessed the bread and broke the bread before their eyes. And suddenly they recognized Jesus in their midst.

When they recognized him, his physical form disappeared from before their physical eyes, for they had encountered him and learned to recognize him in the opening of the Scriptures and in the Breaking of the Bread. We in the Church today are no less advantaged than the Emmaus disciples, for Christ is always with us, and we always have the opportunity to encounter him in the Word and in the Sacrament.

The image above is Supper at Emmaus (1601) by Caravaggio.