Living Peaceably with All (Romans 12:16–21) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:00 We continue this evening with our study of Paul's letter to the church at Rome, and we are in the twelfth chapter, the chapter that gives so many of the practical applications of the fruit of our understanding of the gospel that the apostle sets forth in the first eleven chapters. And, of course, chapter 13 is introduced by Paul's revelation to the people of God of the role and purpose of government in the life of human society and what the responsibility is of those in the church with respect to that human government. And, God willing, we'll take that up the next time. But this evening we're going to be looking at the last few verses of chapter 12 as we continue an evaluation of these short, aphoristic injunctions of Christian behavior.

1:02 And we're going to pick it up this evening at verse 16 and read to the end of the chapter, Romans 12, 16, and following. I'd like to ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God. Thank you. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion. Repay no one evil for evil, but have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

2:05 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in so doing, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Again, this teaching comes to us not from the cumulative wisdom of ancient sages, but it is the wisdom that comes from God Himself, who understands all things and who does all things well.

3:04 Let us, as his children, receive it as such. Please be seated. Let us pray. Again, our Lord and our God, we invoke Your presence in our midst as we endeavor to sit at the feet of the apostles whom Thou hast anointed and given Your Word for our edification, our instruction, admonition, to the end that we might live by the light of that lamp that You have set before our feet, so that in the finalist analysis, Christ may be glorified through the obedience of His people. Be with us now as we contemplate the matter set before us in this chapter of Romans, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

4:09 Last week we looked at the injunction to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep, and immediately added to it is Paul's statement that we ought to be of the same mind toward one another. Now, this is linked with that previous injunction of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who weep. It means more than having doctrinal unity. It's important for the people of God to believe the same things, to have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and have an agreement of our understanding of the content of our faith. That's why churches produce confessions of faith and say, this is what we as a body believe. But that intellectual assertion that we find in our creeds and doctrinal statements is only a portion of what the apostle is speaking about here.

5:21 Obviously, he is concerned for church unity when he says, be of the same mind one toward another. But the idea in this text is more than the mental, more than the intellectual. Being of the same mind in this context has to do with a certain affection. There is a certain affection that we are to have with equanimity among the people of God, that we are not to reserve our love and affection for a small little in-group or clique within the church, but our affections should be distributed to the whole body of Christ. And then he says, do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. The second clause here amplifies the first. If we just looked at the first one when he says, do not set your mind on high things, I think we would be astonished because that would sound like a direct contradiction to what the apostle enjoins on many other occasions when he calls us indeed to set our mind on high things, to focus our attention on the lofty principles of the kingdom of God, and that we should be concerned with those things that are pure, that are with respect to what has been accomplished for us by Jesus.

6:56 Those are high, lofty, and holy matters. But what he's talking about here now is not the focus of our thinking on the heavenly things of the gospel, but rather with respect to high places of position of status in this world. Some people are driven by the desire to be exalted over the rest of the people. They want to get to the top of the ladder to be in the highest position of power and authority. We looked recently in Mark's gospel at Jesus' rebuke of the scribes who were guilty of that very thing, seeking the highest status among the people, looking for the chief seats in the synagogues and at the feasts, and to be in a position of honor in the community. What is enjoined here is a warning against a life that is driven by fleshy ambition, where our ambition drives us to being ruthless in our relationships with other people, and we won't hesitate to step on their bodies on our desires to reach the top of the ladder.

8:35 And Paul says, don't do that. Don't set your mind. Don't fix your heart on the positions of esteem and exaltation in this world, but associate with the humble. This is merely one more example of following and imitating the life of Jesus, who associated Himself with those who were of low esteem. Again, I remind you of the joyous celebration that was inspired by the Holy Ghost in the song of Mary when she received the news from Gabriel that she would be giving birth to the Son of God. And she sang the Magnificat. You remember that? My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Savior.

9:41 And in the course of that song, she said, he has regarded the low estate of his handmaid. In other words, Mary is overcome that God would notice her in the depth of her humble situation in this world. She had no earthly claim to riches, to status, to significance. She was a humble peasant girl that God noticed and chose her to be the mother of God's incarnate Son. No woman in the history of the earth was visited with greater blessedness than was Mary, the mother of Jesus. And in that action of God, we see that it is God's manner of working that not many of the great and of the powerful have been called into the kingdom of God.

10:55 But God gives Himself to those of no reputation, those who are lowly, those who are meek in this world. Jesus practiced as the Son of God this same process that was manifested by the Father. And now, in turn, we are called to follow that example of associating with the humble. just before the service Burke and I were talking about the next verse, the next line I said I don't like this one too much it says do not be wise in your own opinion and I said I struggle with this and I'll be very candid with you I've spent so much time in my life studying and working to understand the matters of faith and theology, to train my own mind, to try to develop skills of critical thinking and analysis, that oftentimes I find myself having more confidence in my own judgment than I have in other people's judgments.

12:18 and there may be some justification for that, and yet at the same time, at the same time, I come up against a verse like this. Do not be wise in your own conceits. Do not rely simply on your own opinion. Now, let's think about this for a minute, folks. I'm not alone in this struggle with relying too heavily on my own opinion. Because in the final analysis, every one of us has to believe what you in fact believe. In terms of what you give your intellectual assent to, it is a matter of your conclusions that you come to after sifting through whatever evidence you examine, weak or strong. Nevertheless, no one else in this world can think for you. You have to think for yourself. Now, Paul is not denying that reality of human thought and conviction. We have to think for ourselves because there's no one else we can look to to do the thinking for us.

13:43 But have you ever wondered why you have so many disagreements with other people? I listen to newscasters, I read in the paper, and sometimes I'll listen to a speech and I'll have to say, I disagree with 98% of what that person just said. We are in such a radically different page that these people seem to think in one way, and it's the antithesis of how I think, and I step back from that from time to time and say, why? Why do we think so differently? Why do we come to such radically different conclusions about so many important things in this world? And obviously, it's easy to see why Christians come to such radical different conclusions from pagans because the worldview in which they embrace is so different. But what about among Christians, where you believe in the same God and the same Lord and the same faith, the same Bible, and yet you still come to such radically different views on so many things? Well, when I find myself in disagreement with somebody on something, even if it's on many things, I try to find something that we can agree on. If it's only the weather, can we agree that it's a nice day today? And at least that's something to work from because if I can find a point of agreement with you or with somebody else, and then I look from that agreement and follow the train of thought and see where we come to a fork in the road and see why that person goes in one direction and I go in a different direction. In other words, where we differ, the first thing I want to find out is why we have come to such different conclusions. You remember the story of Alice in Wonderland. On her journey, she came to the fork

15:55 in the road. She didn't know which way to go. And in her confusion, she looked up in the tree and saw the Cheshire cat smiling at her. And she said to the Cheshire cat, which way should I go? And the Cheshire Cat said, well, that depends. Where are you headed?

16:17 Alice said, I don't know. Cheshire Cat said, then it doesn't matter. It's previewing the coming of the greatest sage of our day, Yogi Berra, who said, if you come to a fork in the road, take it. But again, we have to ask the question, why? Are we inclined to take this road rather than that road? And that involves not only an analysis of other people's manner of thinking, but also our own. One of the most important things we can learn as Christians, dealing with differences of opinion among ourselves, and with disagreements, and with frequent controversy, is that from time to time, we need to take those guns that we have drawn from our holsters and aimed at our adversaries and at our opponents and turn them in on ourselves and ask ourselves, why do you believe what you believe? Are you just opinionated? Are you fighting for some idea that you have inherited from the love lines of your youth, from the denomination in which you were raised, or from your own house, or from your school? Why do you embrace the opinions that you do? And then the next question, when you turn those guns on yourself, is, are my opinions consistent with the teaching of the Word of God? Because in the final analysis, dear friends, my opinions don't mean anything.

18:01 what matters is truth as God defines it. That's why, since we are so prone to error, so given to delusion, that we ought never to trust merely in our own views. You know, the preacher that stands in the pulpit should study the text of Scripture diligently as much as possible. Examine the original languages. Try to get an accurate understanding of what the text says. But if he just relies on his own intellect, he's doomed. That's why it's important to let the wind of the ages brow through your minds. When I come to a text, I want to know what the greatest minds in the history of the church have understood by that text.

19:03 What can they teach me? Because if I rely on my own mind, I will miss the insights and the counsel of those far more knowledgeable and wiser than I am myself. And so the apostle warns, Don't be wise in your own opinion. Examine your own opinions and see if they are just that, opinions, or whether they have some solid foundation in truth. You remember in the history of Western civilization, that the golden age of Greece that was brought forth early on in their history, at one point threatened to collapse when people abandoned the pursuit of ultimate and objective truth.

20:12 And in those days, the skepticism and cynicism brought to the fore the kind of political relativism that reigns in our culture today. And everybody was doing what was right in their own minds, in their own opinion, abandoned any ultimate view of truth. until the gadfly of Athens began to ask the penetrating questions as Socrates went around from person to person and basically forced upon them the examined life, saying, why do you think the way you think? Why do you act the way you act? And of course, no one more brilliantly incorporated Socrates' pursuit than his star pupil Plato. And some of you will remember in the Republic that famous analogy of the cave that talked about prisoners who were held captive in this dark cave where the only light that was there was the light that came from some dimly burning candles that cast shadows on the wall. And the only perception that the prisoners had of reality was the perception of the shadows that they saw there. And by looking at these shadows dancing on the wall, they thought that they were really achieving a high level of truth until finally they were freed, and they came out the cave and into the sunlight and saw things not as shadows, but as they were in reality.

22:13 And when that happened, when the light of the sun dawned upon their consciousness, their views that they had developed watching shadows dancing on the cave were completely annihilated. And what was the point of the story? Plato was making a distinction between knowledge and opinion.

22:42 And in his view, the opinion was the dancing shadow on the wall that couldn't stand up to the light of day. And so I ask the question of myself, of you, do our opinions, can they stand the scrutiny of the Word of God? Can they stand the light of divine revelation, or must they be discarded? do not be wise in your own opinion.

23:23 Then the apostle goes on to say, Repay no one evil for evil. Before I try to expound that, I need to point out that after last Sunday evening's study, a member of the congregation came up to me and asked me a somewhat provocative question. He said to me, R.C., he says, what's the difference between evil and sin? Because here Paul is talking about evil, not repaying evil with evil.

24:01 And the question, obviously, is this. Are the words evil and sin synonyms? do they mean exactly the same thing? And the answer, dear friends, is no, they do not mean the same thing. And the difference between evil and sin is the difference between genus and specie. All sin is evil, but not all evil is sin. Sin is one particular, although poignant, manifestation of evil. But when the Scriptures speak of evil, it considers within that concept of evil, many things besides moral failure in the human behavior. In the Old Testament, for example, the Hebrew word for evil has at least eight different nuances for what it means, and it can refer to any experience in this world that we do not welcome as being pleasant or good.

25:24 For example, when God reveals Himself through the prophet Isaiah, He speaks of His own providence by which he visits the world with prosperity, but he also brings calamity. And the famine in the field, the earthquake that destroys villages, are experiences of nature that may be catastrophic and bring upon us all kinds of bad consequences. But we don't go to the field that fails to yield its fruit in abundance or to the earthquake and bring them to trial and accuse them of sin. There are bad things, evil happenings, what we would call natural evil as distinguished from moral evil. Moral evil has to do with the behavior of moral agents, agents whom God has created with the faculty of choosing, and agents who are capable of obeying or disobeying the commandments of their Creator. The Confession gives this definition of sin. Sin is any want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God, so that sin is defined by a failure to obey a command or prohibition of God Himself. Historically, the concept of evil has been defined by the great minds of the church, such as Aquinas and St. Augustine, as a negation or a privation, that evil, negatio, is the negation or rejection of the good, or privation, privatio, a lack of the good.

27:30 We say in a bumper crop at the time of the fall harvest that we had a good crop. If there's a famine, there is a lack of a good crop, a privation or the negative side of the crop, and we say that is evil. But again, it's not a moral evil. But what moral evil has in common with other kinds of evil is this idea of a lack or a negation, because sin lacks righteous obedience. Sin is defined in negative terms. It is unrighteousness. It is godlessness. It is disobedience. You notice the negative use of these terms. They are a lack of virtue. But here, Paul is talking in the moral realm when he says, Repay no one evil for evil. And sometimes we say in our own culture, if someone hurts us or someone offends us, we say now it's payback time. What goes around comes around, and we look for the opportunity to wound the one who has wounded us and pay them back.

29:10 We want to get even. In fact, even worse, we're very seldom satisfied with getting even. Getting even is a tie, and a tie is like kissing your sister. It doesn't give us any great satisfaction. We don't want to get even. We want to get one up. We want to win in the battle of human relationships. And Paul said that disposition that reigns in the human heart is a manifestation of corruption and is itself an example of moral evil if we are victims of somebody else's sin. the flesh wants to get even and to pay it back. And the payback involves us in committing sin because somebody has committed sin against us. The apostle said, no, that's not the way the Christian life is to be. We're not supposed to return evil for evil. And then he goes on to talk here about relationships that have suffered from some kind of brokenness and some kind of conflict and how we're to handle that conflict. Repay no one evil for evil. That's the basic premise. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. That is, people are watching you.

31:00 and do they know of you even if they're unbelievers and even if they slander you day in and day out is there something they see in your life that even in their paganness they cannot deny do they see that you have a tender heart do they see that your word can be trusted Do they see that you're not out to destroy them? As hostile as unbelievers may be to Christians, they're not blind, and they can see certain virtues that they don't perhaps enjoy admitting that are there, but they know are there. And Paul says, have regard for good things in the sight of all men. And then, if it is possible, as much as depends upon you,

32:08 live peaceably with all men. Do you have any enemies? Do you have any broken relationships? Are you living peaceably with everybody that you know and have met? If you say yes to those questions, I would suggest that you're wise in your own cassettes and you need to evaluate your own opinions because you're probably not telling the truth, either me or to yourself. We've all experienced broken relationships. We've all experienced significant conflicts with other people in our lifetime. This is one of the most painful elements of human experience. Now, Paul says that we are to live peaceably with all men. Our Lord said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. So the making of peace is something that should be part of our Christian character, that we ought to endeavor to live peaceably with everybody. Now, at the same time, we're warned in the Bible to beware of that one of whom everybody speaks well, because there are those who are the peacemakers of the flesh.

33:44 There are those who are the Neville Chamberlains of this world who think they have achieved peace for our time when they have not. There were the false prophets of Israel of whom Jeremiah complained when they said, peace, peace, when there was no peace. There is what Martin Luther called a fleshy peace, a peace that is born on falsehood rather than truth, a peace born of cowardice rather than of courage. We understand that is the wrong kind of peace. And we also know it's impossible, it is impossible, to live at peace with all men. But notice how Paul qualifies this admonition with the introduction. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. I get a little bit of relief there, not a whole lot, because he realizes that he's addressing a problem that strains possibility to its limit.

35:04 But again, here's where the burden comes, that we are to live peaceably with all men as much as it depends on us, as much as it depends on us. When somebody offends me, I can have a spirit of retaliation, a spirit of revenge, a spirit of vengeance, which only exacerbates the tension and the conflict and deepens the chasm that separates me from that person. Now, what Paul is saying is if somebody offends you, don't strike back. Try to be at peace with that person, which is so hard. This is what our Lord did throughout His earthly ministry. He didn't have the word doormat printed on His forehead. No one could ever accuse Jesus of being a doormat. No one could ever accuse Paul of being a doormat. He's not advocating that we emulate Casper milquetoast when it comes to living out the Christian life. But he's saying, I want people who are not bellicose.

36:29 I want people who are not belligerent. I want people who don't love a fight, who don't throw gasoline on the fire. as much as possible, as far as it concerns you, live at peace with all men. Now, I've used a word several times already tonight, and that is the word offense. Let me make a distinction that I believe is an important distinction, that we all should be equipped with this distinction, and that is the distinction between an offense given and an offense taken. The difference between an offense given and an offense taken. If I walk up to somebody and with malice aforethought crush their toes under my heel and intentionally seeks to hurt them, I have offended them, and they have taken offense.

37:34 And they have every right to take offense because I have given an offense. However, we live in a world where there are people who take offense where there is no offense. People are offended by something you may say or do that is perfectly just and right to say or do, but they don't like it, and so they are offended. They have no just grounds for taking that offense, and when they take an offense, when none is given, they are doing something that is offensive by responding in that manner. So just because somebody is offended does not mean that you have given offense. But it may mean that you've given offense. And so we have to guard ourselves in the middle of this exchange of offenses. As much as depends upon you, live peaceably with all men. That is, as much as it depends on you, don't be offending people needlessly.

39:06 it. Be sensitive to people. And if they are offended in something that you've done that is just, then that's their problem, that they take offense, and there's not much you can do about it except to try to maintain a peaceable relationship with them. Now, this warning tends to escalate here. Beloved, it's interesting that... that Paul prefaces the next admonition with this term of affection for his readers. I wonder why he does that. I know lots of times when I'm preaching, and I know I'm getting to a place that may be hard for the people to handle. I try to do two things. I try to remind the people I love them, and so I'll say, beloved, you know. And that should be a signal to you that there's something punch that's coming any minute at that point so that you may be on guard and prepare yourselves for it. But Paul is not just flattering his readers. He loved them, and he understood their temptations.

40:39 He understood their weaknesses. He understood their struggles for Christian maturity and for obedience. And so what he is saying here in terms of addressing them as beloved signals a tough saying that's about to be delivered. And listen to what that tough saying is.

41:06 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves. Wow. Do not avenge yourselves. When you've been injured, Lord. don't seek revenge on your own.

41:28 Because the deepest natural desire when we have been wounded by somebody else, as I said earlier, is payback, is revenge. For us to be the avengers of our own pain. Now, there are a couple of concepts that are deeply rooted in Scripture that must be distinguished. One of the most important concepts that we have in the New Testament is the concept of vindication. Vindication takes place when somebody who has been accused of some crime or evil is found to be innocent of the charge, or that their labor, which may be ridiculed or scorned by people, is shown to be of great value despite the mockery of this world.

42:37 This has to do with justice. Justice is served when innocent people are shown to be innocent. When innocent people are exonerated of charges brought against them, where the charges have shown to be false and indeed slanderous, the innocent person has now experienced vindication. Our Lord gave a majestic parable about this matter in the parable of the unjust judge, sometimes called the parable of the importunate widow, who brought her case where she had been wronged to the court and sought justice. but the judge who would not hear her case had no regard for man or for God. And yet we recall she wore him out with her ceaseless entreaties until finally, just to get rid of this pest, he heard her case. And then, of course, the point that Jesus gave here is that if an unjust judge in this world who has no regard for people or for God will from time to time actually execute justice, how much more will your heavenly Father be quick to bring justice to bear?

44:14 And Jesus asked the question rhetorically, and will not God vindicate His elect who cry unto Him day and night? Remember when Jonathan Edwards was unjustly accused by a malicious man in his congregation of sin, And as a result, Edwards, who had loved that congregation and served it for so many years there in Massachusetts, was kicked out of his parish, exiled into ministry to the Indians. And when his friends heard these scandalous charges against him, they begged Edwards to speak in his own defense, and he refused to do it. And they said to him, what's wrong with you, Dr. Edwards? Don't you want to be vindicated?

45:18 And he said, yes, very much. I want to be vindicated. Well, then why don't you defend yourself. And he said, because I'm afraid that if I seek to defend myself, whatever defense I will bring to bear will be that defense that the Lord will deem sufficient. But if I remain silent and rely upon Him, that He will vindicate me, and I'm convinced that the vindication that He will give will be so much greater than anything I could achieve by my own defense. Now, that may seem foolish, dear friends, and in many of these cases, the vindication won't take place until we stand before the bar of justice in heaven. But in Edward's case, after ten years, this malicious member of the church was so overcome by conscience that he confessed to the congregation that he had lied entirely in the false charges that he brought against Professor Edwards.

46:33 And Edwards lived to see his vindication in this life. This is what the book of Job is all about, where Job's integrity is vindicated by God, who is Job's Redeemer. But there's a difference between vindication and vengeance. Vindication is that which shows to be innocent. Vengeance is payback for the harm that you have innocently had to bear. And again, we not only want to be vindicated, proven to be innocent, but we want revenge. Now, let me ask you this question. Is revenge a bad thing?

47:33 thank you what do you say yes it's a bad thing right a little child shall lead them into error Revenge is not a bad thing. Revenge is a good thing. If revenge were a bad thing, then not only would it be evil for us to seek revenge, but it would be equally or even more evil for God to seek revenge. But revenge in and of itself is not evil. What is evil is when we assume for ourselves something that does not belong to us. It belongs to God. And God says we ought not to avenge ourselves because, he says clearly, vengeance is mine.

48:39 God owns it. It is His property and His prerogative alone to dispense it, although He delegates, as we will see in chapter 13, to human offices the responsibility of vengeance in giving that power to the civil magistrate. But in the final analysis, vengeance belongs to God. And notice what he says, vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay. Ha! There will be payback. there will be vengeance. our offenses will be avenged. But the one who is to do that is God. Why? Because when God brings vengeance to bear, He brings it perfectly. His justice never punishes more severely than the sin. If vengeance is left to us and we have been the victim of somebody else's abuse, our fallen condition is such that we are unlikely to stop at a just level of payment, getting even.

50:13 We're not satisfied until we can afflict, inflict more pain than the crime deserves. God never, ever does that. Let me hurry to finish this chapter. Therefore, going back to the Sermon on the Mount, really, Paul says, if your enemy's hungry, It's the same to you. Don't just... not starve him, but feed him. If he's hungry, you feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink.

50:59 You don't ask him why he's thirsty. You don't ask him why he's hungry. If somebody's high on drugs and they fall into a ditch and can't get out, you don't ask them how they got into the ditch. You don't ask them what they're doing there in the ditch. You don't ask them why they have AIDS. that's not our job. Our job is to bind up their wounds. If they're hungry to feed them, if they're thirsty to give them drink, this is what the ministry of mercy is in the life of the church. And if somebody suffers from a sexually transmitted social disease, we minister to them in the middle of their suffering. That's what Jesus did, and that's what His people are to do.

52:00 For in so doing, you will help heap coals of fire on His head. Now, that's a tough text, but what does it mean? that rather than repay your enemy with evil, you repay him with good. You repay him with kindness. And when you respond to evil with good, not only do you keep your own hands clean from producing more evil, but you put the coals of fire on their head. you expose them to God's wrath, because if they continue to persist in their evil treatment of you while you're repaying them with good, every time you repay the guilty party with good, you increase their guilt before God. Now, that's not the reason that Paul says we ought to repay evil with good so that we can really get these evildoers into trouble. That's not the point.

53:16 But again, the burden is no longer on us. If we return good for evil, then our hands are clean, and the exposure to the lightning bolt of God is on the other person. I remember when I was a senior in seminary. I had the task of being a student pastor in a Hungarian refugee church in a steel town in western Pennsylvania. We had less than a hundred members. And there was a lady in our congregation who was somewhat vexing, and on one occasion I made a remark to her that she found offensive and she would come to church on Sunday morning and sit and look out the window so that everybody could see her ignoring my sermon and it created a real problem for me.

54:23 I didn't know what to do about it. So I went to see this woman. I apologized to her for the remark that I had made. And honestly, I apologized in tears. And I told her I was sorry for saying what I said, and I hoped that she would forgive me. She wouldn't forgive me. So I went a second time, and again I asked her to forgive me. She refused to do it. Well, I had to meet once a month with my appointed mentor for the student ministry there, and he was an 85-year-old retired missionary who had spent 50 years in China on the mission field, and he and his wife, for one five-year period of that, were incarcerated in two different concentration camps, and this guy was a saint. And I had to go with my hat in my hand and give him the report. He said, how are things going? I said, not so good. I said, I alienated Mrs. So-and-so, who was the pillar of the church. And I said, he said, well, what'd you say? When I said what I said, I said to her, he started laughing and he slapped his knee. He said, you didn't really say that. I said, yes. And he said, oh, he said, it's about time somebody said something like that. That's what he really said. But anyway, I'm still confessing my sin to my confessor there. And when I was all done with it, he said, you know, he said, you made one really big mistake here. He said, it was a mistake to say what you said. You shouldn't have said that. But your biggest mistake was apologizing for it twice.

56:10 once you apologized to that woman sincerely and sincerely repented and asked her forgiveness, the ball was now on her court. And her refusal to forgive in the light of your repentance was far worse than the offense that you made in the first place. He said, when that happens, don't keep pursuing it. the coals of fire are on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This is the grand strategy of Jesus, the grand strategy of the apostolic church, and it is the grand strategy of the Christian life.

57:03 As much as within us is to overcome evil, not with evil. but with good. Let's pray. Father, so many of these injunctions that You have given to us are so difficult for us to perform. And when we hear them, we are immediately aware of how desperately we need Your grace to carry them out. So help us as we seek to do that which is pleasing to You. And we ask, O God, that You would have Your way with us. In Jesus' name, amen.