A Word in Season: Evil for Evil (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

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Let me tell you a football story, or, if that doesn't quite translate, a soccer story, about two players, both hard men, who played on opposing sides on a number of different occasions.

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Early on in that sequence of matches, at the end of a bad -tempered game, there was a clash between the two of them, and one of them was quite badly injured, and the other poured salt into the wound by insulting and abusing the injured player.

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They played again against each other after that, with apparently little obvious antagonism, until an occasion on which the previously injured player seemed to spot his moment and went in brutally hard against the man that he had considered had both injured and insulted him, in the kind of tackle that, if not quite career -ending, is typically permanently career -hindering.

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I think that probably happens far more often than we would wish to acknowledge, both on the field of sport and in other arenas.

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It's the kind of thing that at best would be considered unsportsmanlike, at worst you'd almost say it borders on the criminal.

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And yet, tragically, the same spirit can be found in the Church of Jesus Christ. Paul needed to warn the

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Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 15, see that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for all.

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He says you need to be alert to this attitude and its actions in the Church of Jesus Christ, and you need to take care to police that spiritually among yourselves to make sure that this doesn't happen.

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And you can imagine how it does. There's a perceived insult or injury.

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Perhaps someone doesn't feel that they're properly celebrated, or they feel like they're being held back, or they feel like their reputation is being undermined, or they believe that they've been slighted in some way.

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And so they wait until the opportunity arises, either publicly or privately, to get their own back.

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The evil might be imagined, but the evil could be real. Even Christians, because there's still remaining sin in us, can at times really do harm to our brothers and sisters.

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We can do evil against them. There might also be unbelievers who are in the mix, people who are either professing

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Christians but not genuinely so, or perhaps somebody who's in the congregation and not yet converted, and evil can result.

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And whether the evil is real or imagined, the great temptation is to take matters into our own hands and to seize the moment when it comes, either a particular campaign or just an opportunistic drive to get back what we think we deserve.

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And Paul says that cannot be the case among the people of God. In fact, he seems even to suggest that though there may have been evil done against us, the proper response would be even then to do good to others.

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He says that a true Christian with a God -like spirit, with a Christ -like mind, indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit who is gentle and merciful and gracious, is to set out after good both for ourselves and for all.

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Rather than repaying evil for evil, rather than a payback culture that either looks for or waits for or even constructs an opportunity to get our own back, we ought to be those who are striving to do good to others, and genuine good, not just some saccharine religious niceness, but a genuine

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God -pleasing blessing to the bodies and souls of other men and women.

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It is a genuinely Christ -like disposition, something that only the

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Holy Spirit can work in us and which we must be careful to cultivate, watching out for and resisting the contrary spirit.

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We are to do that within the congregation of the righteous, we are to do that in the community of faith, and we are to do it for all.

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We are to be marked, not by this spirit of selfish and bitter antagonism, but by a desire to bring genuine blessing to all with whom we come into contact, especially perhaps to the household of faith, and then to others besides.

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So let's watch for it in ourselves as well as help others keep a guard over it, not to render evil for evil, but actively to seek after doing real