Overcoming evil with good
Overcoming evil with good
Having moved, in our study of Romans 12 and 13, from the hatred of evil, through the non-repayment and the conquest of evil, to its punishment, we are left with a problem of harmonization. We have seen that evil is to be both not repaid and repaid, depending on who is the agent. But how can evil be at one and the same time ‘overcome’ (12:21) and ‘punished’ (13:4)? This is a more difficult question and goes to the heart of the debate between Christian pacifists and ‘just war’ theorists. The Christian mind goes at once to the cross of Christ, because there they were reconciled. God overcame our evil by justifying us only because he first condemned it in Christ, and by redeeming us only because he first paid the ransom-price. He did not overcome evil by refusing to punish it, but by accepting the punishment himself. At the cross human evil was both punished and overcome, and God’s mercy and justice were both satisfied.
How, then, can these two be reconciled in our attitudes to evil today? In the light of the cross, Christians cannot come to terms with any attitude to evil which either bypasses its punishment in an attempt to overcome it, or punishes it without seeking to overcome it. Certainly the state as the agent of God’s wrath must witness to his justice, in punishing evil-doers. But Christian people also want to witness to his mercy. It is over-simple to say that individuals are directed by love, states by justice. For individual love should not be indifferent to justice, nor should the state’s administration of justice overlook that love for neighbour which is the fulfilment of the law. Moreover, the state is not under obligation in its pursuit of justice to demand the highest penalty the law permits. The God who laid down the ‘life for life’ principle himself protected the life of the first murderer (Gen. 4:15). Extenuating circumstances will help to temper justice with mercy. The retributive (punishing the evil-doer) and the reformative (reclaiming and rehabilitating him) go hand in hand, for then evil is simultaneously punished and overcome.
It is considerably more difficult to imagine such a reconciliation in war, when nations rather than individuals are involved. But at least Christians must struggle with the dilemma and try not to polarize over it. ‘Just war’ theorists tend to concentrate on the need to resist and punish evil, and to overlook the other biblical injunction to overcome it. Pacifists, on the other hand, tend to concentrate on the need to overcome evil with good, and to forget that according to Scripture evil deserves to be punished. Can these two biblical emphases be reconciled? Christians will at least stress the need to look beyond the defeat and surrender of the national enemy to its repentance and rehabilitation. The so-called ‘politics of forgiveness’, developed by Haddon Willmer,14 is relevant here. David Atkinson sums up this emphasis well:
Forgiveness is a dynamic concept of change. It refuses to be trapped into a fatalistic determinism. It acknowledges the reality of evil, wrong and injustice, but it seeks to respond to wrong in a way that is creative of new possibilities. Forgiveness signals an approach to wrong in terms, not of peace at any price, nor of a destructive intention to destroy the wrongdoer, but of a willingness to seek to reshape the future in the light of the wrong, in the most creative way possible.15
On the cross, by both demanding and bearing the penalty of sin, and so simultaneously punishing and overcoming evil, God displayed and demonstrated his holy love; the holy love of the cross should characterize our response to evil-doers today.