“See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.” 1 Thessalonians 5:15 NLT
The natural man wants to pay back. We want to give it back to people as they did to us. It gratifies our ego and makes us feel powerful.
But the kingdom of God is inverted. Its upside-down approach says we can only pay back with good because we have no evil.
The anchor scripture shows that evil will be done to us. It’s not a probability or something to wish away. Evil times will happen; evil people will attempt to harm us. But our reaction to these is what matters.
Will we repay evil with evil? If that happens, it means we’re not different from those we call evil. But when we continuously repay evil with good, which becomes our default reaction, it shows that our nature has been transformed.
How do we repay evil with good as we work?
If you have ever lost a customer to a competitor before, you’ll notice that there’s that initial ill feeling towards yourself, the client, or the competitor before you snap back and act the way you want.
In this scenario, paying back evil with evil doesn’t always mean getting back at the competitor. Sometimes, entering a state of sadness and depression is an evil act. The competitor doesn’t suffer the resultant evil, but we do.
Paying back with good doesn’t just happen because we tell ourselves that’s what we want to do. It must come from our heart, which also gets filled with the abundance of our words.
When we experience evil, what thoughts come to our minds and what words come out of our mouths? This foundation must be addressed because we will do evil if we think evil and speak evil.
The only way to pay back evil with good is to take in so much of God’s word to the point where we can only think and speak good.
To react to a worldly action using God’s upside-down approach, we must understand how it works before applying it.
It is possible to do good with an evil intent. This happens when we only tackle the evil nature at the surface. But seeking to understand how God’s kingdom operates will help us think and speak good, even when evil is done to us.
“I have the nature of Christ.”
What’s your default reaction to adverse situations?
There’s nothing like, “This is who I am.” If that nature isn’t Christ-like, it can and should be changed. Anything that’s not of God in us can be cast down. So, I believe that change is possible.
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