Romans 12:9–21
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21
Let’s start with the hard part. The next verse after this one is a troubling one: “Obey all earthly authorities.” And as usual we have been taught to misread this text.
Most early churches grew in the in-between spaces, cities full of war refugees and contested loyalties. Rome had its share of instability, but it also had the center of the imperial metropole and a landscape of local neighborhood governments that operated as a parallel form of collective decision-making.
It is this parallel structure that Paul references in the next verse. Paul isn’t talking about Emperors. Paul’s call to harmony and noble action is a call to care for neighbors by building and supporting local leadership and community power.[1]
Most early churches (certainly an anachronistic word) were a blend of Jews and “God-fearing” Gentiles. But the Romans were a predominantly-Gentile church adjusting to a returning marginalized Jewish community in their midst. Prior to Paul’s writing, most if not all of the Jewish people had been forcibly removed from Rome and only recently allowed to return.
In the face of this, Paul asks that the church offer hospitality to strangers and the lowly amidst the temples of Roman wealth, to avoid the temptation to allyship with the forces of Empire.
“Bless those who persecute you” is not acquiescence. It is a radical call to have hope in the slow, patient work of building neighborhood power and turning the tide. Even in the belly of the beast, we can act with integrity, trusting that our God is moving within our work to bring vengeance and transformation. Another world is not only possible, “the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor.” (Romans 8:22). That is how we overcome evil with good.
[1] See this interview with scholar Robert Mason: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/law-order-and-romans-13/id1441649707?i=1000544881770
Rev. Jay Bergen is a pastor at Germantown Mennonite Church in Philadelphia, and a volunteer organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), a campaign fighting to end life sentences and heal communities across Pennsylvania.