Unattached To Self

Unattached to Self

Read: Matthew 5:38-42

“Do not resist an evil person.”

Matthew 5:39

“True charity means returning good for evil—always.”

—Mary Mazzarello

IN WORD There is perhaps no more difficult point for the flesh to wrestle with than this one. Nonresistance is not our natural inclination when we’re confronted with evil. And, in fact, there are surely qualifications that need to be applied to this verse. Are despots to be given passive permission to pillage and destroy? Are serious moral issues to be forfeited to a secular culture? Are we to express no opinion at all?

Surely Jesus means for us to resist evil. We are encouraged—even commanded—at several points in Scripture to stand firm against the evil one. So what does He mean by this? He means that when people confront us, we are to counter evil with good (Romans 12:21). Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13). Evil aggression is never defeated by an evil response.

Watchman Nee tells a story of a Chinese Christian who used to go to great pains to pump water from an irrigation stream into his rice field. Every night, his neighbor, whose fields were lower, would make a breach in the dividing wall and drain the Christian’s water into his own fields. The theft was repeated frequently. The Christian asked his friends for advice about the right thing to do. A fellow believer advised that Christians ought to do something more than what is right. The next few days, the Christian filled the neighbor’s fields first before filling his own. The neighbor knew his acts were evil, but he was amazed at the Christian’s nonresistance. Good won out over evil. The neighbor soon became a Christian. He had observed a higher way.^a

IN DEED What is your reaction to evil and offensive people? No, God does not tell you to be a doormat. He does, however, tell you to demonstrate a goodness that surpasses anything this world has known. Give evil people a glimpse of heaven. Do not fall to their level; we were born from a much higher source. Let them see it and be amazed.

^a Watchman Nee, Sit, Walk, Stand (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale Christian Literature Crusade, 1977), 32–33.