1. Grace to you and peace from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word comes from our Epistle lesson today from Romans 12:9-21 for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost. It’s entitled, “The Real Enemy,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. Every one of us has a short list — maybe a long list — of people we would not mind seeing get their comeuppance. The neighbor who never returns the ladder. The coworker who takes credit for your idea. The family member who knows exactly which button to push, and pushes it every Thanksgiving. Paul knows this list exists. He doesn’t pretend it doesn’t. And that’s what makes Romans 12:9–21 so useful — and so uncomfortable.
3. Paul begins simply: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). Notice he doesn’t say love should be polite or convenient. He says genuine — literally, in the Greek, “unhypocritical.” No mask. No performance. That kind of love shows up specifically in how we treat people who have wronged us, which is exactly where Paul goes next: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (v. 14). “Repay no one evil for evil” (v. 17). “Never avenge yourselves” (v. 19).
4. If that sounds impossible, good — it’s supposed to. Because on our own, we are much better at cursing than blessing. We are gifted, natural-born grudge-holders. Left to our sinful nature, we would rather nurse a wound than heal it, and we are remarkably creative about finding reasons why our particular grudge is the justified one. The real enemy Scripture keeps pointing us back to isn’t usually the person across the pew, the office, or the fence line — it’s the sin that lives in us, the old Adam who would rather be right than be reconciled (see Romans 7:18–19, where Paul confesses he does the very evil he doesn’t want to do).
5. You see, the real enemy resides inside. “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?” (Mt 7:4). “Take up the cross, deny yourself, hate your own life and lose it” (cf Mt 16:24). In Romans, Paul uses the Greek word anthrakas for burning coals. From this, of course, we derive our English term anthrax. It designates an infection brought about by the bacillus anthracis bacterium. The typical symptom presents as a section of necrotized tissue with vividly crimson skin surrounding the blackened lesion. It also enacts the same effects invisibly and internally on lungs and intestines. The germ feeds on hemoglobin proteins in the blood. It can prove both contagious and fatal among animals and humans as well as between the two. The pathogenic particles may remain dormant in the environment for extended periods, years even, only to reactivate under conducive conditions. It’s why armies illegally employ anthrax as one of the most common biological weapons.
6. We not only face the enemy within, we also fight against the devil as well. St. Paul advises us. “Stand against the schemes of the devil,” he goes on. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:11–12). Ah, yes, the ancient serpentine adversary. But should we share a table with Satan? Should we be serving him supper? Is Scripture really instructing us to have a drink with the demons? Ought we live in peaceable harmony with the prince of darkness? Certainly not, when this epistle (v 9b), all the others, the Gospels themselves, and the entire Bible demand we resist and run the other direction as fast and as far as we can!
7. Then comes the verse that always stops people in their tracks: “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head” (v. 20, quoting Proverbs 25:21–22). At first hearing, that sounds almost vindictive — like Paul is offering us a passive-aggressive form of revenge, kindness as a weapon. But that’s not the picture. Burning coals in Scripture aren’t only about judgment; they’re also about cleansing. When the angel seraph touched Isaiah’s unclean lips with a burning coal from the altar, it wasn’t to destroy him — it was to declare, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for” (Isaiah 6:6–7). Coals from the altar don’t just consume. In God’s hands, they purify.
8. That’s the deeper gospel underneath this text. We are not commanded to love our enemies because we’re strong enough to pull it off by sheer willpower. We’re able to love our enemies because Christ has already absorbed the fire meant for us. On the cross, Jesus bore the full heat of God’s righteous judgment against sin — our sin, and the sin of everyone who has ever wronged us. He didn’t wait for us to get our act together. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) — while we were, in fact, His enemies (Romans 5:10). The coals of God’s wrath fell on Jesus instead of on us. And now, risen and ascended, He hands us not judgment but forgiveness, warm as the charcoal fire He kindled on the beach for Peter, the disciple who had denied Him three times (John 21:9). That fire didn’t punish Peter. It restored him.
9. This is why Paul can say, in the same breath as “never avenge yourselves,” the very next line: “overcome evil with good” (v. 21). That’s not a suggestion to grit your teeth and fake it. It’s a promise rooted in what God has already done for you. You have been forgiven an unpayable debt. The coals that should have consumed you instead cleansed you, in the waters of Baptism and at this altar, where Jesus’ body and blood are given “for the forgiveness of sins.” Out of that overflow, you are free — genuinely, unhypocritically free — to feed the enemy, to bless the one who wronged you, to leave vengeance in hands far more capable and far more just than your own: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (v. 19, quoting Deuteronomy 32:35).
10. None of this makes reconciliation easy. Jesus Himself, in today’s Gospel, tells Peter that following Him means denying yourself and taking up a cross (Matthew 16:24) — and crosses, by definition, hurt. Loving people who have hurt you is a cross. But it is a cross carried in the shadow of His cross, not instead of it. You don’t manufacture this love. You receive it, first, from Him — and then, only then, you have some to give away.
11. So go ahead and make your list today — the ladder-borrower, the credit-stealer, the Thanksgiving instigator. Then remember: you were on somebody’s list too, including God’s, and He chose coals of mercy instead of coals of wrath. Genuine love, blessing instead of cursing, feeding instead of feuding — this is not a burden laid on you from outside. It’s the shape of a life that has already been set on fire by grace. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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