Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Be not overcome of evil - for then you are the conquered party,
But overcome evil with good - and then the victory is yours; you have subdued your enemy in the noblest sense.
Remarks:
(1) Let it never be forgotten that the redeeming mercy of God in Christ is, in the souls of believers, the living spring of all holy obedience (Romans 12:1).
(2) As redemption under the Gospel is not by the sacrifice of irrational victims, as under the law-when redemption was only in promise, and could only be held forth in type-but "by the precious blood of Christ," by which now "once in the end of the world" sin hath been put completely and forever away (1 Peter 1:18-19; Hebrews 9:26), so all the sacrifices which believers are now called to offer are "living sacrifices;" and summed up, as they all are, in self-consecration to the service of God, they are "holy," they are "acceptable unto God," and they together make up 'our rational service.' In this light, what are we to think of the so-called 'unbloody sacrifice of the mass, continually offered to God as a propitiation for the sins both of the living and the dead,' which the adherents of Rome's corrupt faith have for ages been taught to believe is the highest and holiest act of Christian worship? The least that can be said of it is, that it is in flat contradiction to the teaching of this Epistle to the first Christians of Rome.
(3) There is no snare against which Christians have more need to be on their guard than that of supposing that they are at liberty to be conformed to the world to any extent short of what is positively sinful. If nothing else will convince them of this, the gradual sapping and mining of their own spirituality, which inevitably results from such a course, to all who have ever tasted that the Lord is gracious, cannot fail to inspire them with the suspicion that all is not right; and if any tenderness is left to them, they must sooner or later come to see that, in their vain attempt to serve two masters, they are reaping the fruit of neither service-laying up for themselves a store of varied disappointment, and strewing the pathway of return to their first Husband with thorns and briers. As it is by "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit" that we first come to apprehend, in all its reality, breadth, and grandeur, "what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God," so it is only by "living in the Spirit" and "walking in the Spirit" - and so ever afresh "transformed by the renewing of our mind" - that we are able to discern clearly what is the proper carriage before the world which Christians should maintain, and thus steer safely between the extremes of ascetic seclusion from it and sinful conformity to it.
(4) Self-sufficiency and lust of power are peculiarly unlovely in the vessels of mercy, whose respective graces and gifts are all a divine trust for behoof of the common body, and of mankind at large. As forgetfulness of this has been the source of innumerable and unspeakable evils in the Church of Christ, so the faithful exercise by every Christian of his own special office and gifts, and the loving recognition of those of his brethren as all of equal importance in their own place, would put a new face upon the visible Church, to the vast benefit and comfort of Christians themselves, and to the admiration of the world around them.
(5) What would the world be if it were filled with Christians having but one object in life, high above every other-to "serve the Lord" - and throwing into this service 'alacrity' in the discharge of all duties, and abiding 'warmth of spirit!' (Romans 12:11.)
(6) Oh how far is even the living Church from exhibiting the whole character and spirit so beautifully portrayed in the latter verses of this chapter! (Romans 12:12-21.) What need of a fresh baptism of the Spirit in order to this! And how "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners," will the Church become, when at length instinct with this Spirit! The Lord hasten it in its time!