The Conquest of Evil





Rom. 12:21.---' Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.'

Here we have one of the most inspiring watchwords of the Bible. The text has two assumptions. First, that though evil is ever present and alluring, it can be overcome, it must be overcome by good.

'Be not Overcome of Evil.'---These words contain at once a warning of danger and an encouragement to resistance. They assume, as a Scripture does---and it is an assumption well worthy of our deepest and most serious attention---that there is such a thing as evil, that contact with it is inevitable, that defeat and ruin by it are not impossible. It is all about us and within us, and the solemn inevitable truth is that either we must overcome it of be overcome by it. Day by day evil meets us; day by day we resist and vanquish it, or we are vanquished by it. Sometimes it comes suddenly and forcibly upon us, taking us unawares; sometimes it works steadily and persistently, wearying us into compliance; sometimes it operates through the instincts and passions of our nature; sometimes through our constitutional infirmities; it varies in method; it is different in different persons; different in the same person at different periods of life and under different circumstances. But we know that the conflict with it is just a struggle for life.

There is comfort as well as exhortation in the words, 'Be not overcome of evil'; there is no necessity that we should be overcome in this conflict. Evil is strong, we are weak; past experience, falls, and present failings make us distrust ourselves. Others fall and are overcome; and yet there is no necessity that we should be overcome. There is no power can force us to sin, and there is no sin till the will consents.

Difficulties may be great, discouragements frequent, failures more numerous than successes; but everyone who looks into his own heart can find a conviction seated there, as the deepest foundation of his own moral nature, that good is strongest and will prevail. It was the most pessimistic writer of the Old Testament---that one who summed up all human life in the two words, vanity and vexation, that is, emptiness and disappointment---who nevertheless said, 'Surely I know that it shall be well for them that fear God.' That is the very thing that we also know---that it shall be well for them, both in the work that they do for themselves, and in that which they do for their brethren. We cannot tell precisely how we know this--- whether it is a deduction from admitted principles, or an induction from observed facts, or an intuition, or a Divine revelation---but we do know it. We know that goodness and truth are strongest. At every apparent triumph of evil in the world we return into our own hearts, and there we find the conviction written indelibly on our consciences, that good will conquer in the end.

What this world awaits is personal, positive, constructive goodness. Not by law, legislation, and rhetoric shall we prevail, but by practical righteousness, and intellectual and spiritual education; by the positive remedy of superior character, action, and institutions do we make it difficult for evil to survive. And some blessed day it won't. Come Lord Jesus fill the world with your presence, be our/the all in all.

Good day ya'll----Tim.

Our Lord has not forsaken us, nor left us unto ourselves. But is our Power to overcome. Praise Glory....AMEN. Tim