Romans 12: 14-16 // Unfair is Awesome

Treat Them Unfairly

This past Sunday at Word of Life AG, Pastor Tom opened Romans 12:14 with a challenge: the Christian response to persecution is not retaliation, not retreat, but blessing. Drawing from the world of the first-century Roman church and the story of a street preacher who stared down a gang leader, Pastor Tom traced a thread from Paul's letter straight into the present, making the case that what looks like weakness to the watching world is actually the strongest thing a follower of Jesus can do.

Stepping Into Another World

Pastor Tom invited the congregation into a vivid scene. He asked everyone to imagine being an ordinary member of the church in Rome almost two thousand years ago: a cobbler living with six others in a 350-square-foot apartment, stepping over sleeping family members before dawn, making your way through streets already alive with merchants, soldiers, and priests while the smoke of sacrifices drifts through the air.

Into that world came the news of Jesus. A Jewish teacher crucified in a remote province, claimed by His followers to have been raised from the dead. Pastor Tom described the suspicion that surrounded the early church, the whispered rumors, the confusion about what happened at their gatherings, and then the moment an invitation arrived to attend one of these home churches. Around the table sat people who would never have shared a meal otherwise: slaves, soldiers, government officials, tradespeople, wealthy landowners, and ordinary laborers. And yet they called each other brother and sister.

That community, Pastor Tom said, came at a cost. Customers disappeared. Family members turned away. Neighbors whispered. And it was into a room of people who had already paid a real price to follow Jesus that Paul's letter arrived. Someone read aloud: Romans 12:14 says, "Bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them; pray that God will bless them."

We Hate Unfairness

Pastor Tom was direct about what most people feel when they hear that verse: the immediate, visceral reaction is "that's not fair." And he affirmed it. It is not fair. We are wired to resist unfairness at every level. He pointed to the way sports fans erupt at a bad call, the outrage a court verdict can generate when it feels unjust, and even the dynamic in his own home where all three of his children have, at different points, accused him of having a favorite.

That instinct, Pastor Tom explained, is real. It does not make someone a bad person. But it sets up something important.

The Gospel Is Unfair

Here Pastor Tom made his central turn. The message of Jesus is not fair. It was never designed to be. Grace is, by definition, unfair. It is the giving of what is not deserved, and that is what makes it grace. The reason people are moved by their faith, the reason gratitude runs so deep, the reason the gospel still carries the weight it does, is precisely because none of it was owed. We are not on the losing end of the unfairness. We are the beneficiaries.

He pointed to the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35 as one of the most sobering passages in the New Testament. He then brought in Matthew 6:14-15, where Jesus says, "If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins."

The standard of forgiveness we apply to others, Pastor Tom said, is the standard that comes back to us. Forgiveness is not fair. It is absorbing a cost you did not create. That is exactly what Jesus did, and that is what He calls His followers to extend to one another.

Bless, Don't Curse

Pastor Tom opened up the specific language of Romans 12:14. The Greek word behind "bless" is eulogeo, which literally means "to speak well of," but in Scripture carries the idea of actively seeking God's favor and goodness on behalf of another person. To bless someone is to pray that God would work in their life, to sincerely hope for good things for them, and to respond with genuine kindness rather than hostility.

The word translated "curse" is not about language or spells. In the biblical context, Pastor Tom explained, to curse someone means to pray for harm or judgment upon them, to hope for their downfall, to wish evil on them.

So when Paul writes that believers should bless those who persecute them and not curse them, he is saying something that cuts against nearly every natural instinct. He is not saying "don't get too angry" or "try to say kind things." He is saying: when someone intentionally makes your life miserable, pray that God shows them mercy. Pray that God transforms their heart. Pray that God blesses them.

Pastor Tom acknowledged that this is not natural human behavior. It is, he said, the supernatural response of someone who has first experienced undeserved grace themselves.

An Act of Strength, Not Weakness

The question Pastor Tom took seriously was the obvious one: doesn't this make me a doormat? Doesn't blessing people who mistreat me just open me up to be hurt again?

He sat with that concern before reframing it. He described two responses the world recognizes: absorbing the loss quietly, or retaliating. In ancient Rome, a person either accepted weakness or proved strength through revenge. Pastor Tom proposed a third path, one the world misreads as weakness but is actually something entirely different.

To bless those who have wronged you is an act of strength, not weakness. It is the strength of the Kingdom of God. Real weakness, Pastor Tom argued, is letting someone else's sin define your life. It is staying down after being knocked down. The world's version of strength only fuels an endless cycle of retaliation. But blessing the person who wronged you means rising above the offense. It does not excuse what they did. It does not require returning to a dangerous or abusive situation. It simply refuses to let hatred have the final word.

He grounded this in three passages. Romans 8:37 says, "Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." 1 John 4:4 says, "You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world." And Isaiah 54:17 says, "No weapon formed against you shall prosper."

To show what this looks like in a real life, Pastor Tom shared the story of David Wilkerson, author of The Cross and the Switchblade. Wilkerson stood in front of a teenager named Nicky Cruz, the hardest face Wilkerson said he had ever seen. Nicky refused to shake his hand, told him to go to hell, and when Wilkerson stepped toward him, threatened to kill him. Wilkerson's response: "You could cut me in a thousand pieces and lay them out in the street and every piece would love you."

Pastor Tom noted that Nicky Cruz, the boy who threatened to kill a preacher, has now spent decades as a minister himself, traveling the world to share the gospel. Pastor Tom and his wife Megan have been invited to hear him speak in Rochester this November. He left the question open: does anyone think that was weakness?

We Cannot Do This Alone

Pastor Tom was honest that none of this is simple or easy. If it were, he said, he would only need to preach on it once and move on. Living this way requires the support of a church community, prayer, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. It requires returning again and again to the same source.

He connected the passage to the verses that follow in Romans 12:15-16: "Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don't think you know it all!" These are not a separate topic, Pastor Tom said. They are a continuation of the same call. Living this way takes genuine empathy, real unity, and the kind of humility that refuses to sort people by social standing.

He quoted D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, who wrote that ordinary Christians living out the Christian life in their daily work and relationships has always been the most powerful form of evangelism. It was how the gospel spread through the ancient world. When people see something in a believer that they cannot explain and cannot dismiss, they ask about it. That, Pastor Tom said, is exactly the point. The church will make a difference by being different, not by being religious fanatics, but by standing out for the right reasons. Living this way legitimizes every faith claim we make.

Remember the Cross

Before the service closed, Pastor Tom returned one more time to the church in Rome, the same congregation he had introduced at the beginning of the message. He asked the room to jump forward seven years. The city has been devastated by fire. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to ash. The small apartment, the cobbler's stall, the ordinary life that once felt so permanent, all of it is gone. And Emperor Nero has chosen Christians as his scapegoats.

Friends from church have disappeared overnight. Some have fled the city. Others are in prison. A brother-in-law was seized, covered in an animal hide, and torn apart by hunting dogs in front of a crowd. A church leader was crucified. A woman who had been a slave in a wealthy household was covered in tar, fastened to a post, and burned alive to light up the emperor's garden parties. Believers under arrest were tortured until they gave up the names of others. Fear has changed everything.

In the darkness, a small group slips through narrow back streets to a secret gathering. No lamps outside. No raised voices. A coded knock. A whispered greeting. The room is smaller than it used to be. Many familiar faces are missing. Then someone carefully unwraps a worn parchment that has been read many times before. It is Paul's letter. And once again, in the silence, someone reads aloud:

Romans 12:14-16 says, "Bless those who persecute you. Don't curse them; pray that God will bless them. Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with each other. Don't be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don't think you know it all!"

That is where Pastor Tom landed before moving into a time of communion. Words that sounded difficult the first time now sound impossible. But they are rooted in the same unchanging truth: we bless others because we have been blessed beyond anything we deserved. Before loving people with deep sincerity, before blessing those who persecute you, before any of the outward work of living like Jesus, there is something prior: remembering the grace of God and reflecting on the wonder of the cross.

Pastor Tom closed with two questions to carry into the week: Who could you begin to bless instead of resenting? And how should God's grace toward you change the way you treat others?