What do you say when someone is attacked? A parent might tell their child: “You need to be the bigger person and not fight back.” They may say: “You need to be the bigger person and walk away.” Something around the phrase “be the bigger person” is the common refrain, but I’ll just be blunt: I don’t like the phrase.
Listen to Paul:
Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
Rom 12:16-17
The idea behind being the “bigger” person is that we are “better” than the need to fight back. We are “above” such low brow means of resolving disputes. To be clear, you’re not going to find me saying we should fight back, or that punching a person in the nose (or slapping them in the face when they make fun of your wife) is the right course of action. Not at all. But while it’s good that we not teach retaliation, our attitude should not be “I won’t retaliate because I’m the bigger person” because that attitude replaces one sin (vengeance) with another (arrogance).
We aren’t the bigger person. That’s Paul’s point in v16. We are all equal. Just because the bully doesn’t see it that way doesn’t give us license to stop treating him like an equal. He may think he’s better than you when he bullies you, but he’s not. He’s your equal. And when you are bullied, you don’t fight back. Why? Not because you’re better than him, but because you are equal to him and he doesn’t deserve your vengeance anymore than you deserve his bullying. You’re not his judge, jury and executioner; God is, so leave that to God (Romans 12:19).
Under the Old Testament, the precept of “eye for an eye” was the Law of the land. In that case, God was regulating justice for a nation. If you lost your eye, the Law called for Justice (a word which implies equality). If you lost your eye, the one who took it lost his, that way the issue was resolved and there was no need for escalation, resulting in someone going on a John Rambo-like crusade against the assailant’s family.
Here, however, Paul is speaking to Christians, whose Law of Jesus is written in their hearts. The Christian Law says that we don’t recompence (to pay back) evil with evil of our own. Instead we turn the other cheek, etc. He says to provide honest things to all men, but while word in the King James is translated as “honest” a better rendering would be “beautiful” or “virtuous” or “valuable.”
The attitude of non-retaliation is the beautiful, Christian attitude we are to have. When we are attacked we ought not fight back, because that shows the beautiful Christian spirit to all men who see us and observe how we handle our attacker.
~ Matthew