Five good remedies against evil

Called to be a blessing? How is that supposed to work in a world where evil rules and the good seems so weak? In a divine service recently, the Chief Apostle had some answers.

“Do not return evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.” This was the Bible text for a divine service on 9 March 2025 in Bottrop in Germany. 

“Blessing is everything that contributes to our fellowship with God,” Chief Apostle Jean-Luc Schneider explained. When God blesses us, it primarily means that He gives us what we need to strengthen and foster our relationship with Him. After all, the greatest blessing of all is to have eternal fellowship with God, the Chief Apostle said.

“Now we are to bless.” And what does that mean? We are to help other people find the way to God and help them walk this path.  We can bless them by helping them to overcome evil, in other words, that which prevents them from having fellowship with God.

Evil and verbal abuse

What is evil? The Chief Apostle gave two examples:

• Lovelessness and suffering: “The consequences of people’s bad behaviour and bad decisions often have an impact on many, many people. And many people suffer on account of this and do not understand what God is doing and why He is allowing this.” 
• Materialism: “That is the big problem of our time: people are only concerned with worldly matters. Everything is about their existence on earth. They no longer need God.”
• Repaying evil with evil: “People respond with anger because everything is different from what they want. They become aggressive and intolerant. People are becoming more and more violent, both physically and verbally. That is how you distance yourself from God.”
• False expectations: “Unfortunately, there are many believers today who believe in a God who punishes. They are far from God, because God is not like that at all.”
• The sinfulness of believers: “We see time and again that Christians, the clergy, and the churches are all far from perfect. Things happen that should never happen. That is why people are turning away from God.”

The blessing and the answers

Now we are called. God needs us to be a blessing for people, the Chief Apostle said. But how can we do this? The Chief Apostle’s answers:

• Attending divine services: “This is how we prove that God is here. He is at work, we can encounter Him. We can hear Him. He is working on our salvation: in divine service, through word and sacrament. Every Sunday we gather to celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ over evil.”
• Sharing the good news: “Life is more than just money, possessions, and pleasure. There is another dimension. The dimension of love, hope, peace, and fulfilment—all that God gives us.”
• Fighting evil with good: “We will not allow ourselves to be carried away by the spiral of violence. We do not take refuge in selfishness. Let us do good. Even if it is on a very small scale, one person amid a thousand others, we can do good.”
• Being forgiving: “We don’t want to accuse the other person. The evil and pain that my neighbour inflicts on me may be painful, but it cannot prevent Jesus Christ from saving me. That is why we can forgive.”
• Humbly confessing: “True, not everything is perfect. We are aware of this, but we are making every effort to change it. And don’t forget how beautiful it can be in the fellowship of believers. There where the love of Jesus Christ is truly at work, it is beautiful, warm, and pleasant.”

The blessing and the inheritance

“If we strive to bless others, we are like Jesus Christ, which is our goal,” the Chief Apostle explained. We want to become more and more like the Lord Jesus so that we can enter His kingdom. And that is the inherited blessing: this personal development.

“The results of our efforts are not always visible,” he admitted. However, let us not lose heart. The important thing is not success but our development. And we leave everything else to the Lord. He can make us into an instrument for doing good. We are not even aware of it, which is not a bad thing because we are just an instrument. The actual good is done by the Master, not by us.”