Romans 12:21
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Study Note
Study Note
The climactic ethical maxim 'be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good' concludes the remarkable catalog of 12:14-20 — blessing persecutors, living at peace, non-retaliation — with a strategic inversion: good does not merely resist evil but actively defeats it. The competitive metaphor ('overcome,' nikaō) implies that the interaction between good and evil is dynamic, not static: good can conquer evil not by meeting it on its own terms (counter-violence) but by introducing a qualitatively different response. The strategy draws on Proverbs 25:21-22 (feeding enemies = heaping burning coals), cited in verse 20, suggesting that generosity can produce shame-induced transformation in the opponent. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethics of 'bearing the cost of the other' and Martin Luther King Jr.'s philosophy of non-violent resistance both draw explicitly on this passage.
Other Translations
Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
Be not overcome by the evil, but overcome, in the good, the evil.
Do not let evil overcome you, but overcome evil by good.
Cross References
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that …
But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye …