Evil for Good

"Returning evil for good" — repaying benefactors with harm — is treated in Scripture as a particularly grave moral violation, one that compounds injustice with ingratitude. Proverbs declares: "If anyone returns evil for good, evil will not depart from his house" (Prov. 17:13), marking it as a self-destructive vice. The Psalms lament it as the experience of the righteous sufferer: David protests that his accusers are those for whom he fasted and prayed, yet they repay his love with hatred (Ps. 35:12; 109:5). Joseph's brothers preemptively feared he would repay evil for their earlier treachery — a projection that reveals their own evil-for-good mind (Gen. 50:15). In the NT's ethics of enemy love, Jesus transforms the calculus entirely: the command is not merely to resist repaying evil for good but to actively return good for evil (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27–28; Rom. 12:17, 21). Paul explicitly states: "Do not repay anyone evil for evil" — the governing principle being that evil is to be overcome with good (Rom. 12:17–21). This ethic is grounded in imitating the God who is kind even to the ungrateful and evil (Luke 6:35).