“For your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil.” – Romans 16:19
In a culture overflowing with information, opinions, and spiritual confusion, Paul gives a refreshing command—don’t become an expert in evil. Don’t study error. Don’t flirt with falsehood. Instead, fill your mind with what is good, pure, and true. The world says you need to “know everything” to be informed. Scripture says you need to know God’s truth so well that anything false becomes obvious.
Think of how bank tellers learn to spot counterfeit money. They don’t study every fake bill ever printed. They study the real thing. They learn the texture, the color, the watermark. And because they know the genuine, they can instantly recognize the false. That’s how we guard our hearts. We don’t need to dive into heresy to understand it—we need to know the Word of God so deeply that anything counterfeit stands out immediately. A.W. Tozer once compared this to tuning pianos. If you tune each piano to another piano, the result is chaos. But if every piano is tuned to the same tuning fork, they all harmonize. In the same way, we don’t measure truth by comparing ourselves to others—we measure everything by Scripture. God’s Word is our tuning fork. God’s Word is our standard.
Paul’s instruction is both simple and freeing: be wise in what is good, and uninitiated in what is evil. You don’t need to explore darkness to appreciate the light. You don’t need to taste poison to know it kills. You don’t need to study every false teaching to stay grounded—you need to stay close to the truth. Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth” (John 17:17, NKJV). The more we fill our minds with what is good, the less room there is for what is harmful. The more we cling to Scripture, the quicker we recognize anything that contradicts it.
Fill your heart with what is good. Spend more time in Scripture than in speculation. Tune your life to God’s Word, not the world’s noise. Don’t chase every new idea—anchor yourself in the truth. When you know the real thing well, the counterfeit becomes easy to spot. Be wise in what is good, simple concerning evil, and confident that God’s truth will keep your steps steady.
“We are called to be students of God’s Word, not students of every wind of doctrine that blows through the church.”— R.C. Sproul
surrendered devotions 