Your post, bd, and the discussion of "burning coals" overall brought to mind a couple of verses:
The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance...Romans 2:4
When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him...Proverbs 16:7
Galatians 6 tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. We evidence these qualities only as we abide in Christ Jesus (John 15), and most especially in those situations where our flesh is most tried, most tempted to impatience, retaliation, giving up on loving someone, refusing to repay their evil with good.
Though not all my enemies have ended up at peace with me, I have found it to be true that in manifesting Christ, in walking in the Spirit of the Holy God and not in my flesh, I have seen men who hate my God and myself because I love Him, become men who love my God, or love being around me because I am manifesting His kindness and goodness, His patience and generosity. (I do not do this in my own power, and I am not in any way credited with the results.)
Surely it is the Holy Spirit who "convicts of sin, and righteousness, and judgment," and this, I believe, is the meaning of the "burning coals" upon the head: The enemy/unbeliever starts thinking with either conviction or further hardening of heart, "Gee, I stole that girl's _____ and called her dirty names behind her back and laughed in her face and vandalized her car and tried to get her fired, etc., etc., and here she is offering me a jump start because my battery quit, and handing me a cup of coffee just the way I like it, and letting me use her cell phone to call my _____ and tell them I am running late." Such righteousness in the face of such evil will either convict a soul or harden it. Sometimes the heart will harden first, then soften later. Sometimes you just can't win, no matter what (it's in God's hands, not ours), but regardless we are to keep the biblical commandments: "As much as it remains in you,
be at peace with all men," and "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:1). I am not motivated to do this so that men will be burned up, but that men will see the kindness and love of God my Savior, repent and be saved!
Goodness, which is of God alone - whether directly from Himself in Spirit or nature or circumstances to men (and all men are evil), or indirectly through me as His chosen instrument, especially in the face of evil done to me - in producing heat, like the image of the "burning coals on the head," may either melt butter or harden clay; which event occurs is not in my control. Godly sorrow that leads to repentance produces a good kind of pain (2 Cor. 7:10); that kind of "heat" is not be be regretted! That kind of "burning" is the kind that produces purification!
May all the goodness and kindness our Gracious God sends to this wicked world through us produce further righteousness upon the earth, the increase of His government and kingdom, and of peace, to which there never shall be an end, amen!
Let all flesh praise the Lord!
You both have fascinating responses regarding God's meaning in "heaping coals of fire" on the heads of our enemies.
I remember being startled by Paul's verse the first time I read it and again seeing it in Proverbs.
Lately I've found it to be true that God marks His own, by the blood of the lamb on the door or by writing His word on our hearts and minds or even perhaps by not leveling hot coals of fire on our heads.
"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them" -- Hebrews 10:16
"Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:
That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth." -- Deuteronomy 11:18-21
"All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him." -- Luke 10:22
Cals on the head gets therir attention don'tchaknow! But heaping coals on their head really gets their attention ... or not. And that is the essence of what is written, doing good to your enemy heaps the coals on in the hope that it will finally get their attention through contrast, that they may turn to the God Who makes it possible to live in such a contrasting way as doing good to those whom harm you.