Romans 12:9

Verse 9. The apostle does not here prohibit that defence, by which a person, either by word or action, preserves himself from injury. This he could not condemn, since he had so often recourse to it himself, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles: and in the second to Timothy, he writes: “In my first defence no one was with me.” Be he only forbids that revenge which a person takes of his neighbour, by private means, without having recourse to legal authority. Estius.