Dr. Rodney Plunket

No subject appeals to the human race quite like love does.  Our songs make that very clear.  I can easily think of many songs about love that have been popular in my day:  “Love is the Answer,” “Love is all I Need,” “Love will Keep us Together,” “Love Changes Everything,” and on and on it goes.

We need love.  Babies die if they do not receive it, even if everything else is supplied.  Adults might be able to survive without love; I’m not sure, but they do not really live.

The church is to be a storehouse of love.  Every time Christians get together their batteries are to be recharged due to the energizing influence of genuine, Christ-like love.

The Apostle Paul writes a letter to a group of Christians for whom love has become a difficult assignment instead of an easy affection.  The church in Rome is experiencing damaging disharmony.  The disharmony is primarily due to the differences that exist between the Jewish and the Greek members of Rome’s community of faith.  Paul argues stridently.  He points out that God has ransomed both the Jewish and the Gentile Christians in the same way, by the same power; both have been saved by trusting in Jesus.  Therefore, there should be no barriers between them.  In fact, as he says in Romans [Rm] 12:3-8, they should be one body in Christ.

If you turn to Rm 12 you will discover that immediately after verse (v) 8 Paul proceeds to give a treasure store of practical suggestions concerning the how of actualizing this one body type of Christian fellowship and unity.  We will focus upon verses (vv) 9-10.  Please take your Bibles and follow along as I read these two verses:  “Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.  Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.  Honor one another above yourselves.”

The first phrase in the NIV is “Love must be sincere.”  I found it helped fill out my understanding of this phrase when I looked at several translations of it, and it appears to me that all of these translation choices are legitimate renderings of the Greek text.  Both the old RSV and the NRSV say, “Let love be genuine.”  The NASB says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.”  William Barclay’s translation says, “Your love must not be a superficial pretense.”  J. B. Phillips’s Translation says, “Let us have no imitation love.”  The New Living Translation says, “Don’t just pretend that you love others; really love them”.  The New Century Version says, “Your love must be real.”

As I reflected upon this short clause I questioned my ability to deliver a message from a text with this statement in it.  I know that listeners tend to think of public speakers in a certain way.  Listeners are prone to believe that a speaker chooses a specific topic because of a sense of being particularly expert in that area.  I also know that a preacher, even more than other speakers, is expected to practice what is preached.  So let me issue a disclaimer.  I do not know all there is to know about genuine love.  Furthermore, although I try to put into practice all that I do know, I fail––sometimes badly.  So this is a lesson that I will direct at myself as the primary target.  However, I believe that you can also benefit, otherwise I would have preached it to myself alone in front of a mirror.

Some of you will know that there are several Greek words that are translated by the English word “love.”  Paul here uses the characteristic New Testament term, aÓga¿ph.  He has already used this noun four times in Romans; however, in those previous cases he seems to be referring to God’s love for us, while here Paul clearly is referring to the love of Christians for one another.  I think the fact that Paul uses the same Greek word when referring to our love for one another as he does when referring to God’s love for us is significant.  The kind of love that God has for us serves as the model for the kind of love that we should have for one another.  So if I am going to understand Christian love, I must first understand what sort of love it is that God has for us, and God’s love is most fully revealed in the sacrifice of God’s Son.  God’s love is a love that gives, that serves, that sacrifices.  I, therefore, am called to do the same.

But Paul not only indicates that Christians should love one another with a love like God’s, he very explicitly says ‘that love should be a genuine love.’  To tell his readers that they should love with a genuine, sincere, and unhypocritical love emphasizes the God-likeness of this love.  You see God’s love is not some manipulative endeavor to get what God wants.  God’s love is an effort to give us what we need.  God truly has the best interests of humanity at God’s very heart.  Therefore, God’s love seeks to confer the full life for which humanity was created.

So how, I ask myself, should I love?  How can I be as unselfish in loving as God is?  How can I keep from falsely, deceptively using the language and actions of love to get my own way, to meet my own needs?

I must come to know God!  I must be drawn into God!  I must be filled with God Spirit!  I must be captured by the example of God’s Son!  I must seek to love my neighbor as myself!  I must love others as Jesus has loved me!  I must have the courage to look hard at myself and acknowledge the flaws in my heart, the flaws in my understanding, the flaws in my motives, and to acknowledge my egocentricity––all of which keep me from actualizing genuine and sincere love.

And, as I confront my significant failings, I realize how easy it is to make terribly wrong assumptions about others.  I realize that as long as I retain my self-centeredness and yet try to love, I fail to understand others.  My view is too dis­torted by looking at others through the defective window of self.

If I allow God’s Spirit/God’s example to transform my love, I can seek the very best for people, I can seek to give them what they genuinely need, rather than what I want them to have, what I enjoy giving.  Genuine Christian love looks away from self; it looks out; it focuses attention upon others.  And there is nothing more difficult!  The Apostle Paul knows that if he can persuade the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians in Rome to love one another sincerely, genuinely then the divisive tensions will cease.  They will become one body in Christ.  There is no greater unity, no truer oneness.

I believe that the Lord wants no less for us.  In fact, I believe that as our world sees us loving one another as Jesus loved, we will become like a city set upon a hill, like a light which cannot be hidden.  The Lord will use that light; the Lord will use it to draw people to himself.  May the light’s radiance increase so that even more are drawn to Christ, the Christ who came to die, to die that we might live.

In the second half of Rm 12:9 Paul tells his readers to “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”  Is that not surprising?  Does it jar you a bit?  Right after a wonderful reference to love, Paul turns to hate.  What is the opposite of love if it is not hate?  How could a writer jump from one straight into the other?

You see the NT teaches us something about love that we may find hard to comprehend.  It teaches us that a love which does not hate evil becomes a sugary, gooey substance that is shaped by moods, fads, and whims rather than by what is fundamentally good and needful.  Christian love has backbone.  It has a strength of purpose and the strength to make both the one who loves and the one who is loved into the full and complete human being that God intended.  It is guided by a hatred of evil and (note the next clause) by a clinging to what is good.

To cling to what is good is to have goodness as a companion.  It is a friend, a guide.  It gives our love for one another a positive goal.  We want the good.  We want to see it in our own lives.  We want to see it in the lives of others.  We want to bring out the good in others, to bring it out for all to see.

As I have reflected on the importance of hating evil and loving goodness, I found it helpful to create some resolutions to help me give shape to my efforts.  I share them with the hope that you also will find them helpful.  These resolutions have been framed especially to deal with evil and goodness as they relate to sincere love for others.

I want to share first with you my three “Hate what is evil” Resolutions:  First, I will hate pride and selfishness because they make it impossible for me to genuinely love others.  Second, I will hate covetousness and greed because they cause me to depersonalize others and to treat objects and power as more important than people.  Third, I will hate my inclination to rebel against God because it not only inhibits my relationship with God it also dims my view of my fellow human beings who are made in God’s image.

Now let me share with you me three “Cling to what is good” Resolutions:  First, I will cling to humility because it is the attitude of Jesus and because it is the only appropriate attitude for one who knows the almighty and omnipotent creator God.  Second, I will cling to service of others because service is characteristic of the life of Jesus and because it bears such positive fruit in the lives of us all.  Third, I will cling to the virtue of truly listening to the words of others, because it is through words that human beings invite their fellows to see into their hearts and, thereby, to discern their pain, their aspirations, and their needs.  Through truly listening to the words of others I can know how to love them, how to love them with a sincere love patterned after the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Now let’s turn to Rm 12:10.  There Paul writes, “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.  Honor one another above yourselves.  The Greek word translated “be devoted” here means “to love dearly” (BAGD).  Therefore, in this exhortation to be devoted to brotherly love, Paul is urging his readers to take one another into their hearts, to care deeply and resolutely for each of their fellow believers.  There is no way divisions can persist when persons have this level of commitment to one another.

But that is not all of this verse.  Paul also exhorts his listeners to “honor one another” above themselves.  When I read this clause my mind immediately leaps forward in the NT to Paul’s very similar words in Phil 2:3 where one reads, “consider others better than yourselves.”  This type of imperative can be easily demonstrated by the example of Jesus.  His behav­ior constantly demonstrated that He put the real needs of others above himself.  His sacrificial death is the classic proof of that approach to life.  Jesus was not, however, a weak, spineless character who agreed with others even when they were wrong or who sat quietly by when sin needed to be opposed.  He put others needs so far above His own that He fought, fought valiantly for those who felt unworthy, for those who were made to feel irredeemably "unsavable" by the religious elite.  He fought so hard for the needs of those no-hopers that He built a church full of them, a church peopled by folks who knew their need of God’s grace, God’s unearned and unearnable love.

If you are here this morning and know your need of God’s grace, won’t you come to God now as we stand and sing?!

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