Nuggets
- Our love for others should be genuine and heartfelt.
- To put our spiritual life as a priority, not our physical life – as it is with God’s – we need to hate sin/evil.
- God wants His church to be unified and at peace.
- We are supposed to love, esteem, and respect others first.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if more focus could be put on everyone loving everyone else? What some don’t understand is that means they will need to give up evil. This devotion looks how disciples should love and how that love means we must give up evil.
Let's Put It into Context
Let’s get Dictionary Chick satisfied first. We have a couple of terms, so we want to make sure we are on the same page.
Love is an intense feeling of deep affection. It drives you toward something. Affection is fondness and liking.
Unconditional love is intense feelings of deep affection without limits or circumstances. It is believed to be a complete love.
Charity is agape (love) flavored with benevolence.
To read a related devotion, click the appropriate button below.
Evil is defined by the Holman Bible Dictionary as “that which is opposed to God and His purposes or that which, defined from human perspectives, is harmful and non-productive.” Believers equate evil with sin. While all sins are not necessarily evil, all evil can generally be categorized as sin.
One of the evils is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, according to the Holman Bible Dictionary, is “pretense to being what one really is not, especially the pretense of being a better person than one really is.” We would probably say hypocrites were pretending to be something they aren’t.
Paul had just been writing about the different gifts that disciples have been given. Next, Paul told us how we should be members of society. Let’s take a look.
Love without Hypocrisy
“Let love be without hypocrisy …” (Rom. 12: 9 CSB)
How would we combine the definitions of love and hypocrisy?
Have an intense feeling of deep affection while not pretending to be something we aren’t.
Have an intense feeling of deep affection that does not doesn’t inflate our egos.
I think — sometimes — we want to make such a good impression on a person that we do puff ourselves up. It may be because of our egos. However, it may be we don’t think they would like the real us.
What I see Paul saying here is our love for others should be genuine and heartfelt. It shouldn’t be an act or a delusion. Brady wrote that we can’t have goodness without sincerity.
So, how are we supposed to do that?
Lyth gave us a list of things we can do. He wrote that we should be honest, pure, and kind. He also said we should be cheerful, patient, and prayerful. If we follow these, he noted we will love our neighbors, be humble, patient, and peaceable.
Hmmm. Those sound an awful lot like the virtues we just talked about not long ago.
Beveridge reminded us that loving others is the second greatest commandment. Christian perfection is achieving the two greatest commandments.
Brady cautioned us about hypocrisy. He wrote, “It is directly injurious to the Divine nature, by pretending to elude His infinite wisdom; and pernicious to human society, by deceitfully imposing upon their finite understanding.” It is one of the evils we are to detest.
Detest and Cling
“… Detest evil; cling to what is good” (Rom. 12: 9 CSB)
God’s priority is our spiritual life, not our physical life. To put our spiritual life as a priority, we need to hate sin.
But it is more than not doing the don’ts. We have to cling to God.
We cling to God by giving up and hating sin. I think most disciples know what sins they need to give up. I wonder how we are doing on the abhor sin part.
Think about it. I told you, when God gave me self-discipline as my word of the year, I expected that to be followed by “give up this sin, this sin, and this sin.”
Instead, God said, “we are going to work on character.” That is His priority – changing our core to be more like Him.
Our character — if it is imitating God — shouldn’t pick and choose which sins we are going to call sins and which ones we aren’t. If God has called them sins, they will be sins then, now, and in the future.
God doesn’t want us to flirt on the edge on sin. He doesn’t want us to figure out how close we can get without falling.
Girdlestone talked about this. He wrote, “Questions often arise as to whether it is fitting for a Christian to partake of this amusement, to engage in that employment, or to enter into the other company. In such discussions many argue as if it were desirable to take all the liberty they can. And frequently they act on the presumption that what is easy to argue is safe also to do. But how different would be their conclusion if they would but bear this text in mind! The mere suspicion that any conduct might possibly be wrong, should be quite sufficient ground for us to desist.”
Oh, yeah. That is the opposite of what our physical nature tells us. It says, “Give in and have fun.”
Instead, Girdlestone said — if there is any question at all — consider it a sin.
I know. Worldview people would think that is too harsh and use it as one of the major cons for submitting to God. They think we should have the love without giving up the evil.
However, Paul knew that, as soon as we start justifying the sin and quantifying it, we are on the downhill slide to full out committing the sin. God cannot condone sin.
Instead, we are to follow whatever the Lord has proclaimed.
Yes, I know. How can we be held accountable for giving into our physical nature? Couldn’t God have fixed that when we submit to Him? We say, “God, we’re Yours,” and He zaps all sinful urges.
Doesn’t work that way.
Say free will. Besides, Bell reminds us that it is “a hidden power in the soul.”
How does this fit in with the first part of the verse? The opposite of love is abhorrence, as Bell told us.
Abhorring/Hating evil is just one part. We need to cleave to what is good. Cleave means to remain firmly loyal.
Beveridge told us why that is important. God is always providing us with the good. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8: 28 CSB). He wants us to do good, so that we won’t sin.
Family Love
“Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters …” (Rom. 12: 10 CSB)
We’ve just been talking about God seeing His church as a family. Christianity boils down to one word — love. We need to love God, but we have to love each other, too.
God wants His church to be unified and at peace. He is the God of peace, isn’t He? If we aren’t at peace, what kind of witness are we giving?
Hargreaves identified what that unity and peace should look like. He wrote, “Each Christian should defend his brother, help the weak, and regard all with unbounded charity. Brotherly love avoids saying or doing anything that would offend the modesty or honour of a brother.”
Yes, this world is really divided right now. There is hope. Hargreaves also wrote, “The world is one common family, split up by sin, but to be united again by Christian love.”
It doesn’t matter how the world treats us. The second greatest commandment says we are to love our neighbors — that means everybody. We are to love them using God’s definition of love, not the world’s definition. If it is the second commandment, that is what is going to be used for the sheep-and-goats separation (Mt. 25: 31-46).
To read a related devotion, click on the appropriate button below.
Take the Lead
“… Take the lead in honoring one another” (Rom. 12: 10 CSB)
The last part of the verse takes that a step further. We are to “… take the lead in honoring one another” (Rom. 12: 9-10 CSB).
Another definition. Honor means to esteem and respect another.
Ooo, baby. Put that together.
We are supposed to love, esteem, and respect others first. We don’t wait to see how they are going to treat us. We don’t change our treatment of others based on their treatment of us.
We treat others as God expects us to treat them.
Oh, yeah. Our assessment of the situation could go either of two ways. We could feel they are better than us — or we could think we are better than them.
Doesn’t matter. We are to love others. We are to think they are better than us (Blencowe).
Period. End of discussion.
Making the Connections
Christian love. It is based on how God loves us. It is affected by our hatred of sin.
Let’s go back to God not zapping the sin in our lives after conversion. Blencowe explained that. He wrote, “The grace of God does not destroy natural affection, but increases and purifies.”
See, it is all about God and what He has done and does for us. It isn’t about how we can earn our way into His kingdom.
It is about us following God’s laws and commandments. It is about the status of our relationship with Him.
How Do We Apply This?
Blencowe and Beveridge suggested everything I would have.
- We have to be kind and courteous to others.
- Find the good to complement.
- If something upsets them, we have to avoid that.
- We have to be patient.
- We have to be forgiving
- If they are committing a sin, we need to counsel them.
- We need to pray for them.
- Don’t get stuck on ourselves.
What I get from all of this is we have to put God first and then others. That is how we serve Him.
Holy Father. You are love. You call us to imitate Your character. That means we should be love. Help us to be that so others will see You in us and come to know You. Amen.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
What do you think?
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