We have been talking about how to live life on the altar. Romans 12:1 teaches that because of the mercies of God we are to become living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to him. In Romans 12:2 we learned that we must not allow our thoughts and actions to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by God through the renewing of our minds so we can discern the will of God. In Romans 12:3-8 Paul taught that we need to change the way we think about ourselves and others so that we will see that we have been given gifts that must be used joyfully so that God is glorified. In Romans 12:9-10 Paul now turns his attention to love. If we are going to be living sacrifices, then we must love. However, it is easy for us to think that we are loving the way God wants us to love because we can make our own definitions of what love is supposed to look like. So the scriptures have to teach us what godly love looks like. Since we are not to be conformed to the world but transformed, then we must listen to what God says love looks like and not what the world says love looks like. When talking about love, you might think about 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul describes what love looks like. But here in Romans 12:9-10 Paul gives us another description about what love looks like and what love does.
Love Without Hypocrisy (Romans 12:9)
Paul first tells us that life on the altar means love without hypocrisy. But what does this mean and what would this look like? Why is hypocritical love a concern? It is easy to pretend to love people. It is easy to let love be fake. We can pretend that we care about each other. We can tell each other hi and offer a smile. We can sit in this room, sing, pray, and remember Jesus together and it looks like that we love each other. But Paul is teaching us that we need to have an authentic love for each other. Our love needs to be genuine and sincere. Love does not show one thing but thinks differently inside of us.
Why is fake love so bad? Why can’t we just pretend to love? There are at least two problems. First, hypocritical love is not real. Hypocritical love is as dependable as a vapor. It is just words but there is no action. God does not want us to be fake with each other. God does not want us to love each other only when times are good. God wants us to build genuine relationships with each other. I will explore this more when we look at verse 10 in just a moment. But the apostle John taught:
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:18 ESV)
The other problem with hypocritical love is that is does not allow for deeper relationship. If we are fake with each other, then a true relationship cannot develop. Let me illustrate it like this: how deep is a marriage if both people in the marriage are pretending to love each other? They are nice to each other. They pretend to have a marriage. But there is no depth. It is not real. The problem with hypocritical love is that the marriage cannot get to the heart of the issues and build a true relationship because they are faking it with each other rather than rolling up their sleeves, addresses problems, and working to solutions. True love has to be real with each other and address the problems so that solutions can be found and love can continue to be developed. Fake love leads others on to think things are good when they are not good at all. We have tell each other that when there is a problem with each other. Otherwise we will keep thinking that the relationship is good. Love without hypocrisy. What Paul does next is gives us three ingredients for developing true, sincere love for each other.
Genuine Love Hates Evil and Holds On To What Is Good (Romans 12:9)
Hypocritical love overlooks evil and gives up on what is good. I want us to hear this point because our world is trying to conform us into its way of thinking. Love does not ignore morality. Love hates what God hates and loves what God loves. But our world tells us that if we love someone, then we will do what they want. “If you loved me, you would…” and then we fill in the blank. We must understand that love does not approve of everything. This is how our world wants us to think about love. The world says loving the person means overlooking the actions. That is not godly love. If we love our children, then we will not let them do whatever they want because we know they will be injured or worse. Further, God loves us. But God does not overlook our actions. God loves us but God does not overlook our words. We can be tempted with our friends, with our church, and with our blood family to overlook sin in the name of love. Friends, we cannot do this. We cannot approve or allow immorality, even when it is in our own family. The first ingredient for love to be without hypocrisy is that love must be morally firm, upholding God’s standards. God shows his love for us by telling us what we are doing wrong and showing what we need to change, not by ignoring our sins. We must follow Jesus and follow this same standard he has given to us. We made it clear to our children that we will always love them. But we are going to have an issue that will need resolution when you are not loving the Lord and living according to his ways. As shepherds of this church, our shepherds will tell you the same thing. We will always love you. But we are going to have an issues that will need to be dealt with if you are not loving the Lord and living according to his ways. Paul is telling us that even if we have pressure from others, we are not going to let go if what is good and we are not going to stop hating what is evil. Real love cares about spiritual outcomes.
Genuine Love Is Family Affection, Not Just Friendship (Romans 12:10)
The second ingredient for loving without hypocrisy is, when talking about loving each other, to love with brotherly affection. We are to have a family love for people in the church. Genuine love is to have a family affection for each other, not just being friendly with each other. We are being told that life on the altar means taking our relationships to the next level. We are to see each other as family and have that affection for each other. This does not mean that we simply talk about each other as family. The way we think, feel, and act toward our own physical family is how we are to think, feel, and act toward each other in Christ. The irony is that we can think we are doing pretty good in our relationships with each other when we have become friends instead of merely acquaintances. But Paul did not tell us to move from being perfect strangers in Christ to becoming friends in Christ. Rather, Paul tells us to move from being perfect strangers in Christ to becoming family in Christ. This is a challenging command when you think about it. When someone becomes part of the family here, this person is relatively unknown and we have to spend time with each other and become open with each other so that we can develop this family affection.
In a group of this size, it is going to be impossible to spend the same amount of time with each other. In a group of this size, there are going to be people that we draw closer to than others. Just like in a physical family, we have different relationships with the different members of the family. But we are still family and love each other like family. The point I want to make is that love without hypocrisy means we are going to have a family affection for each other. As we develop these relationships with each other, we may be closer to some instead of others. But here is the really important key: while we may be closer to some, we are not closed to anyone. To say this another way, we may have different circles but we never close our circle to anyone in the family of Christ. We are one family and we can never exclude or isolate others in the family. We are going to be in different seasons of life. The college kids cannot relate to where I am in life. I cannot relate to those who are in a more seasoned time of life. So while we might have some circles in the church, those circles must overlap and those circles must never be closed to other people or other circles in the church. We must have the same family affection for everyone single person in the spiritual family.
Being family also means that we do not give up on each other. Family does not quit being family. Being family means we do everything we can to work out whatever difficulty we have. We do not shoot eyes of ice to others. We do not give people the cold shoulder. We do not exit quickly because we have a problem. I am sure that you had problems with relationships in your family. But you did not stop being family. There are going to be times when we disagree. There are going to be times when we accidentally hurt each other. There are going to be times when we do not like what is going on. But we are family and we communicate to each other so that we can work things out and grow deeper in our family love for each other.
Genuine Love Honors Others Above Self (Romans 12:10)
The final ingredient for love to be without hypocrisy is to show eagerness in honoring others. Genuine love defers to the other. Sincere love elevates the other person ahead of ourselves. I love this picture of honoring others. It would be like standing at the door and no one can enter or exit because we are trying to have the other person go ahead of us. “You go ahead.” “Oh, no, you go ahead!” “No, I insist that you go ahead.” Genuine love honors others. We are being reminded that love does not think about self. Love does not make everything about me. So let’s consider how our thinking and our words will change if we are honoring others. Now my thinking in this spiritual family will be “Who did I talk to?” and “Who do I need to talk to?” and not “Who talked to me?” We will think about who we can encourage and not about who encouraged me. We will not be concerned if we are appreciated or if people see our contribution or importance. We will just want to be part of the family, exercising our gifts and doing our part in the family. Love without hypocrisy means that this family relationship in Christ is not about what I will get from it but what I can give to it. We are going to come together and think about how we can honor others. We are going to spend time together trying to show honor to others.
This is really hard when in trials, isn’t it? When we are going through adversity it is easy to turn life into how we are being affected. We can become consumed with our own problems and trying to survive what we are going through. Giving others preference is so important when we are struggling with our family and struggling to endure. Let me illustrate why these commands are nullified when we are going through trials. Many years ago the state of Florida ran an annual conference in which was about helping and serving those with disabilities and their families. We went to it for a few years to be able to gather information on how to help Grace and all the legal things that have to be done. Having a child with special needs is hard and can be absolutely crushing. But we went to this conference and we were surrounded by other families whose loved also had special needs and disabilities. Do you want to know what we thought while we were there for those three days? We did not think about ourselves and woe is us. We thought that we were fortunate. We realized how much worse things could be. As bad as these things are, we are so glad that we are not dealing with some of the other issues that come with other special needs. Friends, I believe one of the reasons we are told to stop thinking about ourselves and to give honor to others is because it helps us get out our sphere of pain and see how we can help others in their pain. It reminds us that there are other people who are hurting besides you and they need the help that you can provide. It helps us be thankful because we see that we could be going through some things that others are going through that we would never want to go through. True love sees the other person, not just ourselves. Be eager to put others ahead of us just was Jesus was eager to put us ahead of himself.
Love without hypocrisy. Do not be fake. Instead, see others as family. Love others as family. Elevate others because we are family in Christ. Only then are we living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to the Lord.