Romans 12:9-10

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.

Paul explains the virtues that develop as we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In v9-13, there are 13 commands. What do we make of these? It’s very easy to breeze through in 10-15 seconds of reading silently or aloud and say to ourselves, “How lovely! How nice! Let’s do a better job focusing on those!” And move right along. We should spend time with these and soak them into our skin. Ask what they mean and think about that in relation to the other Scriptures. Think about practical situations where they affect us. And this is hard to do. We’re not even going to do that now. But let it be known that we should.

As he typically does, Paul starts with love. See Galatians 5:22 and 1 Corinthians 13. It has been said that Romans 12 is the neglected “love” chapter, since 1 Corinthians 13 gets all the “love.” Like a good teacher Paul repeats himself on this topic throughout his epistles. In v9-10 he basically spells out what love means. Christian love is sincere, godly, affectionate, and self-denying. And this is the opposite of what we might want our love to be prior to having that renewed mind. We might desire to love with selfish motives – to make us look impressive to others or get something in return. But Paul says that our love must be real, discerning, fervent, and selfless. We should be genuinely fired-up to serve others in love, because we love God, or rather, He loves us. One commentator said about this passage, “As our new relationship to God can be summed up by faith, so also our relationship to men, because of the relationship with God can be summed up by love.”

Paul says that believers should be known both by their sincere love and by their sincere hate. Love (generally, without an object) sincerely and without hypocrisy, and hate (the object is clear: evil) just as sincerely. See Psalm 97:10, Proverbs 8:13, and Amos 5:15. Our love must not be the kind of love that makes no distinctions. “It’s alright; it’s okay; I still love you anyway.” That’s not love, according to Paul. Paul might say, “You cannot truly love if you do not truly hate.” Love does not mean ignoring right and wrong. In fact, love is not able to manifest itself to the fullness without making the distinction between wrong and right. Our culture says that you do not love if you don’t love homosexuals for who they are. Again Paul dissents. You’ve heard, “Love the sinner; hate the sin.” Always distinguish between good and evil in your love. And note also that we love objective good and hate objective evil. Good and evil are not determined by our emotions toward things. Our emotions must be conformed to God’s objectives.

Next, Paul commands us, as believers, to show familial love to one another in deed, not in word alone, and in honor, in order to uphold and exalt the good qualities in our brethren, thereby encouraging them to live in a godly manner. Paul is not talking here about unbelievers; he’ll get to them in a minute. We should treat our Christian brothers and sisters as more important than ourselves. See Philippians 2:3 The Bible says there is “a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24), and we think of David and Jonathan. That’s what the Church ought to be like. There ought to be self-sacrificing love relationships in the church that are deeper and stronger than anything experienced with parents and siblings. That said, it shouldn’t surprise us that we as sinners don’t always - if ever - live up to this vision, but we must strive to make sure that love and loyalty can be experienced at church through church in church like family. We must honor each other above ourselves – and remember it’s based on God’s mercy to us.