Genuine Love
13 Imperatives for the Church • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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One of the great things about traveling is the experience of culture shock. It’s positive and useful for us to find ourselves challenged by the differences in how people of various cultures live and thrive.
Visiting New York City, for instance, one gets a new appreciation for public transportation, especially after having spent stressful hours navigating the traffic of that city.
Visiting Europe, one learns to appreciate the various bakeries and butcher shops that can be found throughout even the smallest towns.
There’s something wonderful about being able to walk from your house to a couple of shops just a few minutes down the street and gather the ingredients for a simple picnic lunch or even an elaborate feast without having to navigate the aisles of a supermarket.
In Dallas, I experienced the joy of public parks devoted to the enjoyment of art. In the deserts of New Mexico, we marveled at the ability of people to thrive in the most inhumane of environments.
When I’m doing travel well, I learn new lessons about life from every place we visit. I gain new understanding about what’s important. I gain new appreciation both for what we have here in America and for those who are perfectly content without all the trappings of our lives here.
As you might imagine, there were many such cultural lessons to be learned during my time in Haiti.
I learned to measure the pulse of the community by sound of cheering coming from a palm-leaf hut, where dozens of people sat watching from uncomfortable wooden benches as World Cup soccer was projected onto a sheet.
I learned to love the sense of community that comes from being able to shout greetings over the wall to your neighbors as they are getting their children ready for school.
I learned great respect for the moto drivers, who could arrange two women, three children and a 50-pound bag of rice on their little motorcycles and then weave their way through dangerous traffic on their way to dropping everyone off where they needed to go.
I also learned the value of LESS. And Annette and I returned from our first trip to Haiti with a commitment to managing life with less stuff, fewer anchors.
There were also some ways that Haiti taught me to appreciate my life here in the U.S. I gained a great appreciation for running water that we can drink straight from the tap. I learned to be thankful for traffic laws and the police officers who enforce them. And, strangely enough, I learned to appreciate mortgages.
You see, in Haiti, there’s really no such thing as a mortgage. Just as here in America, if you want a house, you either have to buy it or build it. And Haitians very much like to build their own houses.
But they can’t go to the bank and get a 30-year loan like we can. They have to build what they can build, as they can afford to do so.
So all around that nation, you see partially built houses, and you can sort of track how well a person is doing financially by keeping track of how his house is coming along.
Sadly, it’s all too common to see foundations dug and poured, with reinforcement steel sticking up to support walls that will never be built, because someone who was able to pay for the work to start then fell on hard times and was unable to finish it.
That’s the image I want you to remember today and in the coming weeks as we transition from our long series on church fundamentals into a new series on the church’s imperatives.
What you heard during the previous series was the sound doctrine regarding the church’s institution, its defining characteristics, its purpose, its responsibility, its relationship to the Trinity, and its structure.
But all of that is only the foundation. All of that is just sound doctrine. And sound doctrine doesn’t exist for its own benefit. I don’t teach sound doctrine just so you can all gain new knowledge.
Sound doctrine, as we saw when we studied the Book of Titus, should result in changed character, in proper behavior.
The sound doctrine of Scripture should result in righteous behavior by those who follow Jesus in faith.
The Apostle Paul talked about some of that righteous behavior in his letter to Titus. But there are four verses in the his letter to the Roman church where he gives his most concise instructions for “effective Christian living.” (Robert H. Mounce, Romans, The New American Commentary series, [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995], 236.)
There are 13 statements here, 13 exhortations, 13 imperatives or commands for the Christian.
As we seek to build on the foundation of sound doctrine by allowing that doctrine to change our character and cause us to behave properly as followers of Christ and as the church that is the body under His head, these 13 imperatives will be a good place for us to dwell for a while.
Indeed, my plan is to spend a week on each of these imperatives, finishing this new series by the end of the year.
Coincidentally — though I don’t believe it’s a coincidence — this is exactly the place where the Wednesday night Zoom Bible study finds itself in our study of the Book of Romans.
So, for those of you who haven’t joined our study, you’ll get a window into what we do during those evenings together.
And perhaps you’ll find that you’re interested in joining us. I believe I speak for most of the group when I say that this study has been a source of rich blessings for us all.
So, let’s take a look at the passage as a whole, and then we’ll dive deeper into the first of the 13 imperatives. We’re picking up in verse 9 of chapter 12 in the Book of Romans.
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11 not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, 13 contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.
Now, to give you some context for what we’ve just read, Paul spent the first 11 chapters of this letter to the Roman church explaining the doctrine of the righteousness of God.
He talked about the fact that none of us is righteous. We are all sinners. We have all gone about our lives as if we are the final arbiters of right and wrong, as if the perfect and righteous God who is the only one worthy of declaring right from wrong does not exist.
That’s the state of the world today. And in the arrogance of denying God, we break pretty much everything we touch.
Our foolishness in this regard actually amounts to rebellion against Him as our Creator and King.
That rebellion brought death and destruction into a world that He created to be a place of life and contentment.
Paul puts it this way: “The wages of sin is death.” In other words, we’ve earned the proper wage for our works of sin, for all those ways we fail to demonstrate the perfect, righteous character of the God in whose image we were made.
And we see the destructiveness of our sins in the relationships we ruin, in the wars we fight, in the funerals we hold, and even in the very environment we destroy.
Sin has broken everything, and we are powerless to fix it all. Indeed, we are powerless to fix the most important thing of all — the broken relationship with the one who created us to be in fellowship with Him.
And so, having shown us just how badly we’ve broken everything, Paul goes on to tell us how GOD stepped into history to provide a solution where we could not.
He sent His unique and eternal Son, His beloved Jesus, to live here as a man so we could see the beauty and joy of a life lived in perfect obedience to God.
And then, in order to provide the solution to our sin problem, Jesus gave Himself as a sacrifice on the cross.
There, He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind, bearing the just punishment for all our sins, so that all who follow Him in faith can be reconciled to God.
We can only stand before a righteous God in righteousness, and since we have no righteousness of our own, God gives followers of Jesus HIS righteousness.
And His promise of eternal life for Jesus-followers is confirmed by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.
God has shown throughout the pages of history that He is a promise-keeper. And so we can be certain He will keep THIS promise to those who put their faith in Jesus.
That’s a very brief summary of the first 11 chapters of Romans, of the doctrine of the righteousness of God.
But sound doctrine doesn’t exist simply for us to gain knowledge. Sound doctrine should result in changed character, in proper behavior. And so, Paul shifts, beginning in chapter 12 of this book, to the application of that doctrine.
For we who have followed Jesus in faith, we are now called into a right relationship with God, one in which we devote our lives to Him — one in which we give ourselves to Him as living sacrifices.
And to the extent that we do that, then we can begin to live among one another in the way that is proper. And that’s what these 13 imperatives of verses 9-13 are all about.
And what I’ll suggest this morning is that the first two of those imperatives — “let love be without hypocrisy” and “abhor what is evil” — provide the framework that supports the other 11.
The sound doctrine was the foundation. The first two imperatives are the structural steel. And the other 11 imperatives are the walls and roof of this structure.
Put another way, these first two commands are general in nature. They are the guidelines we should use to determine the right way to act in any given situation.
And the 11 that follow are examples of how those two broad commands or imperatives should look in the lives of Christians.
We’ll spend the rest of today’s time talking about that first broad imperative — “Let love be without hypocrisy.”
Now, in order to understand what Paul is telling us here, we have to understand what he means by “love.”
I think we’re much too careless about this term in our modern society. We use “love” to describe everything from how we feel about our favorite sports teams to how we feel about husbands or wives to how we feel about our pets to how we feel about bacon.
Part of the way the Greek language dealt with this range of emotions was to give different words for different types of love.
There are three different word groups, for instance, that deal with interpersonal love — agapao, phileo, and eros.
Eros deals with sexual love, and it’s not used in the New Testament — not because it’s not important, but because it’s not the topic of concern for the New Testament writers.
Phileo is brotherly love. Phileo describes an affection for someone, often a friend. Phileo is the word that’s translated as “brotherly love” in verse 10 of our passage.
But the highest kind of love in the Greek language — and the one with which the New Testament most often concerns itself — is agapao, agape love.
Agape love “refers to a kind of love that expresses personal will and affection rather than emotions or feelings.” [R. P. Nettelhorst, “Love,” ed. Douglas Mangum et al., Lexham Theological Wordbook, Lexham Bible Reference Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014).]
Rather than an emotion that can be subject to change based on circumstances, agape love describes a choice. THIS is the term that’s used to describe God’s love for mankind.
God CHOOSES to love us, and that’s good news for we whose sin might very well destroy any emotional bond God might have with us.
Since He CHOOSES to love us — even though He knows we are sinners, rebels, deniers, and betrayers — we can be confident that He will go on loving us, even when we fail to be whom He created us to be.
One of the greatest statements of that idea appears in this very letter from Paul, back in verse 8 of chapter 5.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
God’s own agapao for us, Paul says here, is evident by the fact that Jesus died for us WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS. God doesn’t wait for us to clean up our acts before extending His grace and mercy to us.
Instead, He reached down into history — before we were even born and knowing how we would deny Him, how we would betray Him in our sins — and poured out His grace upon sinful mankind at the cross, where Jesus bled and died for us and in our place.
Even though it was the debt for our sins — yours and mine — that Jesus would have to pay at the cross, He gave Himself for us, because He has CHOSEN to love us, no matter what.
This agape love is the standard for the Christian love Paul talks about in verse 9 of today’s passage.
This choosing love that is unaffected by circumstance or even great wrong done to the one who extends agape love is exactly the kind of love we are called to have for one another.
In fact, Paul uses one of the forms of this word agapao nearly 25 times throughout this letter. And it will be helpful for us to explore some of those other appearances of this word in order to fully understand what he means in verse 9.
It first appears in verse 7 of chapter 1, in Paul’s greeting to the Romans.
7 to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This letter was addressed to the church in Rome, which was composed of believers, people who were beloved of God, agapetos of God, chosen by God for His special love.
These are the people who have been called by God to salvation, and they have responded to His call by placing their faith in Jesus.
Quoting the prophet Hosea in verse 25 of chapter 9, Paul uses the same word, agapetos, to show that the Gentiles, who were the enemies of God’s chosen people, Israel, in much of the Old Testament, were now beloved of God because of Jesus’ work at the cross.
25 As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’ ”
God had promised Abraham that his descendants would have a special place in God’s heart, that they would be His chosen people, that He would love them.
But they had failed to love God. They had largely denied Him and betrayed Him throughout the centuries, even to the point of crucifying His Son, Jesus.
They had made themselves enemies of God, refusing His grace, and so He had chosen to show that grace to their enemies, the Gentiles.
But He never stopped loving Israel, His chosen people.
That’s what Paul talks about in verses 28 and 29 of chapter 11.
28 From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; 29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
In other words, the Jewish people had made themselves enemies of the gospel, which was a good thing for the Gentiles who now could experience the benefits of God’s grace.
But the nation of Israel has never stopped being beloved of God, whose promise to Abraham and the Patriarchs can never be broken.
In fact, what Paul describes in chapters 9-11 is how God will use the salvation of the Gentiles to make Israel jealous of His affections and draw the Jewish people back to Him.
So, we can see how this choosing love, this agape love, is not some sort of emotional response. It is one-sided; it doesn’t stand or fall on the response that one gets to it.
And so, the Christian’s call to “love without hypocrisy” means that we choose to love one another, regardless of whether or not that love is returned.
But there’s another aspect of this agape love that we must address in order to see how it’s separated from the realm of emotion.
And there are two verses that will help us in this regard. They appear in chapters 13 and 14, where Paul further explains how agape love looks within the church.
In verse 10 of chapter 13, he says this:
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Now, the law — and here, Paul is talking about the Law of Moses — described how the people of Israel were to live before God and among one another.
And Jesus said the law could be reduced to two commandments — love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.
So, love fulfills the law in that it causes us not to harm one another.
But in verse 15 of chapter 14, Paul takes this concept another step further in a discussion of what kinds of food and drink are appropriate for Christians.
15 For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died.
The background here is that some new Christians in Rome were afraid to eat meat from the markets, because it might have come from animals that had been sacrificed to false gods.
Paul reminded the Romans that what they ate wouldn’t make them unclean before God, and so they should feel free to eat whatever they could purchase.
But in this verse, he says that there’s something even more important they should be concerned about.
If their freedom to eat and drink might hurt their brothers and sisters in Christ, then they should set aside their own rights for the benefit of the others.
Agape love seeks the greatest good for others, even when that means giving up our own rights.
And this is the key to a full understanding of the love that we’re called to as Christians, especially as it concerns how we love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Agape love seeks the greatest good for another. That means we don’t do things that are hurtful, and it also means we don’t affirm things that are destructive.
And one other thing. Agape love is without hypocrisy. REAL love is sincere.
If I’m nice to you when we’re here on Sundays, and then I gossip and snipe at you behind your backs on Tuesday, then I’m not showing agape love. I’m not showing real love. In fact, that’s not love at all.
Genuine love treats others the same whether they’re in our midst or not, whether there’s anything to gain from it or not, whether it’s compensated or not.
Genuine love — agape love, choosing love — always seeks the best for its objects. Genuine love calls us to set aside our own rights for the benefit of those we’re called to love. Genuine love is a choice, not an emotion.
THIS is the love that we’re called to have for one another as followers of Christ. And it’s exactly the kind of love He showed for us, as He hung on that cross to pay the just penalty for our sins.
In His sacrifice for us, we see agape love — genuine love — at its most sublime.
And as we seek to understand how our character should be changed by the sound doctrine of the church — as we seek in the coming weeks to recognize the righteous behavior this sound doctrine should bring about in us — let us commit ourselves to this framework of genuine love. Let us be people who love even as we have been loved.
Let’s pray.
Now, this being the fourth Sunday of the month, today is Lord’s Supper Sunday.
t’s a time for we who have followed Jesus in faith to remember His sacrificial death on our behalf and in our place by partaking of the bread and juice of the grape in the manner He commanded.
It’s a time for us to remember and celebrate the agape love He showed us at the cross.
Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper in the upper room in Jerusalem, where He ate with His disciples on the night of his arrest, before He was crucified the next day.
He told them to repeat this observance to help them remember what He was about to do for them and for us.
This is a memorial observation. We do this, in part, to help us remember the great price that Jesus paid for our salvation and also to remember that He will return in His resurrected body to take home with Him we who have followed Him in faith.
In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul says we do this also to proclaim the good news of salvation.
Our participation in the Lord’s Supper portrays the message of the gospel — the good news that God Himself came to us in the person of His unique and eternal Son, Jesus.
That He lived a sinless life as a man so we could see what perfect obedience and fellowship with God looks like.
And that He gave Himself as a sacrifice on the cross, taking upon Himself the guilt for OUR sins and bearing the punishment that we deserve for them.
And, finally, that He rose from the dead on the third day, demonstrating His victory over death itself and His ability to keep His promise of eternal life for those who follow Him in faith.
This is what we proclaim to the lost world when we partake in the Lord’s Supper.
This observance is for those who have committed themselves to Jesus and have demonstrated that commitment in believers’ baptism. If you have taken those steps, then I invite you to join us in this observance today.
Now, the conditions during the Last Supper were different than the conditions we have here today, but the significance of their observance was the same as it is today.
While the deacons are distributing the bread and juice, I’m going to ask Andy to play Amazing Grace. After that, we will pray and then eat the bread.
SONG/ELEMENTS
Jesus told His disciples that the bread represented His body, which would be broken for our transgressions.
Let us pray.
26 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.”
As Jesus suffered and died on that cross, his blood poured out with His life. This was always God’s plan to reconcile mankind to Himself.
“In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
Let us pray.
27 And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.
Take and drink.
“Now, as often as we eat this bread and drink the cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Maranatha! Lord, come!
Here at Liberty Spring, we have a tradition following our observance of the Lord’s Supper.
Please gather around in a circle, and let us sing together “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”