Love...
Notes
Transcript
Love should be shown without pretending. Hate evil, and hold on to what is good. Love each other like the members of your family. Be the best at showing honor to each other. Don’t hesitate to be enthusiastic—be on fire in the Spirit as you serve the Lord! Be happy in your hope, stand your ground when you’re in trouble, and devote yourselves to prayer. Contribute to the needs of God’s people, and welcome strangers into your home. Bless people who harass you—bless and don’t curse them. Be happy with those who are happy, and cry with those who are crying. Consider everyone as equal, and don’t think that you’re better than anyone else. Instead associate with people who have no status. Don’t think that you’re so smart. Don’t pay back anyone for their evil actions with evil actions, but show respect for what everyone else believes is good.
Here we are in the third week of our sermon series, When in Romans XII…. Our first week we talked about not conforming to the world but being transformed by God’s Word. Part of that discussion was how humans make tough topics political in order to avoid talking about them within the church. By doing this we are conforming the church to the world. We remove the tough issues and call them politics so that they are not talked about in church either.
Last week we talked about the body of Christ and how he is the head of the church. Unfortunately, churches all over the world have not followed the head but have followed human desires. If we follow the head of the church great things happen and the Kingdom of God will grow because of following Christ. Not only is Christ the head of the church but he is also the heart of the church.
By being the heart of the church then we should share the same felling and love that Christ does. If we as humans and the church were to actually let Christ lead us as the head and heart things would be completely different. First, all our actions would be to glorify God and make more disciples. Secondly, it means we would love differently than what we do now.
After Paul talks about these things to the church in Rome he talks about love. We have mentioned love in our previous sermons but Paul turns his focus to love directly here. Now, I must say, when I think love I am taken back to the Princess Bride when Princess Buttercup is getting married the priest says, “Wove, true wove.”
The love Paul is talking about is different than what the priest from the Princess Bride is talking about when he said Wove. The word Paul uses here is agapao or agape. In the Greek language there are 6 different words that mean love. Each of these loves are different. The Bible only uses three of these 6 words for love. Those three are Eros, Philia, and Agape. This is one of the issues with translating the Bible, the English language only has one word to describe this feeling, yet the language that Romans was written in was Greek and thus the different words used to describe love.
Paul’s choice of agape in this portion of Romans is important. Agape is a Godly love that is unconditional and never-ending. I know some of you are questions Paul’s choice of “Love each other like the members of your family,” because there are some members that are hard to love. But, you know the saying blood is thicker than water. We will tend to defend family members who we don’t love unconditionally.
Paul’s discussion on love comes from his understanding of love through the acts and lessons of Jesus. If we turn back to the Gospels we find this agape style love throughout. Jesus offered this love to all that he met. His love was not limited to those whom he knew or followed him but it went out to everyone. He did not love just those who were part of the community but loved those who were pushed out from the community. Jesus sought to bring everyone into the community through his love.
This is a concept that we as humans struggle with. It is hard for us to understand the possibility of loving all unconditionally as Jesus has loved. Loving unconditionally is near impossible because we create reasons for us not to love people. We find other’s downfalls or negatives and do not offer that unconditional love to them. We require others to love us also. We require other’s to be part of our community and circle before we can love them.
The other issue we struggle with is that when we say we love all people we put limits on that too. Humans will say all as a way of being unconditional in their love but then not mean all as God does. Let me ask you this, how many of you would say I love all people? If that is true honk your horns. So, do you love Muslims? Do you love pedophiles? Do you love those with different opinions than you? Do you love those who hijacked the planes and flew them into the twin towers on 9/11/2001? If you hesitated on any of those then you have put limits on your love and are not loving unconditionally.
That is the unconditional love Paul is talking about here in his letter today.