INTRODUCTION
In 12:3-8 Paul wanted us to think of the church as , the body of Christ.
In 12:9-13 Paul wants us to think about the church as .
We’ll learn today how we can be a healthy, contributing member to the church, the family of God.
As we’ve discovered, Paul gives us 12 commands in these 5 verses. We’ll summarize his commands under four headings. To be a good member of God’s family we must:
Start with the .
Express and to others.
Keep up your .
Make your love .
To be a good member of God’s family:
I. Start with your heart, 1
Romans 12:9 (ESV)
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
Love is a matter of the heart, so the heart is the very best place to start if your goal is to have good relationships with others.
Proverbs 4:23 (ESV)
Matthew 12:34 (ESV)
Matthew 15:17–20 (ESV)
Matthew 22:37–40 (ESV)
If the heart isn’t right whatever comes out of the heart be right. If we have genuine love in our heart for God and for others we will end up doing for others what God wants.
Paul’s first command is to be sure that our love is the real thing.
Our heart needs to have genuine love or the phoniness of our love will come out.
Romans 12:9 (ESV)
Let love be genuine. Lit: genuine love (no verb)
Because Paul omits a verb here, some see these words as the title for the paragraph: what genuine love is. That certainly is the subject of the paragraph, but most translators insert the verbal phrase Let…be… That seems to be the idea.
Love must be genuine: No play-acting. From a word root that gives us our word hypocrite. In Genuine love there is:
1. No pretense or
2. No shallow
This is in line with what Jesus taught and what the apostle John speaks so clearly about. We are to love everyone but especially our brothers and sisters in Christ.
John 15:12 (ESV)
1 John 4:7–8 (ESV)
1 John 4:11 (ESV)
1 John 4:21 (ESV)
Paul’s second command deals with what we let into our heart.
Romans 12:9 (ESV)
Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
To abhor evil is to exceedingly. The Greek word means vehement dislike with is just the opposite of love.
To hold fast to the good is to cling to good like clings to each other.
Recall what Paul taught the Corinthians about love:
1 Corinthians 13:6 (ESV)
Love and , love and , love and cannot get along with each other.
If our heart is to be ready to what is good it must be with what is good.
Once we’ve purified our heart of any phony, superficial, hypocritical love, and have turned from sin and are clinging to what is good, we are ready to live as God wants within his family.
To be a good member of God’s family:
2. Express love and honor to others, 10
We are to love each other as should love each other.
The love here is philos love – natural love for family and friends.
In philos love there is no coldness, no shallowness, no withdrawing from one another. Family members may not always agree but they still love each other. Family members may disappoint, but we still love the. Family members may withdrawn from us, but we don’t withdraw from them. In the church we demonstrate real family love for one another.
We are to outdo others in .
We are to recognize and appreciate others’ contributions and accomplishments. The Greek carries the idea of showing this through our actions.
To be a good member of God’s family:
3. Keep up your spiritual passion, 11-12
The six commands in verses 11-12 can be summarized by the statement: Keep up your spiritual passion.
Paul knows that living in God’s family in the right way requires . Without it, operating just in the flesh, we will not be getting along with our brothers and sisters as we should.
Recall what Paul taught in Galatians:
Galatians 5:16 (ESV)
Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV)
We can’t manifest the love, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control and everything else that is needed to live with genuine love in God’s family if we are not walking in the Spirit. To walk in the Spirit we have to maintain a living relationship with God.
Maintaining a vital relationship with God is Paul’s focus in these verses. He tells us we must:
Be zealous not slothful
Be fervent in spirit (Be set on fire by the Spirit; maintain spiritual fervor)
Serve the Lord
Rejoice in hope
Be patient in tribulation
Be constant in prayer
If we let our Christian life we’ll at best with our Christian brothers and sisters, but the real love will be gone. Genuine love needs God’s power and is kept alive with zeal, fervency of spirit, serving God, rejoicing, being patient in the hardest times, and keeping our prayer life in good health.
To be a good member of God’s family:
4. Make your love practical, 13
In verse 13 Paul turns back to what we should be doing in the family of God, and here he emphasizes the practical. This is in line with both James and John:
1 John 3:17 (ESV)
James 2:15–16 (ESV)
Paul gives two specific instructions for living in God’s family:
Contribute to the needs of the saints
The word translated ‘contribute’ comes from the same root that the word for comes from: koinonia. Here Paul uses the verb. It has the meaning of something with someone else.
Seek to show hospitality
In Paul’s day believers would invite other believers who were traveling into their homes and provide room and board for them. This took the place of unsafe and unhealthy inns.
Some believers regularly opened their homes up to church gatherings. House churches were common. More well-to-do believers would host pot-luck suppers before or after worship services and provide enough food so even those who could not bring food got a good meal. House-to-house fellowship was a regular practice in the early church.
Paul says we should to show hospitality.
The family receives the help it needs when believers with genuine love in the needs of others in the church, and seek to find ways to to them.
CONCLUSION
All born-again believers are part of God’s family. How are we to live in God’s family? The ruling command is love – unselfish, self-giving, other-focused love.
But to consistently show this love we need to be sure our heart is right, that we actively love others in the family, keep ourselves spiritually fit so we can walk in the Spirit, and show our love in practical ways.