Romans 12:10-13
10Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Last week we looked at verse nine and talked about the importance of a sincere love for each other as Christians, being genuine in our love for each other.
We also talked about in verse nine that love is not to be taken lightly, that we must use discretion when applying our love.
That also in verse nine we are called to have hate in our lives, a hate that is righteous and applied in a godly manner, a hate of and for evil and whatever form that may come in.
Proverbs 8:13 - To fear the LORD is to hate evil
If we “hate evil” and “cling to what is good” as it says, then we are creating a situation in our lives were we are better able to stay on that straight and narrow road of righteousness. We are to hate evil that comes not only from around us in this world but also from within us, the evil of sin that is in our lives.
But in doing this we also need to be careful that we are not keeping ourselves from doing Gods work. If we stay to far away from evil and by that I mean evil people or worldly people, then we are unable to confront them in a way that will bring them to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ.
Have you ever watched that show on the Discovery Channel, Dirty Jobs? I love that show. That guy gets into some of the nastiest stuff.
Well being a Christian means that sometimes we are going to need to get in to the dirt a little. Not that we are to allow that dirt to sink within us but that we for sure are going to get a little dirty and have to go home and wash it off of us when were done.
In verses 10-13 Paul lists 8 things that we should see in the Christians life. Now these are not the only eight things, but just eight items we should strive for in our Christian walk. We may be doing a great job in some of these areas already and that’s fantastic. Other areas maybe not so well and we will need to work on those.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love – Brotherly love as I am sure most of you know in the Greek text is the word Philadelphia. Paul here is telling us that we must be devoted to each other as we would be to our natural brothers and sisters.
Now I thought to myself when I read this that if most of you have families like mine then you may have different relationships with your siblings, some closer than others. But we still tend to always say “but he is my brother or she is my sister and I still love them.”
What Paul is saying is that as Christians we are truly brothers and sisters, we are one family. It doesn’t matter what our background is, or our nationality, or our occupation, education or wealth, or our hair color, skin color or what shade of nail polish you may use.
All of it is irrelevant! None of it matters. God doesn’t see any of it and we shouldn’t either.
Honor one another above yourselves – We should not wait around for someone to recognize our contributions and praise us, but we should recognize others contributions and praise them.
Unfortunately, if we look at today’s church as a whole, we must conclude that the exact opposite is more often the case. Instead of thinking about and appreciating other Christians and other churches and what they are doing, our minds are usually on ourselves, and we at times are resentful that we are not sufficiently recognized or appreciated.
Therefore we are really jealous of other Christians. Much harm has been done to Christianity because of such jealousy. Ministries have been weakened, churches have split, and valuable causes have been set back because of this jealousy.
Philippians 2:3-4 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
This is how true brotherly love works for Christians. It gets to the front of the line not to receive its own honors, but to show honor and respect for others first.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord In the King James Bible it says “Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.” What it means is we must have a passion, like we would in the building of a business, when we serve the lord.
The word “fervor” or “fervent” means to boil over, or to be over flowing. The ESV Bible says “being aglow with the Spirit.”
Now some of you may not have ever been a part of building a business, so let me tell you, and I am sure my wife can tell you, it is something that requires a tremendous amount of time, focus, passion, and persistence among many things in order to be successful.
We as Christians must be passionate, desiring, focused, and for sure we must make the time needed to serve our Lord in a way that will bring Him glory, in a way that we will be successful. If we love our God as we say we do, then the business of being a Christian must be handled in a God honoring manner. It must be the first thing in our lives not the second, third our fourth.
Be joyful in hope – Hope in the bible is not a hope of the unknown but a hope in the knowing that God has made us promises and that He will fulfill them and that we await them in confidence.
Patient in affliction – God tells us that at times this life as a Christian is going to have some tough times. He tells us that not everything is going to go our way or be perfect for us. But He also tells us that if we put our faith in Him and we are patient during these hard times that things will get better.
Now I can tell you this, it may be that we may have to wait until we get to heaven before things get better but whether it is here on this earth or when we get to heaven things will get better. It is not all about what we get here, but what awaits us for eternity when we get there in heaven.
Faithful in prayer – I think this one thing “prayer” is probably the most neglected things for Christians as a whole. The sad thing about this is that prayer is one of the most beneficial things for us. Especially in establishing and building our relationship with God.
It is also beneficial to others by including those we know are in need of our prayers.
Think about how good your relationship would be with you spouse if you didn’t speak to your spouse but maybe a minute or two a day. Not very good would it?
We need to devote more and more time to prayer and the building up of our relationship with God.
The best reason for this is sin. The closer we keep to God, the farther away we tend to get to sin.
Share with God’s people who are in need – We can make the mistake of narrowing this down to money when we talk about sharing with other Christians who are in need. But this isn’t just about money, though money is important and we as a church through your giving have shared financially several times in these last nine months and I know God has blessed us by doing this and we will in the future continue to do this.
But it is much more than money, it is talking about all needs of our Christian brothers and sisters. It is talking about being there when one of us is in mourning, it is about spending time with someone who is lonely and included them in activities when we can, it is about caring for the sick, clothing the poor, caring for those in prison, the list goes on and on.
Practice hospitality – We have a great example of this today, Mike and Anne have opened there home to us after church. Now I know some of us live in much smaller homes and maybe we are only able to have a few guests over but we should do what we can with what God has provided us.
