Our text from Romans this morning is quite challenging. Paul writes to encourage God’s people to live in their in the calling, but his words are overwhelming to us. “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another…be fervent in spirit…rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer”. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? This is only a small portion of what he writes in the first three verses. His list goes on and on. In fact, it includes 30 little commands or sayings to encourage us.
Listening to his words though, it is easy to feel exhausted. It is easy to feel unworthy. It is easy to wonder if the Holy Spirit could ever form within us all of these desires of God. Paul’s list is overwhelming and leaves us wondering, “Where do we start? What should we pay attention to? What is a Christian to do with all of these words?”
Let’s say you were to take one exhortation a day and really work on that one. So, for Monday, you take “Let love be genuine” and all day, you try to work on and to demonstrate genuine love. Passing by someone at work or at the store, you say, “How are you doing?”, but only this time, you stop to listen and then respond to what they are saying. For this day, love becomes more than the words of a casual greeting. For Tuesday, you move on to the next exhortation and work on “Abhor what is evil”. If you were to do this for every one of these exhortations, it would take you almost a month to get through the list just once! And that would be spending only one day on each and it would assume that you could actually do these things. Paul’s list is overwhelming for the Christian.
This morning, we’ll focus on two of the overarching thoughts of Paul’s encouragements, which are self-sacrificial love and overcoming evil with good. The first thought, showing self-sacrificial love is shown in the first paragraph (v.9-13). The second thought, overcoming good with evil (14-21), is shown in the second paragraph. We’ll also see how they point us to Jesus.
Paul tells us about self-sacrificial love in the first five verses. He encourages us to have this with these sayings. What is a self-sacrificial love? Let’s see what he says. First of all, it is a genuine love. It is a love that cares for others and their needs. It does not focus on us or demand anything in return for what it does for another. Simply put, it puts others first. Paul says a self-sacrificial love also abhors what is evil. It despises and repulses evil acts and deeds. It is a love that does not seek to harm or avenge oneself. A self-sacrificial love also is one that shows a brotherly love to others. A brotherly love sees people as all alike and on the same level. It does not have favorites. This love transcends our immediate family ties and does not depend on natural or ethnic bonds. In fact, it does not even consider it! Isn’t this what our world needs?
This love according to Paul, shows honor and respect too. It doesn’t wait to be honored, but it makes the first move in honoring others. It considers others better and more important than oneself. He writes that a sacrificial love obviously includes a love for God that comes from the Holy Spirit. This love leads one to serve God with the talents and gifts that one has been given. Lastly, a sacrificial love looks out for the needs of others and shows hospitality. It looks for opportunities to serve, and it goes out of its way to do so.
Right now, we see a lot of examples of this in Texas. This is just one of many. Abe Minor, a man nicknamed “The Houston Hero,” has been rescuing people all week. He started by being sent by his wife to rescue her friend’s family, which included four kids, one of which was an infant. As he was going there, others called out for his help as they saw him with his boat. He said that he couldn’t ignore their pleas, and told them that he would be back to help. He ended up rescuing at least another 20 families as of Tuesday, and goes back out to search for more. This kind of love looks for opportunities to express itself, just like this.
Having a self-sacrificial love can a challenge though, and these challenges stem from a variety of things. In our lives, we are often told to focus on ourselves first and foremost. We hear outrageous things like this: “You need to learn how to love yourself before you can love others.” Or “Love yourself, then love others.” This ordering of love focuses on us. Who knows if it will ever extend to others when it begins at and focuses on us?
Complicating matters though can our definition of love. As Americans, we more naturally see love as emotionally based. We can understand it as a feeling. We hear it with a phrase like this: “I just don’t feel love for them anymore. Its all dried up.” Once that emotion wears out, some people can struggle to show love. We don’t often see love as an action like Paul and Scripture do. Going along with this is the nature of our love. Our love can be conditional, or based on what we can get in return. It is easier to love those who are nice to and who serve us, than it is easier to those who don’t. A self-sacrificial love can also produce fears and concerns for us too. One of the scariest things about showing love to others is that it can go unappreciated, unnoticed, and can be misused. Consider this story.
A pastor went to the hospital to visit Maggy, one of his members. She was in the last stages of her life because of cancer, and was heavily medicated, and unresponsive. He went to support her family, who was taking it hard. When he got there, he was surprised with what he saw. Her daughter, Kimmy, had taken the sheets and set them aside. She was putting lotion on her mother’s body, and was starting at the feet. This was an expensive lotion, and was more than she could afford. As he walked in, Kimmy gave a mischievous smile and made him promise not to tell her children. Her kids gave it to her for Mother’s Day, since, in their words, “you never do anything for yourself, Mom.” As Kimmy put it on her mother, she was unresponsive. Maggy, nor anyone else, would never know the difference. But this is the nature of a self-sacrificial love. So what if these acts of love go unappreciated, or unnoticed? So what if no one ever knows these precious acts? God knows and sees these acts. They are not unnoticed, but are precious and valuable in His sight. Acts like these care for others and their needs. It puts others first. These acts of love show the mercy and love of Jesus, and are motivated by them. They point us to Him.
As Paul talks about self-sacrificial love, we cannot help but be pointed to Christ’s self-sacrificial love for us. Jesus once said: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down His life for His friends.” Jesus loved us so much that He willingly gave up and laid down His life for us, so that we could have His. He put our need for grace and salvation first, and let Himself endure beatings, torture, pain, and suffering for us. He did what it took to save us. We only love because He first loved us. This self-sacrificial love that Paul talks about is produced in us through the Holy Spirit. When we share this kind of love with others, it points them to the greatest act done for them, Jesus’ death and resurrection.
After encouraging us to have a self-sacrificial love, Paul moves on to encourage us to overcome evil with good. But like earlier, this can be a challenge. When we are wronged or hurt, we can carry wounds with us. We can endure a heavy heartache, a piercing pain, and deep distress. We can be scarred mentally, emotionally, and perhaps physically from people’s misdeeds and harmful words against and to us. When people wrong or hurt us, our natural response is to hurt others back, or get even. It seems to be hardwired in our sinful nature. When we hurt from others, we can want others to feel and know the same feeling. We may want them to feel our pain and suffering. We want to return their evil with evil.
Paul encourages us not to do so. He encourages us to repay those deeds and acts with good. He encourages us to wait for God to act and give vengeance. He writes: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” The vengeance business is not a space that we are to set up shop in. We leave it in God’s hands. What do we do when we encounter and endure evil? We overcome it with good.
In this section, Paul encourages us to show goodness and mercy by praying for, blessing, feeding, clothing, and providing for the needs of those who have wronged us. It seems to be the wrong, or opposite thing to do, but it has a purpose. These acts might drive these people towards faith and repentance. The mercy that we show them might lead them to the greater mercy that is found in Jesus. David is a great example of this.
King Saul tried to kill David numerous times. When Saul would be in David’s hand, David would refrain from showing him evil. Instead, he would spare Saul. He showed respect for his office of king, which led him to showing the mercy that Saul didn’t deserve. Sometimes, this led Saul to seeing the error of his ways. David waited for God to avenge him, even though that took years. David overcame evil with good.
That is what our God does. He overcomes evil with God. This is depicted on the front of our bulletin this morning. On the cross, where our Savior was nailed and His blood poured out, God overcame many things. He overcame our sin, the violations and wrongs done to Him, through Jesus’ perfect life and sacrifice. He repays our sin with mercy and forgiveness, not with wrath and condemnation. He overcame death with, ironically, the death of His Son. Through what Satan thought to be his greatest hour, killing God’s Son, came His greatest defeat with Jesus’ resurrection. We will see His victory fully at the Last Day when His enemies will be defeated, and sickness, pain, and sadness will be overcome. Our God overcomes evil with good, He overcame it through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Paul’s list of encouragements can be overwhelming for us, but it points us to Christ and His overwhelming grace and love for us. IN JESUS’ NAME, AMEN.
