Page 84 - Romans Student Textbook.doc

Overcome evil by faithful obedience to the commands of Christ which are the display of His goodness and
the way we show His goodness to the world. (12:9-21)

There are a flurry of commands given in this paragraph — 28 of them in just 13 verses. The key command
in this paragraph is the first one, “Let love be genuine.”104 All of the other commands in the paragraph
are but directives about exactly how one goes about doing that as they live daily in the midst of a sin-
cursed, sin-twisted world. On my desk I have a set of bookends that hold up my Bibles from which I study.
They are not identical, but they are thematically connected. Together they make up a soapstone carving
of a Rhino. I have found it helpful to me to use the way that bookends work on a shelf in my office to
describe the structure of this paragraph. It contains a shelf — the command “Let love be genuine.” There
are bookends — “Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.”105 and “Do not be overcome by evil, but
overcome evil with good.”106 And in between there are books on the shelf arranged according to two
themes. I think it will help us to look at each of these in order. The shelf is the command “Let love be
genuine.” So how does the Bible define “genuine love.” The word translated “genuine” this text is a Greek
word ajnupovkritoV which literally means, “unhypocritical” and is often translated “sincere.” To be
hypocritical is to portray being someone or something that you are not. It is to give the appearance of
being one thing when you are not that thing. So, what is being said in this passage that we are not allowed
to fake love but are only allowed to really love one another. The example of such a love is Jesus and the
acts that demonstrate that love have been stated in an earlier verse from this letter, “but God shows his
love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”107

The bookend commands that hold up the volumes on how to love genuinely focus on the overcoming of
evil by the doing of good. These bookends summarize God’s grand strategy for dealing with the problem
of evil in our world. It is the strategy of God that Paul has just spent eleven chapters explaining. On the
cross

Jesus did good for those who were doing evil to him. The result of that supreme demonstration of
goodness is sin being conquered, death being vanquished, Satan being defeated, power to change hearts
being displayed, forgiveness being given, and the true glory of God’s righteous love being displayed.
The remainder of the commands in this paragraph are the books on the shelf.

They are specific ways that God’s children can display God’s genuine love in their daily lives in the midst of
this sin-cursed world as they take the gospel of Jesus Christ to it. They fall into two categories. There are
volumes on loving saints (vv. 10-13) and there are volumes on loving the people of this world (14-20).
Toward and with our brothers in the church we must love one another constantly (10), show honor to one
another consistently (10), serve our Lord faithfully (11), rejoice hopefully (12), endure hardship patiently
(12), pray constantly, and address the physical needs that arise among us willingly (13).

The volume on showing God’s genuine love to the people who are outside the church in this world is more
extensive. There are attitudes and actions we are called to display as we live among them. We must:
watch our words (14), show we care (15), discipline our thinking (16-18), trust our God (19), and share our
stuff (20). Our words must communicate good, not evil; blessing, not cursing; compliment, not criticism.
Our actions must show that we care about their sorrows and that we are willing to let them comfort us in
our sorrows. Our thinking must show the perspective of God even in tense situations. Our trust in God
must be seen in our unwillingness to take matters of justice into our own hands. Our generosity must
speak to the fact that everything we have belongs to God and is given to us so that we can be a blessing to
others.

104 Romans 12:9, ESV.
105 Romans 12:9, ESV.
106 Romans 12:21, ESV.
107 Romans 5:8, ESV.

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