Loving God's Way

We are concluding our exposition of Romans 12 this Sunday, and Paul brings the aspirational Christian life into focus. He implored the Christians in the Roman church to surrender their bodies to Christ as “a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), refuse to conform to the ways of the world but transform themselves by renewing their minds (Romans 12:2), and be humbly self-aware, not puffed up with pride but confident enough in the gifts granted to them by the Holy Spirit to put them into practice (Romans 12:3-8).

However, what's the point of this dramatic, counter-cultural transformation into a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17)? The answer is simple, but in practice, it's hard - “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19;18; Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:3!). Loving those who love you or believe, behave, or look like you is easy, and Christ gives us no credit for that (Luke 6:32), but Paul, echoing the command of his Lord and Savior, implores us to love those who don't love us, don't look or act like us, aren't in the “right” social circles, or have been marginalized by society.

When the young lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), He used the example of the most reviled people in Israel other than the Gentiles, the Samaritans, to put the Great Commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves into perspective. Likewise, when Paul instructed the Roman believers to "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Romans 12:14), and “not repay anyone evil for evil” (Romans 12:17) but to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21), they didn't have to look far to know who he was talking about.

Let's look at Paul's description of love in action - how we're to love one another in the body of Christ, and love those outside the body so that Christ may be glorified. Marcy and I look forward to gathering together and learning as one how to love God's way!

Blessings,

Ron