Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
3^rd of September 2023

Romans 12:9-21

‘Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.’

It is awful when the Bible convicts you of your besetting sin. I can read the many biblical commands in both the Hebrew and Greek scriptures to share what I have with the poor and to welcome the stranger unperturbed because I do seek to do those things. I read Jesus commanding us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us with some discomfort because I know I frequently fail, but at least I am trying. And I have found that pausing to pray for any misogynists and homophobes attacking me does at the least calm me down. But today we hear the Apostle Paul telling the Christians in Rome not to be haughty and not to claim to be wiser than they are – and ouch! If there is any sin of which I am consistently guilty it is being haughty about my intellect and my education. I do not know whether I claim to be wiser than I am, but I frequently claim to be wiser than a number (small or large) of the rest of the Australian population. On this count, Paul has got me bang to rights.

Your besetting sin may not be the same as mine, but that is okay. Paul has plenty of admonitions to share. There are thirty imperatives in this one short passage, thirty times that Paul is telling us to do something or not to do something else. Are you patient in suffering; do you persevere in prayer? Do you welcome strangers and ‘contribute to the needs of the saints,’ giving from your wealth to those in the church in most need? Do you bless those who persecute you, live in harmony with one another, live peaceably with all? Are you ardent in spirit, seeking to serve God in everything you do? I have confessed my sin, I am not going to ask you for yours, but I suggest that none of us can live out Paul’s description of Christian life completely.

How can Paul expect such perfection from us? This is the same Paul who earlier in this very letter said, ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate … I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ (Romans 7:15-18b-19) I preached a whole sermon on how relatable that made the Apostle. Now he seems to be expecting that we can do the good we want, that we can turn away from the evil that we do not want, and that is much less relatable.

The reason Paul feels able to make such demands is because of the new thing that he has described God doing, the adoption of both Jews and Gentiles as children and heirs of God. (Romans 8:14-17) As I said when I preached on that passage, by arguing that everyone who has received the Spirit is a child of God, Paul was telling the Christians in Rome that the privileges that had previously been considered to belong to Israel alone had now been extended to Gentiles as well as Jews. What Paul is doing in this list of imperatives is describing how the children of God, those adopted by baptism, have been enabled by the Spirit to live. He can be so very blunt and demanding because he believes that through our adoption we have been ‘transformed by the renewing of [our] minds’ rather than ‘conformed to this world’. (Romans 12:2)

Today’s passage shows us what lives lived in the power of the Spirit look like, and it begins: ‘Let love be genuine’. When I was taught to write essays I used to occasionally get into trouble because the first sentence of my paragraphs were not always topic sentences. Unlike me, Paul obeys good essay-writing rules. ‘Let love be genuine’ is the topic sentence, and everything that follows simply describes how we are to genuinely love: ‘Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.’ This is how the members of the community in Rome, and by extension every Christian who has followed them, are to live as Christians. Christ gave us the new commandment to love one another as he loves us. What Paul is describing here is how to do that.

In the Greek what is translated as ‘loving one another with mutual affection’ is philadelphia, brotherly love. Paul is telling the Romans, Gentiles and Jews, to love each other as members of the same family. As God’s children all Christians are family to each other, and we are to show that in the way we love. The love Paul describes is active; we are not to wait for occasions to come our way to act lovingly, instead we are told not to lack in zeal and to be ardent in Spirit. We are to deliberately look for ways of loving each other and sharing what we have with each other.

Commentators disagree on whether the first part of today’s reading is about how Christians are to love each other while the second part is about how we are to love those who are not part of our community, but that does seem to me to be a helpful interpretation. Paul, of course, was writing to Christians living as a small, vulnerable community within a larger and much more powerful Empire, an Empire that in the future would murder Paul in the very Rome to which he is now writing. Given the context, it makes sense that Paul would write: ’Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them … If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.’ As I have said repeatedly, Christians in Australia are not in the same situation as Christians in first-century Rome. It is exceedingly unlikely that we will be martyred for our faith in North Balwyn. But since Christianity was for some two centuries the unofficial ‘official religion’ of Australia, the antagonism and indifference we now experience from our fellow Australians can sometimes feel like persecution. We have now become an unimportant minority within a surrounding culture that thinks we are a wee bit strange – and Paul has good advice for how to live in such a situation. We are to ‘rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer.’ When we are criticised and ignored and abused we are not to repay anyone evil for evil, but instead to take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. Paul is clear about how we are to respond to persecution if we experience it: ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’

People should know when Christians are being persecuted by the society around us by the good that we are doing for that society in response.

There has been much discussion over the centuries about what it means to heap burning coals on the heads of our enemies. Most of the Greek Fathers thought it meant that God would increase the punishment of these evildoers. But Church Fathers Origen, Augustine, Pelagius, and Jerome thought it meant that our kindness would melt the hearts of our enemies and convert them, and that makes more sense in the context of the rest of this loving reading. Paul’s language may occasionally be abrasive, (‘You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?’ Galatians 3:1) but we do need to remember that topic sentence, ‘Let love be genuine’. It is not genuine love to say to our enemies, ‘I forgive you, but God is going to get you’!

Can we do this? Can we show such genuine love that we overcome evil with good? It seems unlikely. We are only human, and responding to evil with evil feels much more natural. But Paul is not asking more of the Romans than Jesus commands of his followers in the Sermon on the Mount. And, again, we need to read Paul’s imperatives in the context of the rest of Paul’s letter. With great love God in Christ died for us on the cross, writes Paul, and with him we have been raised to new life in the Spirit. We live in Christ; Christ lives in us. This means, Paul says over and over, that we are no longer slaves to sin. We can live lives pleasing to God. We can live lives of love. God has given us the ability to do so.

Can I live in harmony with all my fellow Christians, avoiding haughtiness, listening to those with whom I disagree, never claiming to be wiser than I am? Certainly not in my own strength. But I am not asked to do it in my own strength. God so loved the world that God became human in Jesus and died for us; in response Jesus commanded us to love God, our neighbours, and one another; and in today’s reading Paul describes what that love is to look like. Christianity is all about love, and we have been reassured that if we seek to abide in love the God who is love will abide in us. (1 John 4:16) This is our calling: to love in imitation and through the power of the God who is love and who loves us. That is not a bad vocation to be called to. Thanks be to the God who loves us. Amen.