LOVE LESSONS


by Steve Zeisler


I have been told that everyone in the world is an expert on at least one thing---reading their own handwriting. (Sometimes I am the only one who can read my handwriting!) We are more familiar with our handwriting than anyone else is, and we probably have some memory of what we were thinking when we wrote a particular note; so we can make sense of our own scrawl when no one else can. But an observation like that can lead to a misconception: that because we are experts on reading our own handwriting, we are also experts on other things that concern us. The Scriptures are very clear that we are not experts on ourselves. We need to taught how to think of ourselves.

We have seen remarkable truths in our study through the book of Romans. The intention of the Spirit of God has been to make us more impressed with God than we are with ourselves---to be captured by the love of God from which we cannot be separated by height or depth or any other created thing; to be captured by the mind of God, his unsearchable judgments and his ways that are beyond finding out; and finally to have our minds renewed as we worship this God. Romans 12:2 says we should no longer be conformed to the world, but from the inside the Spirit of God renews our minds and makes us think differently.

Having the freedom to think differently, we are finally able to understand the God who has claimed us and then to understand ourselves. Our renewed mind allows us to see ourselves clearly. And so we come to Romans 12:3-8:
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
This passage is about fitting in with one another, being members of one another, each contributing to the another. The essential point is that we are now free by the grace of God to think of ourselves accurately. The tendency of every one of us without renewed minds is to be more impressed with ourselves than we ought to be. We have fantasies in which we are the star of the show and the key contributor to every situation. We have relationships in which we feel misunderstood, our greatness going unrealized as people fail to comprehend the very magnificence they are walking by. This can be done, of course, from the negative side too---we feel hurt and set upon, we have lists of people who have rejected us, and we spend our time thinking negative thoughts about ourselves because of what other people have done to us. But then, too, we allow ourselves to be the star of what goes on in our minds, as if it were a reasonable thing to spend that much time either praising or putting ourselves down; we are still saying, "I'm worth all the attention."

Viewing Ourselves Soberly

Paul says in the very beginning phrase of verse 3, "...By the grace given me I say to every one of you...." [Verse 6 makes the point that spiritual gifts are given by grace---and here Paul is speaking by the gift of apostleship bestowed on him by grace.] "...Think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith that God has given you." Faith grows as we walk with the Lord. We should be able to take the insights of faith we have gained in learning to trust God, turn them on our circumstances, and see ourselves as we are with what he calls sober-mindedness, or clear-headedness, no longer having to imagine things that aren't so or defend possibilities that will never be true of us. It is only when the grace of God awakens faith in us and his perspective becomes ours that we can finally see ourselves as we are and be able to appreciate what we see.

There are philosophies in the world around us that say that you can mold yourself by what you think of yourself. Religions like Christian Science that say you can banish disease from your existence by the force of your thinking. New Age points of view urge us to tap into mental energy and turn ourselves into anything we want to be or experience anything we want to experience. We're told that the power of the mind is great enough that if it is harnessed, we can create wonders for ourselves---become wealthy, attractive, or anything we want to be---if we just learn to think rightly of ourselves.

This passage is saying exactly the opposite. There are things that are objectively true of us. I have a son who wishes he were six foot three. He used to keep track of his growth with little marks on the wall behind the door of the utility room every six months. But he is not six foot three, and no amount of thinking differently about himself is going to change that.

Billy Graham is seventy-five years old now and is slowly retiring from public ministry. I and probably most other preachers in the world have every now and then thought, "Well, God is going to have to replace Billy Graham on the world stage, and I could see his deciding on me." But that isn't going to happen, either.

This hoping that we can make things come out the way we want them to by the force of mental energy needs to be replaced by a gracious faith in God that lets us look at ourselves and say, "To be honest, this is the kind of person God has made me. This is what my calling is and what my gifts are. This is what I can do. And I am perfectly delighted to be who I am."

Getting On with With Our Contribution

Paul goes on to say that we all fit into the community someplace. The Christian church is just like a human body; that teaching is found throughout the New Testament and is probably given clearest expression in 1 Corinthians 12. Hands, feet, arms, ears, eyes---all have a different role to play. We do not compete with each other. You don't try to hear with your elbow; there is no use in it. You need ears to hear, arms to lift, and legs to move. The body needs everybody's contribution---each different, all in harmony, all useful, and all appreciative of one another. And what we need to discover as God gives us insight into ourselves is what our contribution is, and then we need to be gratefully willing to get on with it.

There are people who are perpetual students. They just finish one degree and say, "I need to get another degree before I get a job or do anything useful. I know I'm forty now, but I'm not really trained or aimed the right way yet." This continual learning is often very self-focused and somehow never arrives at doing anything, going anywhere, or becoming anything. One of the misapprehensions of thinking of oneself foolishly rather than thinking rightly is that we never feel quite ready to do what we are called to do.

But the great insight of this passage is that Paul says you can indeed discover who you are and what your contribution is, and when you do, get on with it! If you are a teacher, teach. If you have a God-given capacity to show mercy, don't just keep on getting training in the showing of mercy, but start acting mercifully. Do what you have been called to do.

There is a two-part division of these gifts that will help us think about them. At the end of verse 6 Paul says, "If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith." Prophecy as the first gift listed here suggests the category of speaking gifts. And in verse 7 he says, "If it is serving, let him serve...." In 1 Peter 4, Peter similarly divides the gifts of the Spirit into speaking gifts and serving gifts.

Speaking gifts can be exercised in small settings or large. Since the canon of the New Testament is closed and all the books of the Bible are written, prophesying is best understood as preaching. Probably the most frequently encountered speaking gift, it enables someone to say the thoughts of God in a way that is useful to all in a particular congregation. Another gift mentioned here is teaching, which is a directed not to the broad scope but more to people who are taking a particular class or who are in a particular learning environment. Encouragement is also a speaking gift mentioned here. It often happens one-on-one or in a small group; an encourager shares from his or her experience that God is faithful and can be trusted. They build up another's faith by saying an encouraging word to them.

The Important Serving Gifts

The other great category is serving gifts, and some of those are mentioned here. Some people have the means, opportunity, and insight to be effective in giving, and they are to do it with generosity, we are told. A wonderful example of the gift of giving, related during our sharing time earlier, was Audrey Allenson's receiving an anonymous check that was just the amount she needed to get her furnace fixed. Someone had the gift of giving, knew her need, and acted in such a way that she is completely aglow with praise for the Lord's provision, and we can be too. The giver did it generously, appropriately, and at the prompting of the Spirit. Giving is a "hands-on" gift, as is showing mercy. When someone is hurting, bleeding or battered or frightened, they need to be treated with mercy. The one who leads gives direction to an organization or gathering.

God gives both speaking gifts and serving gifts to help us grow and to enable the body of Christ to minister effectively. Speaking gifts and serving gifts are not in competition with each other. All the gifts are needed. It doesn't matter what we discover our gifts to be, there is no hierarchy among them.

I have a friend who works in a Christian organization, and he and I both have daughters who play volleyball. Some years ago we were talking about the game of volleyball itself. Later he shared this with me: "The Christian organization that I am in has a leadership need. A board of directors is going to make a decision about filling the need. There are two of us that they are considering for the position, myself and my friend. We are very different from one another." Then he used a volleyball illustration, saying, "They are going to decide whether they need a setter or an outside hitter."

A setter in volleyball is the person who delivers the ball to other people. They have to see the whole court and how the defense is being set up. They distribute the ball to the other offensive players depending on who can make the best play. It requires breadth of vision and selflessness. A setter makes other people successful. An outside hitter, on the other hand, has to get off the ground as far and as fast as she can and hit the ball a hundred twenty miles an hour at the floor on the other side of the net. It is a forceful, decisive, aggressive position.

My friend said, "I'm an outside hitter. My buddy is a setter. The organization is going to have to decide it needs one or the other to fill this position. But it doesn't mean that whichever one of us isn't chosen has failed. All the gifts are needed. We aren't in competition with each other. We are genuine friends and will remain genuine friends. But what is called for? That is the decision that must be made." He knew who he was. He was perfectly comfortable being himself and looked forward to what God would do with that.

It is with that kind of self-understanding, the freedom to be who we are, and the expectation that God will use us where we are, that we are supposed to exercise our spiritual gifts. It is tied to having the measure of faith to see ourselves as we really are, being able to agree with God that he has done a good thing in our creation and redemption, and being free to fit in as he has equipped us.

We live in a world that is crying out for community. Many people don't have friends, and family members often live at a distance from one another. They don't know how to fit in; they are at a loss for relationship and belonging. The blueprint for belonging in the body of Christ is the only one that works, the only one that is real and lasting. It gives everyone permission both to be different and to be connected. In most other fraternal organizations, you join because of common interests, you wear the same type of clothes and cheer for the same team. You agree to be part of an association that in some way calls everyone to accentuate similarities. You have to adopt the outlook, the point of view, the politics, the hairstyle, or the music of the group to be accepted. But the joy of the body of Christ is that we get to be more fully ourselves than we have ever been before, and we are more radically connected than we have ever been before. We are really for each other and really who we are individually in the Lord. This marvelous freedom is what everyone is longing for. And it is made available to us in Christ.

Loving One Another With Passion and Energy

In the next section Paul is going to teach about how to think of the Christian community, this circle of believing people we are in. Just as we have to have sober judgment about ourselves as a starting point, we also need to understand what it is like to live with other people and understand their needs, to see ourselves as part of the community. That requires good thinking, knowing what is true and what is not. Let's read verses 9-16:
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
What is being added here is passion. Paul's first point was to be sober-minded. One of the things you need to do in order to be able to look at yourself clearly is to settle down a bit, and then look hard at what you see in the mirror and agree with God about who you are. But now what he is adding to that soberness is a calling to love one another in a way that is essentially passionate, in which relationships are not shallow and commitments don't fade. Listen to the energy and passion words here: "Hate what is evil... Be devoted to one another... zeal... fervor... joyful." He wants us to not only think clearly but to be engaged from the heart with the people around us, to be deeply committed to them, to care what goes on with them, to be able to walk in their shoes and look at life from their perspective, to have their burdens matter to us as much as ours, to be drawn out of ourselves, to weep and mourn and rejoice, and to pray fervently.

Great Generosity

These paragraphs comprise a series of commands in the form of short, proverbial sayings on how to live your life in community. And if passion is one theme among them, the other is generosity. "Give more than you get" is essentially the point that he is making. Time and time again he says here, "Look for ways to spend yourself for someone else rather than keeping track of whether you're getting back as much as you give."

Do you know people who have an ability to beat the check in social settings? It seems that nine times out of ten you get stuck with paying the bill when you are with them. But what Paul is advocating is exactly the opposite of that. He is saying, "Reach for the check, not just in restaurants but in relationships and in spiritual things. In every setting you're in, when there is a chance for you to act, give something, or spend yourself, do more for others than you get for yourself; be aggressive in giving yourself away! Look for what you can provide in a relationship rather than what you can receive. If there is work to be done among a group of people, do more than your share.

For instance, in verse 16: "Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position." Our tendency is to look for people who make us look better. There are certain high-status people, mid-status people, and low-status people (humanly speaking); and we want to do our best to associate with those who have more status than we do so it will rub off on us. But if we are more committed to giving than to receiving, we ought to look for people who need us, who are not able to promote our self-interest but to whom we may be able to give something.

Be hospitable. Hospitality is not entertainment. You entertain in your home people from whom you expect to receive a return invitation. Hospitality really means to love strangers, to reach out to people who are unlikely to ever pay you back, who can't give you as much as you're going to give them.

Understanding People Who Drive Us Crazy

The issues raised in verse 14 are very important ones. He is still speaking of the Christian community when he says, "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." He is talking about those occurrences in every family---the church family and the nuclear family---when someone seems, for whatever reason, to be out to get you and to make your life miserable. In the book of Philippians Paul writes an admonition to one he calls his yokefellow, a church leader who will read the letter, and says, "Help Euodia and Syntyche to get along with each other." These women both loved the Lord, but they were driving each other crazy. They were hurting each other, at odds or in competition with each other.

Verse 15, "Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn." We are being told to get inside someone else's skin. If this person is attacking you, you need to understand that there is something that is driving them, some mourning they haven't figured out yet, some sorrow or misunderstanding they are wrestling with. They may not even be able to articulate it. But if you understood it you would be able to help them, and you wouldn't receive their attacks as persecution.

Verse 9 says, "Love must be sincere," and then at the same time we are told to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Real love cannot just be a smarmy, shallow pat on the back. It has to be the same on the inside as it is on the outside. But at the same time we are not to be sentimental. If there is evil we should hate it; if there is good we should love it. Love does not mean imagining the best when the best isn't there, making up things that aren't true. There is a toughness about love that can call evil evil and that can cling to what is good. Yet the commitment to one another in the body can be completely genuine.

This section of Romans is a lot like the book of Proverbs. Proverbs has a great deal of wise information that a loving father, who in this case is Paul, passes on to his children. Learn in the body of Christ to see life from another's point of view. Give more than you get. Extend yourself beyond your own boundaries. In giving these commands, Paul is adding passion, commitment, and energetic love to what he has already said. He is advocating generosity. We would greatly benefit if we would go through every phrase in this section and think long and hard about what it would mean for us to live this way, what would it mean to honor one another above ourselves, to defer to someone else, and to be more enthusiastic about their exaltation than about our own.

Wishing Good To Our Enemies

The final section begins in verse 17. Here he talks about those who are outside the faith and who in fact are completely antagonistic to God and everything he stands for. How should we, having renewed minds, think about these people? Verses 17-21:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
There are men and women, organizations, and philosophies that are evil and destructive. If you are a parent, you will have had conversations with other parents about the things you fear for your children. There are serial killers who have completely seared consciences and kill people for no other reason than that they love blood and violence. But what we must not do, if we are going to think with renewed minds, is to fight back and hurt them as much as they have hurt us or are attempting to hurt us.

If we have been taught to think by the Lord, we should do what is right in the eyes of everybody, and as far as it depends on us, be at peace with all. We should be adding more peace, more responsibility, more gentleness, and more restraint into the conflict, even though there is evil that is threatening us, because, Paul says, we can trust God to deal with it.

We aren't wise enough ourselves to know when to seek revenge; it is too complex a matter to know exactly when to hurt people if we were to choose to. God will avenge evil. He is going to establish righteousness on earth and he is going to establish it forever. He is going to punish that which is wicked. But the remarkable thing about our God is that he may punish the wicked by placing their punishment on the cross; he may win the wicked to himself because of the work of his Son. That is why we are not wise enough to know how he is going to act. We can instead trust him to do so. "It is mine to avenge," says the Lord, "I will repay."

Then verse 20 quotes Proverbs 25:21-22:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."
Jesus turned the other cheek, prayed for those who persecuted him, and gave to those who attacked him; entrusting himself to his Father rather than fighting back. That is what we are being called to do as well. We are called to wish good even to people who mean us harm. It is an extraordinary calling and one that I confess is much easier to talk about than to imagine myself doing on a regular basis. But the motive of revenge, hurting those who have hurt us, is something the Lord intends to take from us. A renewed mind will think of a way to be a blessing rather than to attack.

Getting God Involved

The phrase "heap burning coals on his head" is a very difficult one to interpret, and there are four or five streams of thought as to what it means. This phrase did not originate in Paul's day, but comes from a more ancient body of wisdom literature in the Proverbs. It seems to me that the best explanation is that in some kind of face-to-face disagreement where evil is being intended toward you, the expectation is that you are going to fight back and do evil in return on a horizontal plane; you are going to be just as harsh and difficult and aggressive as the aggressor is toward you. But if you react differently and start wishing them good and trying to benefit them, that invites a vertical response: Something happens to the attacker, and it is not from the person in front of them, but from above. The point here is not so much what the burning coals mean as the direction the response comes from. All of a sudden there is another player in the drama and something coming down from heaven.

The burning coals may indicate a sense of shame that will descend on the attacker. When someone who is being attacked returns only love, that stands the best chance of breaking the hard heart of the attacker. If you have ever been deeply ashamed of yourself, utterly embarrassed to the core, your face flushed and felt hot, and there was a sense of burning that was associated with the shame. He is saying that, if we don't fight back, God is going to get involved, and from heaven something is going to be poured on these people that they can't anticipate. It may be that if they continue to attack the innocent, God will visit judgment on them. Or it may be shame; he may break their heart and lead them to himself.

We have seen in verse 9 that we are to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. When we are faced with something that is deeply unrighteous, we have the right to reject it, to call it what it is and not be sentimental. But at the same time we must recognize the greater power of God to bring about change and to run his world. Verse 21 says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." We can overcome evil with good not by acquiescing to evil, but by continuing to hate it and at the same time loving the people and seeing them change.

In some ways verse 21 is a summary of the whole book of Romans. The evil of the human condition with all its wickedness, horror, self-righteousness, and lies is more clearly delineated in the opening chapter of Romans than any other place I know of. Yet the end of the story is that God is able to overcome that. He forgives wickedness and wins the unrighteous. Every one of us, if we could have seen our hearts before we were given the gift of salvation, would have discovered more wickedness than we had any idea of. Yet we have been given a gift. The calling when we face opposition is not to hate and resist and fight back but to ask God to bring vengeance or to bring change.

The Roman empire at the time Paul was writing was every bit as wicked as California is in 1993. Our society is degenerating at "warp speed." We live in times that are violent, crazy, and dark; in which what is evil is exalted and what is good is cast aside. The culture and its public declarations are growing more and more lost all the time. But that is exactly the condition that obtained when Paul wrote this letter. The Roman empire was a brutal place. The religious ideas encountered not only in Rome but among all the people they conquered were often demonic. Everywhere there was cruelty, self-love, exaltation of the human spirit, and resistance to glorifying God.

Yet Paul's essential stance in the midst of that is that we can be free for the first time in our lives. So we are to take a hard look at ourselves and agree with God as to who we are. We are to be free to start acting as members of a community of other Christians. We can learn to love each other with passionate energy, care, and commitment. We can be the person who reaches to pick up the check first, to give more than they get, to pour themselves out rather than to be given to. And that community in which everybody is giving to each other, preferring one another, and caring for one another becomes the community that can shake up the unbelieving world. Unbelievers want to know the God who produces that kind of life. So when we are faced with opposition we can be hopeful that God will do his work; that evil can be overcome by good; that the love, wisdom, and commitment of God is sufficient to change hearts like ours; and it is therefore sufficient to deal with the world we live in, however awful and destructive it is becoming.


Catalog No. 4354
Romans 12:3-21
Twenty-first Message
Steve Zeisler
November 14, 1993

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