Psalm 149:5-6, 1 Let the faithful rejoice in triumph; let them be joyful on their beds. Let the praises of God be in their throat and a two-edged sword in their hand… Hallelujah! Sing to the Lord a new song; sing his praise in the congregation of the faithful.

Introduction

Last week Paul exhorted us to lean upon the mercy and grace of God so we are “transfigured by the renewal of the mind”, no longer conformed to this “present age” but to proving the will of God into the world. The gist (tl:dr): as those who follow Christ out of the Jordan and into the world, we take the path of the Cross. We seek out and go to the least of us, to identify with them, to be with them, considering ourselves no better and no worse but as them because this is what Christ did. For Paul, when we are encountered by God in the event of faith, everything changes; by “everything” he means e 👏ver 👏y 👏thing 👏

All of this depends on the change that occurs with the inner person in the encounter with God in the event of faith as the inner person is redefined and substantiated by the love and grace of God producing faith and trust that God does really love you. In this faith, the need to use works to make one right with God dies away. The one who has this faith, who trusts God, is the one who can now be and act in the world toward the beloved of God, the neighbor, without using the neighbor or works to justify oneself before God because they are justified by faith alone.

Now, Paul says, we can act and be in the world as we are on the inside with God; that which we have received from God we now share outward toward our neighbor and this proves God’s will in the world. How do we do that? Well, according to Paul, it’s as easy as…

Romans 12:9-21

[Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy. Abhor the evil, adhere to the good and to tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another, prefer valuing one another, shrink not regarding diligence, be fervently devoted to God in conformity with the Spirit, rejoice according to hope, bear up against tribulation, persevere in prayer, share in the needs of the holy ones, and pursue loving strangers. Speak well of the ones who persecute you, speak well and do not curse. (Rom. 12:9-14)[1]

Our passage opens with an odd construction of a noun and adjective in the nominative case (subject): [Let] Love [be] without hypocrisy (Η αγάπη ανυπόκριτος). There is no verb in the Greek, it’s implied. However, the most interesting aspect to this construction is that it’s the only expressed and explicit subject stated for the passage.[2] So, we can see this nominative phrase as the controlling thought for the passage. In other words, Paul tells the Romans to let love be without hypocrisy, and this is how you do it…

Paul starts with the exhortation to abhor evil. Anything threatening the will of God being proved into the world is to be abhorred/detested. This means, in light of letting love be without hypocrisy, the Romans are exhorted to love that which is of God in a Godly way: up front and honest, not secret and cloaked darkness. We cannot love authentically and entertain that which is antagonistic to the love, life, and liberation of divine activity in the world. Anything that is indifferent, death, and captivity is of the reign of evil and to be abhorred and detested. How are the Romans to detest this evil? By joining themselves to the good, to the tenderly-loving siblingly-love toward one another. In other words, love each other as siblings, as if you are all related, as family…this is the good that one is to cleave to: treating your neighbor as if they are blood relations. And, as Paul goes on to say, preferring to value one another, having esteem for the neighbor who is also a sibling.[3]  This is what love without hypocrisy looks like; this is the good way, the better way, the way that is configured to the renewed mind born of faith in Christ.[4]

Paul continues to explain love without hypocrisy. He exhorts the Romans to be hot and not lukewarm in the Spirit. This is connected to being devoted to the Lord. This heat and devotion render the Christian eager to bring the outer person inline with the inner person and to see the very seriousness of the situation at hand in the world holding the neighbor captive. To be lukewarm in the spirit is equivalent to not caring about how the world is catapulting itself into death and destruction and taking everyone with it.[5] To be hot in the Spirit is to feel the urgency of God, the pathos of God, to be caught up into the great line of prophets who go into the world proclaiming in word and deed God’s love, life, and liberation.

The Romans are to rejoice according to hope; hope is a reason to rejoice, and rejoicing invigorates hope, just as a fiesta participates in resistance and liberation![6] From here the exhortation moves to bear up against tribulation and persevere in prayer. Moving through the idea of love without hypocrisy means daring to rejoice in having hope even now, in pulling together and resisting the goal of tribulation and persecution, which is death and destruction. And there’s no better way to do this than through honest and presence-filled prayer[7] individually and corporately participated with the goal to commune with God, to draw close to God through Christ and by the power of the Spirit so that our strength and focus are continually renewed.

From prayer the exhortation moves toward the neighbor: share in the needs of the holy ones. Meaning, among Christians there is not the mentality of “you made your bed now lie in it”; rather, like the one who helped Christ carry his cross, we take a share in the needs of our siblings. You do not walk alone; you are seen, known, and loved; let us walk together.[8] Paul pushes this further, it’s not just those with whom you share a pew or those in your neighborhood, but strangers, pursue the love of strangers (τήν φιλξενίαν). Give this unhypocritical love even to strangers freely and willingly; you did not earn God’s love therefore others do not have to earn your love.[9] This goes for language toward other people, especially those who persecute you. The Romans are charged with loving the stranger and to bless the enemy, speak well and do not curse. Through the presence of God’s love in our hearts and minds, clinging to love without hypocrisy, we love as we have been loved; we love even those whom we do not know and those who persecute us; we do not become that which we abhor.[10]

Conclusion

Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping, have the same understanding toward one another, do not think lofty things but be carried away with lowly things, do not think yourself wise, return to no one evil over evil, foresee the beautiful in the face of all humanity…be at peace with all humanity, do not vindicate yourselves, beloved…do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil by the good. (Rom. 12:15-17, 18b-19b, 21)

Beloved, we love because we have first been loved. We dare to love in a real way, invested with our entire selves even if it means we might get hurt, even if it means we may sacrifice our own lives. There’s a story written by Leo Tolstoy that I believe, in the ending of Master and Man, encapsulates the thrust of this part of Romans 12,

STRUGGLING up to the sledge Vassili caught hold of it, and stood for some time without stirring, trying to get back his breath. Nikita was not in his old place, but something was lying in the sledge covered with snow, and Vassili guessed it was Nikita. His terror was altogether gone now, and if he feared anything it was that state of terror he had experienced whilst riding, and especially when alone in the drift. At all hazards he must not let himself fall into that state again, and in order to safeguard his mind it was necessary to think of something, to do something. So he commenced by turning his back to the wind and unbuttoning his coat. Then, as he began to recover a little, he wiped the snow off his boots and gloves, and girded himself afresh, tight and low down, prepared for action, as when he went out from his store to buy grain from the peasants. The first business that occurred to him was to free the pony’s legs, which he did, and then led and tied Mukhorty to the front of the sledge, and went behind him to put the breeching and pad in their proper places. During this operation he saw something move inside the sledge, and from beneath the snow Nikita raised his head. Evidently with a mighty effort the peasant gained a sitting posture, waved his hand in front of his face with a strange gesture as if chasing flies, and said something which seemed to Vassili as if he were calling him.

He left the sacking without arranging it, and came up to Nikita.
“What is the matter with you? What do you say?”
“I am dying; that is what is the matter,” answered he in a broken voice. “Look after my son and my wife.”
“What is the matter? Are you frozen?”
“I feel my death! Pardon! The love of Christ,” murmured Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing all the while to wave his hands, as if keeping off flies.

Vassili Andreïtch stood for half a minute without speaking or moving, then rapidly, with the same decision with which he was wont to strike hands over a good bargain, he stepped back a pace, turned up his cuffs, and with both hands began to dig the snow off Nikita, and out of the sledge. When this was accomplished, he hurriedly undid his girdle, threw open his fur coat, and flung himself upon Nikita, covering him not only with his coat, but with his whole glowing warm body.

Arranging the skirts of his coat between Nikita and the back of the sledge, and grasping him between his own knees, he lay flat, resting his own head on the bast, and now he could no longer hear the movements of the pony or the whistle of the wind, but only Nikita’s breathing. Nikita at first lay motionless, then sighed deeply, and moved, evidently feeling warmer.

“There now! And you talking of dying! Lie still and get warm! That’s how we shall…” began Vassili. But to his huge astonishment Vassili could not get any further in his speech, for the tears crowded into his eyes, and his lower jaw trembled. He left off talking and only gulped down something rising in his throat.
“I have got a regular fright, and am as weak as a baby,” thought he to himself; but that weakness, far from being disagreeable, gave him a peculiar pleasure, the like of which he had never felt before.
“That’s how we are!” he repeated, experiencing a feeling of curious quiet triumph, and lying still for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat, and tucking under his knee the right side of his coat which the wind kept blowing loose. But he wanted terribly to tell somebody how happy he was.

***

Several times he glanced at the horse, and saw that his back was bare and the sacking was draggling in the snow; he ought to get up and cover him but he could not make up his mind, at that moment, to leave Nikita, and break in upon the happy condition in which he was revelling. He no longer felt any fear. He was warm from below from Nikita, and above from his coat, only his hands, which were holding the fur round Nikita, and his feet, which the wind kept uncovering, were beginning to be numbed. But he gave no thought to them, but only how best to restore warmth to the peasant lying beneath him.

***

He woke, but not altogether the same as he had fallen asleep. He strove to rise, and could not; to move his arm, he could not, nor his leg. He tried to turn his head, and could not even do that. It astonished him, but did not vex him in the slightest. He knew that this was death, and neither did that vex him. He remembered that Nikita was lying under him, warmed and alive, and it seemed that he was Nikita, and Nikita was he, and that his life was in Nikita, and not in himself. He strained his ears and heard Nikita breathing.
“Nikita is living, so that I am also alive,” said he triumphantly to himself. And something quite new, such as he had never known before in his life, came over him.

He remembered his money, his store, his house, his buying and his sales, and the Mironoff millions, and could not understand why the man they called Vassili Brekhunoff had worried over what he had worried over. “You see! he did not know what he was about,” thought he, referring to Brekhunoff. ‘He did not know as I now know. For I know now without a mistake, I know now.” And again he heard that voice calling. “I come, I come!” he answered joyfully, with his whole being. And he felt that he was free, and nothing further held him back. And these were the last things that Vassili Andreïtch saw, heard and felt in this world.

Around the storm still raged, and the snow whirlwinds covered the coat of the dead Vassili, the shivering head of Mukhorty, and sledge with Nikita lying warm in the bottom of it under his dead master.[11]

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[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] the other subjects addressed are the audience in the following imperatival participial and the imperative verbs implied by the masculine nominative plural or second person plural, respectively.

[3] LW 25, 455. “He is speaking here of that inward honor which is a high regard and esteem for one’s neighbor.”

[4] LW 25, 454. “In this passage the apostle is dealing with the idea that the love among Christians ought to be a special and more perfect thing than the relationship among strangers and enemies.”

[5] LW 25, 456. “For they must be fervent in one of the two, either the spirit or the flesh. And the fervor for one is the freezing out or extinction of the other … Therefore the man who does his work with lukewarmness of necessity will be fervent in the flesh. And on that account he is compelled as it were to ‘waste the work’ which he performs, because of the fervor of the flesh.”

[6] Ada Maria Isazi Diaz Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the 21^st Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997.

[7] LW 25, 458.

[8] LW 25, 462.

[9] LW 25, 463.

[10] LW 25, 466-467.

[11] Leo Tolstoy Master and Man, Trans. S. Rapoport and John C. Kenworthy. Rev. George Gibian. New York, NY: Penguin, 1995. Pp. 74-81.