Sunday 04 • 15 • 18

Romans 12:9–21

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed them. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. For by doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Would you join me in prayer? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. Lord, you are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Loneliness Crisis in America

In America today, we are bowling alone. Have you heard that title before? That was Robert Putnam's 2000 bestseller, and it really captured a powerful image of the place of loneliness in our culture today. I think that book, now eighteen years later, has not less but even greater significance for what it's like to live in the United States right now.

Did you know that one of the fascinating things over the last years—one of the gifts of the Internet—has been that the word "friend" has gone from being a noun to being both a noun and a verb? Friend is something you do. You friend someone or you unfriend someone. And we should have known that when friend goes from a noun to also being a verb, it signals something has changed in the way friendship works in our country, the way we think about friendship.

Loneliness is a big deal. Did you know that loneliness is one of the biggest problems in America today? This past August, the annual convention of the American Psychological Association named loneliness as the number one health crisis in America, surpassing what beforehand was obesity. That's a big deal, because it means loneliness is something that grips all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances.

Right now in America, we have more people living alone than any other time in American history. And if that's you, I'm not trying to stereotype anybody. You can be alone living alone. You can be alone in a family. Studies show that by the American Psychological Association—when people with children become over-scheduled, they don't shortchange their children or their work or even their exercise. They shortchange friendship. They stop pursuing friends.

The public health dangers of loneliness are incredibly high. The studies name things like high blood pressure, depression, suicide, and even premature death that come from loneliness. And that's not true just in the culture broadly. There are a lot of people who are lonely in the body of Christ. Many people feel alone in the church, and I hear it regularly in conversations that I have with folks over coffee, emails, or casual conversations—people who, some of whom I think are probably the most connected person in the church, saying, "I feel incredibly lonely." Or people who I observe thinking, man, you've got lots of friends, and they say, "No, I don't feel like I have any friends." Just this sense of profound loneliness and isolation.

Can I let you know a secret at CTK? Everybody thinks there's an inner circle here that they're not part of. Everybody does. People ask me about it. I'm like, there's not an inner circle. But you look on social media and you see other people look like they're having fun with other people, and you're not there. And there's a sense like, what a terrible church. But this isn't just our church. This isn't just our city. I talk to pastors regularly across the country. I get a lot of input and need connection with other pastors, and we share stories. There's a friendship crisis in America right now, and there's a friendship crisis in the body of Christ across our country right now. People are profoundly lonely.

Now, that's the bad news.

The good news is that God's word has things to say to our loneliness, and in what I think is one of the most surprising and unlikely of places: the end of the book of Romans. We have been working our way through the book of Romans and we're finally to the home stretch on the last few chapters, and it's surprising to me that we would find the Bible address our loneliness here.

The book of Romans has been used by God throughout the centuries in a very profound way in the church. Chapters one through eleven have all been about theology—200 proof, hardcore theology. Lots and lots about the sufficiency of Jesus's death on the cross and his resurrection for us. How we apply that? How do we grow as Christians? How do we share the gospel with other people?

When we move from the first part of Romans to chapter 12, that's the hinge. Chapter 12 verse one begins with "therefore," and you'd expect from that "therefore" to be about applying that theology. I would expect it to be like, "Here's all the great theology. Now know it really well. Teach it to other people. Make sure you get your theology straight. Make sure that you know this and you practice this and you correct error." That's what I would expect for the last part of this book. But it's not that.

I've just finished the youth literature, the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio. It's now into a movie. But it's full of these kind of precept summaries, and one of the first ones in the book says, "When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind." And that's what the rest of the book of Romans sounds like to me. Where I would think that Paul would tell us all about how to be right, instead, his "therefore" and the applications of the gospel are all about kindness. In fact, they're all about two main topics: love and unity.

Today, we're going to introduce what is actually going to take us the last five chapters of the book of Romans—all about love and unity. Here's where we're going to go: we're going to look at a costly love, a costly unity, and then the God who pays the bill.

A Costly Love

This is verses nine through fifteen. Paul is talking about love in the church. Love within the body of Christ. Love for other Christians. This is one of two places in the New Testament where Paul waxes poetic and gives lots about the character of love. The other is, of course, 1 Corinthians 13, which is read at lots of weddings, ironically so, because it's not romantic. It's about loving God's people, loving one another, and there's nothing romantic about Paul's descriptions of love. Instead, both in 1 Corinthians 13 and here, we get a wide open look at how comprehensively we are to love. Because loving is hard. It is not romantic. It is really hard.

Friend love is honest. Paul writes:

Let love be genuine. — Romans 12:9

Literally, the word there is unhypocritical. We're not to be phony in our dealings with one another. We're not to have the inside of us be different from the outside of us. So outwardly, we're warm and we seem welcoming and sentimental, but on the inside, we despise other people. The inside and the outside are supposed to be the same.

This is really important in the South where a nice, big veneer of Southern welcoming and sweetness just covers everything like Chick-fil-A iced tea. One of my biggest pet peeves about the way we talk in Raleigh is this: "We should get together sometime." That means, nope, we are never ever going to get together. I want to say something nice, so we say "We should get together," but we will not, because you don't mean that. Let's just call it out. That is not what genuine friend love looks like.

More than not being superficial, honest friend love is being truthful. Verse nine goes on:

Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. — Romans 12:9

Now, that sounds strange. Paul is like, "I'm telling you how to love by telling you what to hate."

Paul is telling us that we are to love what God loves and promote that in our truthfulness with one another. Literally, what he's saying is we must hate—be horrified by—what God calls evil and cling to—be glued to—what God calls good in our relationships. That is telling the truth, giving honest feedback.

You see, when we love someone, the danger for me and I think probably you is that we love the love we get from other people. We love the love more than we love the friend. We love how the friend treats us. We love the responses we get from other people. We like to be liked. And so it's tempting in liking to be liked to hold back from saying what's true, to hold back from being truly honest about ways that this person is actually hard to be around, blind spots that they have to their own sin, ways they may sabotage relationships or conversations.

When we love to be loved, we don't want to tell the truth. It's too risky. But when we love someone else, we actually say what is true and we love with grace. Love says, "I've seen the ugly parts of you and I'm staying. I'm with you."

Oscar Wilde said, "A real friend doesn't stab you in the back, but stabs you in the front." You ever heard that before? What he meant by that is that a true friend tells you the truth about you to your face, not behind your back. A true friend doesn't stab you to harm with a dagger, but uses a scalpel to heal. It tells you the truth so that you would become a different person. You might change. You might repent. Now, Oscar Wilde didn't mean that, but that's what is held out in this passage.

If we love in a way that is honest, we are loving for the benefit of the people that we're caring for.

Friend Love Is Proactive

Friend love is proactive. Now, did you listen to this? None of the commands of this passage say anything about reciprocal relationships. None of them say, "Are you getting what you're giving in these relationships?" I hear us talk so much in our culture in monetary terms when it comes to relationships. We talk about investing in a friendship, spending time with people we care about. We talk in ways that sound like we're looking for the ROI, the return on investment in relationship. What am I putting into it? Is the other person putting in about the same amount? Is this reciprocal? Is it even?

The friend love of Romans 12 is listen to what it says:

Not slothful in zeal but fervent in spirit. — Romans 12:11

It's a proactive love. It is an initiating love. It doesn't hold back and wait.

Here are some common things that we say that show when the church is bowling alone. "I'm lonely," said everyone. Community never just happens. You've watched way too many Friends episode reruns. It doesn't work like that. It never happens. "No one is reaching out to me at our church." Well, do you realize you're critiquing yourself? When you say no one is reaching out to me at our church, you are the church. Who are you talking about? So look, be the church. Stop waiting for someone else to call you. Initiate. "I don't have any friends here." Make some. Create some events and invite some people into it. Do fun things and bring people with you. Take some risks. Real love is proactive.

Real Love Is Other-Promoting

Real love is other-promoting. Listen to verse 10:

Outdo one another in showing honor. — Romans 12:10

The word there for honor means treating someone as precious, as valuable, as important. We know biblically speaking, every person is made in the image of God. Every person, therefore, has dignity. We have human rationality, personality, creativity. We have an eternal soul. Every person has value.

But we're not just talking about loving every person. We're talking about loving the people of God, loving the body of Christ. That means we're not just talking about people who have the image of God. We're talking about people with whom the Holy Spirit is resident within them. Which means you are loving another person who has Jesus in them. You have an opportunity to experience Christ from that person.

When you love someone else and give them honor, you're saying that person has so much value. They have things to teach me about God. They have ways that I can experience God from that believer's life that I can't know him just on my own. You're placing value where it matters. It doesn't mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking more of other people.

You know, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood premiered on PBS fifty years ago and there have been all these kinds of stories and remembrances. I grew up on Mister Rogers. Most powerful to me in all the stories that have come out is his relationship with François Clemmons.

Clemens joined the cast of the show in 1968, became the first African American to have a recurring role on kids TV programming. It was actually Clemons' singing voice that Fred Rogers overheard one day in the studio and said, "I need to work with him."

Here's the story Clemens tells it. He says, "Fred came to me and said, 'I have this idea. You could be the police officer on the show.'" Clemens did not like the idea very much at first. "I grew up in the ghetto," he says. "I didn't have a positive opinion of police officers. Policemen were sicking dogs on people and water hoses on people." And he had a really hard time putting himself into that role, so he was not excited about being Officer Clemons at all.

But Clemons came on the show and eventually stayed for twenty-five years in that role. It launched his singing career. Do you see such a picture of other-promoting love, of putting the other person first?

By contrast, I think that we are really used to not other-promoting love but competition in our relationships. Have you ever have one of those friends who sort of outcompetes you for how sick you were this past weekend or how bad things have been going? "Oh, you had bad allergies. I had bad allergies and a fever." "You have a lot of homework. I had a lot of homework and I was in a car accident too." What we're used to in relationships is competition. Can we pivot off that? And if we're going to compete, can we compete in the area of honoring one another? Can you imagine what would happen if we competed in showing kindness to one another, if out-honoring one another became the normal thing, the way that our church loved? Crazy things could happen.

Friend Love is Feelings and Action

On the one hand in this passage, you hear two things. We're called to empathy.

Weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice — Romans 12:15

To literally feel the feelings of another person. And yet on the other hand:

Put your money where your mouth is. Like, people in need, help them out — Romans 12:13

This speaks to two types of people. Some of us are really good at the doing part—"I'll help you move, I'm glad to do things. I'm a doer." But when someone starts crying, you moonwalk out of the room as fast as you can. You don't want anything to do with those feelings.

Others of you are really good at the feelings part, and yet follow-through and reliability are not your strong suit. This calls both of us to grow. Jesus calls us here toward both feelings and doing in our friend love.

Friend Love Welcomes

Simply put:

Practice hospitality — Romans 12:13

I grew up in a family in East Tennessee, where our version of hospitality was entertaining. Entertaining means the yard looks perfect and the house looks like we don't live in it by the time people come over. There's an incredible spread of food and they just show up and eat and are sort of blessed by our presence. Practically speaking, my parents killed themselves in order to get this ready on a Saturday. By the time people would come over, my dad would be lying on the floor because his back hurt and we're like, "When are they leaving?" That's entertaining.

Hospitality is something different. My version of this was blown apart back when we were in seminary in suburban Philly. We got invited over to Dave and Pat Soult's house. They had four kids and they invited us over. We show up at their house and Dave says, "Jeff, can you pull out the block of cheese and start slicing? Susan, can you man the electric griddle and start making grilled cheese sandwiches?" And I was like, "What? We're supposed to do what?"

We had grilled cheese and tomato soup and it was awesome because their house looked like our house. It was a mess. Instead of being this big production, it was just "Come and help out." And we felt like part of their family, welcomed, invited in.

Friend love welcomes. Welcomes people into the imperfect parts of your home, the imperfect parts of your life, the imperfect parts of your schedule—the parts that are real you, not the put-together parts.

What is the church but joining your imperfect self with a room full of other imperfect selves in community? Church is never a commodity good, people of God. You're not here as receivers of goods and services. This is an incubator where we learn how to love each other. Can we welcome one another?

See, friend love is not just a costly love, but a costly unity. This is the last part of this passage, verses 17 through 21. Now I preached through this last year. If you were here last spring, I did a whole series on peacemaking, and you can go back. If you're in the middle of conflict, we walked through it and took it in little pieces, so I'm not gonna review or rehash all that material today. You can look that up. But I want you to see again how open-eyed Paul is about the problems of the church.

You know, it just cracks me up when people are like, "I wish we could go back to the early church when things were great." Have you ever read the Bible? They share their possessions, they had everything in common. But do you know every letter in the New Testament is written because of the problems and conflicts of the early church? I mean, not utopia—lots more problems than we have. Lots more serious fights than we have. So let's take off the rose-colored glasses because what the Bible really tells us here is that there's hard work. There's a costly job in unity, in living in harmony with one another.

You know, Legos are the number one toy in our household for all of our boys. I think that's just the case. You can still pull out Legos in front of my almost 21-year-old and he'll lose himself for the afternoon. It's just a staple of our home. Now Legos are perfectly engineered. The engineering specifications on production are really, really high. And that's because every Lego has to fit together with every Lego everywhere else in the world. There's no margin for much error in this. They have to be able to fit together and they're built for unity. But I can tell you, Legos on the floor scattered about—the most painful thing to walk on that there is. I mean, maybe hot coals is the second best, but Legos on the floor are really, really painful.

And I think that's such a picture of the body of Christ. We're built for unity. We're engineered to go together. And when we are fit together in unity, God can make beautiful and amazing things out of us. But individually, we are really a pain. Separate and not unified, we hurt and we hurt one another.

So listen to what we read here. Paul calls us to a costly unity in verse 18:

If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone — Romans 12:18

Then he gives us these specifics of how you work that out. Let me go through this really quickly.

Gracious Unity Absorbs Evil and Gives Good

Gracious unity first absorbs evil and gives good. When you sin against me, when I sin against you, when we emotionally hurt one another, we have a choice. I can make you suffer in return or I can absorb it. Forgiveness, reconciliation, unity always involves one person absorbing emotional pain. You hurt me? For me to forgive involves me emotionally taking out my wallet and paying for it, absorbing the pain. Nobody just forgives.

The greatest example for this is the cross. Jesus did not walk around first century Palestine and say, "I forgive you and I forgive you and I forgive you." He went and bled and died a slow, painful death for forgiveness. Tim Keller says, "There is never forgiveness without suffering—nails, thorns, sweat, and blood. Never." And that's true in our personal relationships. It requires a person to absorb emotional pain, to pay for it over and over and over again.

Gracious Unity Forgives

Second, gracious unity forgives. The myth about forgiveness is that you just forgive and forget. When you've been hurt, I don't think the person who came up with that statement ever had to forgive somebody before. That is almost impossible. Insane people forget. God never forgives and forgets. He remembers and forgives. He looks at us through the lens of the death of Jesus—what it cost forgiveness—and says, this is how I am choosing to look at you. I'm choosing to look at you through the lens of the cross. I'm not choosing to look at you and hold up your sin and say, "This is who you are and will always be."

This is what forgiveness means for us. It doesn't mean like we never remember what people did. It means we choose to look at one another through the lens of the cross and say, "Jesus died for you. That's how I'm choosing to deal with you on the basis of him." I'm putting away my picture of you at your worst.

Gracious Unity Overcomes Evil

Gracious unity overcomes evil. See, Paul says that in giving good, you actually overcome evil. Overcome is a great word. It's a war word.

It means to wrestle down. He goes on to say it's like heaping hot coals on a person's head when you do so, when you give good. Some of us are like, "Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to do all along anyway—make them suffer." That can't be what that means. It's out of line if that's the case with the rest of this passage, which is all about being gracious and generous.

What does that mean? What is heaping hot coals? Well, if a spark gets on your skin, you jump up and brush it off. These hot coals are something that wakes a person up. They jump up and move. It's helping another person see their selfishness, their stupidity, and their sin.

There's this deeply ingrained idea in our culture: you repay another person with evil. You get them back and that'll teach them a lesson. But that just perpetuates it. Returning good for evil—that's what changes a person's heart. The Bible calls us here not to passive behavior, not to aggressive behavior, not to passive-aggressive behavior, but to an aggressive graciousness. An aggressive graciousness.

Do you see how expensive that kind of unity is? That is expensive. These are hard things to do. It requires us—when we step on the Legos in our relationships—it requires us to forgive, to trust, to overcome, to pursue, to absorb the emotional pain, to die to ourselves. Where are you going to get the energy to do that?

Being new in Christ, we read all this wonderful stuff in Romans chapter six about how you are a new creation. You're a new you. But does that automatically mean you're really good at this? Does this automatically mean we can do this? No. Otherwise, we wouldn't have five chapters of teaching at the end of this book saying, "Here's how you do it. Let me break it down."

How do we become such friends? How do we pursue such costly, costly, costly friendship with one another? It's only this: because we have a God who pays the bill. We have a God who pays the bill.

Christians, let's be honest—we are by no means the only people who know how to love. There are lots of people who would never darken the door of this church who are probably better at loving than you are. We're not the only organization that promotes unity either. There are lots of organizations that would never agree with our theology that are maybe even better than us at promoting unity.

However, Christians have one thing going for us. We have a resource that no one else has. We have a resource for love and a resource for unity that no one else has, and that is because we have a God who paid the bill.

Jesus as Friend

In John chapter 15, just a few books before this, Jesus is on the last night of his life. He's having dinner with his disciples that evening, and he tells them he's giving them this new command.

This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this—that someone lays down his life for his friends. You're my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I've made known to you. These things I command you: that you will love one another. — John 15

That is incredible news. That's an incredible statement. Jesus—who of all people in the history of the world has the right to come to you and say "servant, employee, student, soldier"—comes and says, "Friend. You're my friends. I welcome you. I love you in this way."

Listen to how Jesus is our friend. Jesus is one who comes and tells us the truth about ourselves. He comes and he doesn't pull back. He shows us who we are. And yet he says, "I have seen all the ugly parts and I'm staying with you. I'm staying."

He's one who promotes the other. He takes us where we are. There's never this idea in the church—and that comes from the Bible—where we say, "Hey, you need to kind of get yourself ready for God's mercy." You can't do it. There's no preparing yourself for grace. Jesus is one who takes us as we are and then says, "I got a change agenda for your life. It's called sanctification, and I can't wait to work in your life."

His love is empathy and it's action. He comes at the tomb of Lazarus and he weeps with Mary, and he raises Lazarus from the dead. We read in Hebrews that he identifies with us in our weakness. He knows how we're made, and yet he provides a way out for us from under temptation. Jesus loves us with feelings and with actions.

And finally, his love is proactive. He always makes the first move.

That's why we read the beginning part of our service every Sunday. God has the first word with sinners. God always initiates with us. See, what if your boss came to you this week and said, "Hey, I just want to provide a new benefit to you in our company. We're going to give you an unlimited expense account for lunches. You can spend however much you want to, treat to lunch whoever you want to, every day." Question: would it be hard or easy to invite people out to lunch after that? Easy, right? Not just a little bit easy. You're like, we're eating high on the hog and I'm gonna invite you and you and you. You can welcome anybody to the table. If you had that unlimited expense account, you can go wherever you want to, spend whatever you want to. It'd be amazing to be able to do so.

Now, what if the God of the universe has called you friend? What if the God of the universe brings into your life the limitless resources of friendship with him? See, if God is that constant a friend and that generous a friend, that merciful and gracious and loving a friend, then your friendship account is filled to overflowing with resources from him. This is what we learn in the gospel. He will never walk away, never give up, never cut you off, never leave you, never forsake you, never reject you, never gossip about you behind your back. He will always tell you the truth. He will always welcome you. He's always proactive. He loves in feelings and deeds. He's not only paid the price in your life, he's called you friend.

If God has so poured into your account that your friend account is that full, do you see how this frees us to love, to seek gospel costly love, and gospel unity with one another? See, you're now free to love without return, without measuring your relationships, without investing in friendships, without spending time, without looking for the return on investment in your relationship. You're free just to pursue people who are hard to love. People whose lives are messy. People who can't meet you where you are with what you've put into a relationship. You're free because God has already filled up your account.

And the same thing is true with unity. You have a limitless expense account from which to do so. Because of the cross, because Jesus absorbed evil and gave good, because Jesus forgives because he overcame evil, you have a limitless expense account to go and seek unity, to go and offer forgiveness, to get rid of your bitterness, to welcome people who have wronged you, to extend an extra few steps in a friendship, to really seek gospel unity. You're free to love.

Mister Rogers and Integration

Let's go back to Mister Rogers. There's an episode that aired in 1969 in which Mister Rogers, instead of showing up on the episode at the beginning where he's in his house putting on his cardigan and changing his shoes, he's actually outside. It aired in the middle of summertime. It's a hot day and the camera looks at Fred Rogers and he's got his pant legs rolled up and he's standing in a baby pool full of water. Officer Clemmons comes by and Mister Rogers invites him to come and cool off and put his feet in the baby pool, and that's what they do.

This is how Clemmons tells it. He says, "Mister Rogers invited me to come over and rest my feet in the water with him. The icon Fred Rogers not only was showing my brown skin in the tub with his white skin as two friends, but as I got out of the tub, he helps me dry my feet."

Now that sounds nice, right? But this was 1969, and that was a very big deal. Public schools and public fountains and public bathrooms, public swimming pools were not integrated. Black people and white people didn't swim in the same pools. In fact, did you know that Poland Park right down the street used to have a public swimming pool that was shut down in 1962 because four black young men and two white young men who were friends got in the pool together and the city closed it down? So this is not a small thing that they did.

This is not a small thing because in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, a white man and an African American police officer showed the world how to integrate a swimming pool. Rogers invites, Clemmons accepts. At the end of the scene, Mister Rogers takes a towel and dries his feet.

Where have we heard that one before? Just a couple weeks ago we celebrated Maundy Thursday and didn't Jesus, that same night he gave them communion, wash their feet and dry them with a towel?

When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. — John 13:12

See, what those two men on public television did is show the watching world what love looks like. Our world is waiting to see, really has yet to see.

The church display that kind of other centered, self-promoting, dying to self, love for the sake of unity, for the sake of care. So, let's get specific because I hate general sermons. I hate sermons with no real like, what do we do here? So, Romans 12 calls us to be very specific and so, as I close down the sermon today, I'm gonna ask you to pull out your bulletin or a piece of paper or your cell phone, and I need you to write down four names for me. Take your time. There's some pens in the pads too. I'm gonna ask you to write down four names. Two of the names are people that God is calling you to love. That God is calling you to pursue in gospel friendship and it doesn't count if you're married to them and it doesn't count if they're already your best friend. That doesn't count. Two other people. And then I want you to write two names of people with whom God is calling you to show costly unity. Forgiveness, reconciliation, ending bitterness, kindness. Anybody got four names? Anybody got three names? Okay, anybody got two names? Okay, keep going.

Let's pray together. Father God, we pray that as we have been graced and gospeled that we would go and do likewise. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.