Marks of the True Christian

Take advantage of that.

Alright, so we're in Romans 12, and we've got a lot to cover.

I'm I'm not I'm not I've determined I'm not apologizing for being long-winded any longer.

We have got work to do because the text is rich and thick, and we're going to be able to dive into it.

So let's just get started.

All right.

Romans 12, we're looking at what is genuine love.

So we've got 1 through 11 of Romans, this doctrinal uh banquet, so to speak, uh, of everything that has to do with anthropology, understanding of man, soteriology, understanding of how we are saved, uh theology proper, understanding about God and who he is and how we relate to him, all these kind of different theological and doctrinal things that we go through in Romans 1 through 11.

Uh, and then in 12 we start the application process, right?

So if this is true, we talked about orthodoxy.

If we're to understand rightly, then what does orthopraxy, or how do we apply that and live that out properly, uh knowing what we know?

And so we talked about the first thing that Paul calls us to do is worship.

And we actually live lives of worship unto the Lord once we understand this rightly.

And then that works itself out in uh not just simply uh living a life of worship uh through singing, right?

And these scheduled times and context of religion and faith, but but every aspect of our life is worship.

Uh the way that we engage with one another, the way that we engage with culture, the way we steward our resources and gifts from God.

All this is about worship.

And then he kind of points us to the reality that you've been brought into a body, and that body is the body of Christ.

And not only have you been brought into that body through the finished work of Jesus, by grace, through faith in him, uh but you've been gifted by the Holy Spirit to play a vital role in the health of that body, uh, to serve one another and to be for one another in the exercising of your gifts, uh, so that we might become the maturity of what Christ has called us to, uh, being his own possession.

And now he's gonna help us understand what love then looks like.

And love is such an uh interesting word, and we use it a lot in society and culture in wrong ways, right?

We we I love certain food.

I just love it to death.

That's not the same way I love my wife, I hope, right?

Uh and her for me.

Uh we can say, I love certain things, but it's not the same way we mean we love something else or a different person, right?

Or we use this in the church a lot.

God is love.

What that definition of what love is is so marred by our own insertion of philosophy or opinion or thought that then we really don't worship God for who he says he is.

He worship we worship a God of our own making, of our own fabrication, based upon how we believe that definition of love should be, right?

And so we have to submit ourselves to the Bible to understand, well, what is love?

What does it look like, and how does it impact and affect the way that we live as Christians?

So, what does Paul start off with in the uh, as we close up chapter 12 and verse 9?

He says this let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.

So if we were to summarize verse 9, this is how I would work to summarize this hate evil, be cemented to good.

Hate evil, be cemented to good.

As an outflow of humble service with our gifts, that's what Paul just referenced in 3 through 8 that we worked through, uh, we are called to love our brothers and sisters in the church.

What we're brought into with this passage is that no matter the diverse or distinct gifts we have been given by grace, they work in harmony with one another to cultivate a genuine love culture in the church.

So if we want to understand what is the fruit of our gifts, what is the fruit of our service being expressed and exercised out within the body?

It is to establish and foster a culture of genuine love.

That's what we're working toward.

What kind of love is Paul referring to here?

So we talked about different kinds of love.

Like I love food, I love my wife, those are very different loves.

What kind of love is Paul talking about here?

He's talking about this agape love.

When he talks about reference to the church and a culture of genuine love, he's talking about agape love.

Now, that's interesting because agape love typically refers to the love of the father towards his children.

So in the Bible, as we as we see these different loves expressed and communicated throughout the Bible, agape love is one of those loves, and it's usually expressed in the context of communicating the Father's love that he has for his children.

Well, what Paul's helping us understand is that that love that we experience from God the Father should be a love that's reciprocated to one another.

You see, we are brought into the agape love, the fatherly love of God for his image-bearers.

It's also a love that we should reciprocate for him and to one another.

Agape love necessarily extends to the love of our fellow man since the reciprocated love between God and man is made manifest in our genuine love for others.

We are being called ultimately to express the same love to one another that we have had lavished on us by the Father.

You see, it's only in understanding the love of God in Christ and the unending mercy and grace of the gospel that we'll be able to actually be a church rooted in genuine love for one another.

You see, we can't actually love one another rightly unless we experience and realize and walk in the love of God for us in the gospel.

Because it's when we understand that we were orphans-made children, will we be able to understand that the outsider becomes an insider and is connected to us through the love of God that He has lavished on us through the finished work of Jesus and by the power of His Spirit.

We cannot properly love one another unless we properly first submit our lives to the truth and beauty of the gospel.

Because that's the love of which we're supposed to love one another.

When the description of this type of love is given, it is understood as genuine or better understood without hypocrisy, right?

So Paul says, Let love be genuine.

That agape love, that's the love he's talking about, but then he qualifies it as let it be genuine, let it be without hypocrisy.

How is this so?

Well, ask yourself, how hypocritical would it be for us to claim to have experienced the love of the Father and have placed our love on Jesus our King, but not strive to have that love demonstrated toward our brother and sister in Christ?

Would that not be the epitome of hypocrisy?

That we so joyously experience the grace and mercy and love of God the Father through the finished work of Jesus, that we have been forgiven of our sin, that we have uh been brought in to the family of God, but yet we refuse or rebel against extending that exact same love to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

That would be a disingenuine love.

Now Paul helps us to understand a succinct description of what genuine love would consist of.

So he says, uh, let love be genuine, and then he gives us a very succinct description.

Abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good.

This is really the description of what genuine love will look like.

And it's fascinating to me that the way Paul describes what genuine love looks like starts with hating something.

When he says, if you want to live, if you want to love one another properly, if you want to love one another genuinely, if you want to love one another without hypocrisy, then you have to begin that with hating something.

First, it consists of a deep-seated hatred for what is evil.

Abore what is evil.

It's this deep-seated within ourselves, ingrained in our being, hatred for what is evil.

As we become a people transformed by the power of his grace, we must repudiate the very sin and wickedness that caused Jesus to have to suffer on our behalf.

God in his holiness has determined what is good and what is evil.

If we are going to demonstrate a life of repentance, a life of repentance meaning that we think the way that God thinks, we transform our mind to line up and think the way that God thinks, we will submit to and grow in like affections toward what He has determined as evil.

He hates what he has determined as good, he loves.

You see, that's lining our minds up with God.

That is growing in our affections similarly with His.

He hates what is evil, He loves what is good.

Love for another cannot be genuine unless it first hates what is evil, because evil is what has restrained them from genuine love in the first place.

We have to point out that there that a hatred of evil will not show itself in acts of violence or reciprocated evil.

A gospel-centered hatred of evil will show itself in selfless, humble, or the good of other love.

So when we look at the right understanding of the gospel, uh it is evil that kept us from our Father.

It's evil that kept us from communion with our Maker.

And God so hated evil that he dealt with it.

But he didn't deal with it in more evil.

He didn't reciprocate evil for evil.

God, and we'll get to this here in a minute, but God brings ultimate good to be able to uh confront, uh bring confrontation to the evil that separated us from him.

God hates what is evil.

So much so that he's willing to give us Jesus, his only son, to conquer it.

You see, it's this evil that kept us from him, and our understanding of genuine love for one another, we should hate evil because of what it does and causes in the lives of others.

Genuine love also cements itself to what is good.

This language of hold fast, we see also in the language of cleaving.

So when it says that uh in Genesis, we see that for this reason, Adam's speaking of Eve, his helper, that God has formed and fashioned out of his side.

He says, for this reason, a man will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife.

This is this fusion, this cementing.

So when when Paul says, hold fast to what is good, he's using very similar language here.

He's saying, cement yourself.

Be so committed and fused toward what is good.

Here it's being cemented to all that God has claimed is good.

A reality of genuine love is that we are relentlessly committed to what God has called good and seeing it cherished and fostered in our lives and the lives of others.

You see, genuine love is not just an acknowledgement or even approval of this evil good paradigm, but it's a commitment to action toward it.

Love must be lived out in action, in sacrifice, and in service.

It cannot just be something we send through good vibes.

And our culture loves this kind of passive thing, right?

We see it all the time.

If I can change my uh Facebook profile picture, or if I can send good vibes, or even the church, I'm praying for you.

Look, for too long, if we're honest with ourselves, we've lied to our brothers and sisters, and we've used that as an opportunity to not have to get our hands dirty in the mess of their lives.

Can we just be honest about that?

It's time to stop.

It's time to be so committed, so cemented to good and genuine love within the church that if we're gonna pray, we're gonna be with them when we pray.

If you're gonna pray with them, you're gonna stop on the phone and you're gonna pray with them right then and there.

You're not just gonna say, hey, brother, I'm gonna pray for you.

Can I pray for you right now?

Can I be with you in your brokenness?

Can I get my hands dirty in this mess because I want to walk alongside you?

That's what genuine love looks like.

We've been passive.

We've acknowledged maybe what is good or what is evil, but we have not gotten to work to see it fostered and cultivated in the lives of one another.

Now the Apostle Paul will shepherd us through the outworkings of a non-hypocritical love that vehemently hates evil and has cemented itself to all that is good.

If we look through verses 10 through 16, what he's gonna help us understand is what love on the inside looks like.

10 through 16 is love on the inside.

This is what love should look like within the body of Christ, within the church.

Uh, and we're gonna walk through this because he has so many examples here.

We're gonna walk through them one by one to help us understand a more holistic picture of what love on the inside should actually look like, lived out within the church.

We first have to acknowledge this.

There is a love that can only be expressed and received inside the body of Christ.

No one else has claim to it, no one else has rights or benefits or privilege to it, it is exclusive in its nature to those who have been saved and redeemed through faith by grace in the finished work of Christ.

No one else can experience this or lay claim to its benefits.

It's a love that can only be expressed and received within the church because it's a familial love that's been made possible through Jesus.

Only those who are united to Christ by faith can lay claim to his eternal benefits.

Speaking of Jesus and his finished work, one of them being the love of an eternal family.

We talked about, I talked about this with some people through uh premarriage counseling.

We were talking about uh what is our relationship with one another.

Uh, and I had to help them understand and see my relationship with my wife as a sister in Christ eternally supersedes my relationship and knowledge of her as my wife.

That that informs how I love her.

That informs how I treat her and how I engage with her because I submit myself to what God has called genuine love.

Now we have covenantal benefits that I ain't got with some of the other sisters, but praise be.

But listen, she's still my sister in Christ before and after our marriage.

There is a love that is eternal.

It's the family of God.

In verse 10, he starts to help us understand this.

He says, this love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor.

We're called to love the church differently than we are called to love the world.

We have to understand that rightly and hold those two things in tension.

We're not called to hate the world, we're called to love it, but we are not called to love the world the same way we are called to love one another with inside the body of Christ.

It is distinct and different.

We love the world because Jesus first loved us.

It's a reflection of the gospel love that we have experienced in salvation.

But we love the members of the church because we're part of the eternal family of God through Jesus' love for us.

In loving the members of the church this way, we should seek to outdo one another in honor.

You see, honor from a worldly perspective is based upon status or possession, right?

Whoever you are in culture, based upon your status or how much wealth you've accumulated, we tend to extend honor to those people.

But in the church, that whole paradigm gets flipped on its head.

Because why?

In Christ, we are equal.

Because he is our possession, and because he is our status.

It is in him that we are seated at the right hand of the Father on high.

It is in him that all the riches of God are ours in Christ Jesus.

It is in him that our status and our possession are equal because it is in him the fullness of joy, the fullness of riches, the fullness of pleasures evermore are found and known.

And so, guess what?

We can extend honor on one another because of Jesus.

In Christ's status and possession are equal among the body.

In this new reality, we're able to lavish honor on one another because our status and our possession are found in Christ alone.

That means the one in our body that we see as the lowest, and the one in our body we see as the highest.

We have to see them as Christ sees them.

Equally seated with him on high, equally obtaining the riches of his glory and grace.

You see, honor means to communicate value through respect and admiration.

How are we communicating value to one another?

That I value you, that I value your presence here, that I value the gifts that the Spirit has given you that you bring to this body.

How am I communicating value to one another?

It should be through respect and admiration.

And this is tough, right?

Our tongue is so sharp.

And James calls it one of the most difficult things to tame.

Because we don't communicate that value well.

Our tongue is trained to tear down rather than build up.

Our tongue is trained to strike.

You see, we should be a people who seek to discipline our tongue.

And one of the ways that we're going to do that is consciously and intentionally outdo one another in honor.

I love competition.

Somebody asked me to be on their uh sand volleyball team.

I said, You don't want me on that team, brother.

I love competition.

I just will yell at everyone the whole time.

But this is a godly competition I can get behind.

I want to outdo you in honor.

That's humility, humbleness, service, a posture of lowliness so that you might make the others higher.

Let's outdo one another in honor, church.

Verse 11 do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

In our service to Jesus and one another, we're called to not be lazy, but work with energy and excitement for the good of one another.

You see, as we serve the Lord, we also serve each other.

We don't just serve the Lord without it affecting or having implications toward those who are in the body of Christ.

You cannot separate those two things because we are his body.

So when we serve him, we also serve one another.

That's a reality of our status as a family and brothers and sisters to one another under the head, which is Jesus.

Subjecting ourselves to him, we also subject ourselves to one another in humble service.

Here's what Paul's really saying: it's unloving to be idle.

Not I D-O-L, I D L E.

To sit there and be lazy, to not work, to not strive to use your gifts to serve, to not be active within the body of Christ.

Paul is saying that's unloving.

Verse 12, he says, Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

Hope is setting our expectation on his promises.

In a time in our culture and society where we feel hopeless, I can tell you it's because you're listening to the promises of this world rather than reflecting and rejoicing in the promises of God.

It's because you're informing your mind and your heart with news outlets rather than the promises of his scripture.

It's because you're spending four to six hours a day listening to what the world has to say about our current situation rather than listening to what God has said has already been done.

You want to know where anxiety, depression, uh, a lot of these things are rooted in?

Because of how you're informing yourself, how your mind's being transformed by the information you're taking in.

Instead of reflecting and celebrating and rejoicing in his promises, the dragon gets thrown into the pit.

The head crusher severs his neck.

This is the end.

This is the hope that we put ourselves in.

And our hope can only be true and steadfast because of the subject and substance we place our hope in.

All of his promises are yes and amen.

Therefore, we can truly have hope.

You see, we talked about this before, but if God breaks any one of his promises, he is no longer God.

We have to wrestle with that.

That reality.

We have to submit ourselves to that truth.

If one of his promises toward us as church goes unmet, he fails and he no longer is God because he banked everything he ever said on the integrity and worth of his own name.

That's something that we can actually put true hope into.

But as we're waiting for this hope to manifest itself, as we live in this already not yet tension, we find ourselves in the midst of trials and tribulations, don't we?

Why is genuine love called to be patient in the midst of tribulation?

It goes back to the source and the substance of our hope.

Be patient, he's coming.

Be patient, he's already conquered.

Be patient.

His promises are guaranteed.

Be patient.

Don't give up hope.

Don't abandon ship.

Don't leave the faith.

Don't curse God.

Don't look back and say he never came through.

Be patient.

This looks rough.

This looks hard.

This looks like you're not going to get out of it.

But I can guarantee you, this isn't some health and wealth prosperity, garbage preaching.

This is the reality of the scriptures.

The king has overcome.

You can be patient in your suffering because his promises are yes and amen.

And on the other side of this is glory.

Glory like we've never seen.

Glory like this world cannot promise.

Where we are circled around his throne, singing with the heavenly beings.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, where the fullness of eternal pleasure and glory can be seen and experienced and felt, where the Lamb is the light of heaven, darkness does not shine, nor is there water that represents death, but he is the river of life that fully, fully satisfies us for all eternity.

We can have hope.

Not because tomorrow is going to be better, but because eternity is going to be that much more glorious.

In both hoping and waiting, we are to be constant.

Constant in prayer means for us to be dependent upon God.

We need God.

And this is why.

We need him to arouse our hope and to steady our waiting.

Let me say it again.

We need God.

Why does Paul tell us to be constant in prayer in the midst of this?

Because we need him to arouse our hope.

We need the spirit to blow those flames of hope inside of our heart.

And we need to be steadied in our waiting.

Like a ship that's uh that's experiencing these tumultuous seas that where waves are causing it to risk capsizing.

No, God comes in and he steadies.

Jesus is the one who calms the storm.

That's why we need to be constant in prayer.

Verse 13, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Through life's weary trials, our family will find themselves in need.

We should be generous with our possessions, knowing we are not owners of any of our stuff, but we are stewards of God's good gifts.

We look out for our family, making sure that they do not go without.

It's important to realize the way in which contributing to others' needs and being hospitable is linked together here in this understanding of what genuine love looks like.

Opening our lives and our homes to one another should cost and inconvenience us.

In the body, we do not choose who we call brother or sister.

God sovereignly chooses that for us.

In a way, it's the sanctification of grace realize in those who frustrate us, who annoy us, who aggravate us.

It's as if God is showing us ourselves in relationship to Him in His radical, grace-filled hospitality he extended to us.

You see, we don't get to choose who our brothers and sisters in Christ are.

That does not dictate our obedience to this command, our obedience to see God's love flourish within the body.

It's not because you like this person more, but this person frustrates you, so you're going to close your door to them.

That's not what it is.

And I want to submit to you that that's God showing you yourself in relationship to him.

When you were his enemy, he went out of his way to bring you in and be hospitable.

When you frustrated him, when you aggravated him, when you were in rebellious against him, rebellion against him, what did he do?

He opened the door, he picked you up, and he carried you across the threshold.

That's gospel hospitality.

14.

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.

This is 14 through 16.

Here, Paul resolves what love on the inside looks like.

And what does we resolve into?

It's a disposition of harmony.

Paul resolves on what love on the inside looks like in a disposition of harmony with one another.

Let's unpack this for a moment.

Here we see the insertion of persecution.

Bless those who persecute you.

Now, we could simply dismiss this as referring to people on the outside.

But I think contextually that doesn't work.

He's been laboring through what does love on the inside look like, and he inserts persecution into it.

I don't think Paul has gone off track.

I think he's much eloquent of a writer than that.

I think he means when we are persecuted, even by those within the church.

And persecution comes not just because of our faith.

You think, well, we have similar faith or kindred faith.

Why will we experience persecution?

You can just experience persecution for your personality type, for who you are, the clothes you wear, if you dress like a goof, right?

All these kinds of things.

You can experience persecution.

And this is why I think it's also important because how hard, how much more difficult, how much more agonizing is it to experience persecution within the church than from those outside of it?

From the ones who are supposed to draw you near, you are put to flight.

That's painful.

Persecution might be the most difficult when it comes from those who are supposed to have our back.

But what are we called to do in the midst of even this?

Bless.

In this instance, it's referring to bless with our words, to speak well of, even praise.

When we're experiencing persecution from even our brothers and sisters in Christ, what are we commanded to do?

To bless them.

To praise them.

To speak well of them.

Paul then calls us to rejoice with those who rejoice.

We talked about this a few weeks just in kind of a bunny trail I took, but it's fascinating within the church, and it's fascinating within the culture, even, but specifically the culture of the church, we're fine with weep with those who weep.

That's not difficult for us.

In fact, there's a huge call within the body of Christ to suffer with those who suffer.

And here's what happens: when someone has an opportunity to rejoice because they're experiencing God's blessing, when somebody has an opportunity to rejoice because they've been gifted with something that the other person doesn't have, here's what the call is.

It's not for the one who's without to rejoice with the one who has.

It's for the one who has to watch themselves in case they offend the one who does not.

That's not the Bible.

That's not genuine love.

That's pridefulness, that's selfishness, and that's wanting people to only suffer with you rather than your call to have to rejoice with them.

I love what John Chrysostom, he's an early church father, and he was the Archbishop of Constantinople.

He says this he died in about 407 A.D.

Brother still knew what was going on here.

Listen to this quote.

There is none so hard-hearted as to not weep over him that is in calamity.

But the other requires very noble soul.

So as not only to keep from envying, but even to feel pleasure with the person who is in esteem.

Think about what he's saying.

He's saying, you don't just have to guard your heart about envying what they have and you don't, but to actually equate yourself, familiarize yourself with the very pleasure that they are feeling from their gain.

It's applied here in rejoicing with others.

Not just guarding against envy, but being enjoined to their very pleasure.

Rejoice with those who rejoice.

I pray that we are a rejoicing church.

Not that we overlook the suffering and the trials of others, the hardships that they go.

We gotta obey both of these commands.

We gotta be a balanced congregation where we rejoice with those who rejoice and we weep with those who weep.

And we can do those simultaneously, even.

We're called to weep with those who weep.

A member's loss or hardship becomes the collective loss and hardship of the body.

No one loses without all of us losing.

And to live in harmony with one another.

This is its disposition.

This is its resolve.

I love the NASB's use of the language here.

It says, be of the same mind toward one another.

Be in unity and thinking.

The harmony should be in the mind that we have toward one another, thinking of each other like Christ thinks of us.

Harmony is in unity.

A collective commitment to love one another with genuine love.

And finally, another call to humble service he makes at the end of this.

He says, to abandon our pride and be submitted to one another for their good.

Do not think of yourself too haughty or highly, but associate with the lowly.

Even within the body of Christ, we are called to associate with the lowly.

Now we go to 17 through 20, and we're gonna look at what love on the outside looks like.

17 through 20 is love on the outside.

So first he says, here's a distinct love of how the church should love one another.

And now we're gonna look at how the church should then love the world.

That is a different kind of love, and it entails a different approach.

Yet I'm gonna submit or argue that it works for the same end.

Let's work through it.

And we start to assess what love on the outside looks like here in this next set of passages.

How do we communicate and express love to those who are not in the family of God because they have not trusted in the finished work of Jesus?

17.

He starts, Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

Though we're called to hate evil, we are forbidden to retaliate with it.

If we are called to hate evil, we must also fully hate its presence in our own lives also.

Right?

So this is this retaliation uh re reality.

We are called to hate evil, but we're not called to retaliate with evil.

And if we're called to hate evil, we have to also be called and committed and determined to hate evil even in our own lives.

We have to remember that the way we live and conduct our lives is continually being watched by the world.

This is what he says when he says, do what is honorable in the sight of all.

The world is watching us and how we respond to it.

We have to be sober-minded, not driven in action by our emotions, so that a response to even evil communicates the powerful presence of a grace-filled gospel.

When we look at how do we respond to evil, we have to be disciplined.

We have to practice restraint so that the world who's watching us sees the gospel in our response, sees the beauty of grace in our response.

Verse 18, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

The ability to leave peaceably with everyone doesn't solely fall on your responsibility.

Let me get a drink real quick.

No, I need to.

That's freeing to me.

That's liberating to me.

It doesn't solely fall on my responsibility if there's peace or not, but I do have responsibility.

And we're going to get into that.

You have the utmost responsibility to be certain that the absence of peace is not because of you.

So you don't have a responsibility to have peace as the resolve, but you do have the responsibility that the absence of peace in that situation isn't your fault.

You see, often we make mistakes of identifying false peace for true peace.

You see, we believe to have peace, we have to compromise or cave in.

It's like a toddler throwing a tantrum in the kitchen for candy, right?

You've been in those situations.

How many have been, come on.

Wives, how many of your husbands have put you in that situation?

Yes?

Friends, so forth.

Yeah.

How do we have peace?

Alright, look, I'm just gonna throw my hands up, do what you want to do.

We know that that's not peace.

We know that that's that's the alleviation of turmoil in that moment, but that that's not peace.

We compromise.

We compromise on principle and truth, which ultimately is no peace at all.

Here's a test of peace for you.

Have I honored God in my actions?

Have I honored God in my actions?

Have I submitted myself to his word?

Have I submitted myself to his word and sought the good of my neighbor?

Have I honored God in my actions and the way that I engaged with this situation?

Have I submitted to his word what he calls truth, what he calls good, what he calls holy?

And have I sought the good of my neighbor?

If you can walk away with those three things being yes, it doesn't matter how they respond, it doesn't matter the outcome.

You can have peace because you rest in the hands of the God who holds you.

Though your neighbor may revile against you, you can have peace.

Let me add a metric of peace within the body of Christ also.

Though we are talking about love on the inside, let's talk about peace when it comes to the body of Christ.

Here's a metric of peace that we overlook a lot.

Often what we think is that if I have peace in my heart, I have the peace of God.

That's not true.

That's deceitful.

We can have peace in our heart and it not be the peace of God.

Here's how I would submit a metric to you.

If you have peace in your heart and you have a unified peace among the body about your decisions, you have the peace of God.

You see, this is collective.

We want to fight for individualism all the time.

We want to fight for autonomy all the time.

That's what we want to contend for, right?

So if I have peace in my heart, you know what?

The heck with what all you guys believe, I got the peace of God because I got peace in my heart.

Well, that peace can be deceptive, and we should look for the affirmation within the body of Christ to understand what peace actually is.

If we're in a gospel-centered church who's rooted in the Word of God, who stands upon his scriptures, who is committed to the good of one another, then what we're going to find unity in is in the decisions we believe God's leading us to make and the affirmation of those decisions amongst his body.

That's peace.

Just want to submit that to you.

Verses 19 through the end of 21 here, or 20, we see, 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 him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.

Paul's quoting directly from two Old Testament passages here.

He's quoting from Deuteronomy.

So if we look at Deuteronomy 32, 35, it says this Vengeance is mine, and recompense for the time when their foot shall slip, for their day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.

Look at what the Lord's promising.

I already know, and I've already committed to the outcome.

I already know, and I've already committed to the outcome.

Do you trust me?

That's what he's getting to the heart of.

Do you trust me?

And then he quotes Proverbs 25, 21 through 22.

If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.

You see, ultimately, we don't have to seek vengeance for the wrong done to us, because God will see to it that all evil, malice, and wickedness is dealt with.

God is not vindictive in paying people back for what they have done.

But God is holy justice, which is eternally more dreadful.

Let me say that again.

He is holy justice.

In our endeavor to exhibit genuine love, we do not seek payback or vengeful retaliation.

We seek to bless, we seek their good.

In doing so, we will heap burning coals on his head.

This is used in writing of antiquity about a change of mind.

When you heap burning coals on someone's head, it means that your actions and behaviors are causing them to change the way that they think.

This symbolizes a change of mind because of a deed of love.

Our very lives and the way we choose to love has missional implications.

This is what I'm talking about.

The world is watching.

The way that we act with one another and the way we act with them, they're watching and it has missional implications in that we can actually win people over to the gospel, even in the way that we conduct our lives.

Now we have to also proclaim the truth of the gospel, but if our proclamation of the gospel and the lives that we claim to live don't balance one another, have we not just made an offense to the gospel that's unnecessary because it's already offensive enough?

Should not the lives we live also harmonize with the beauty of the gospel we proclaim?

And then we just allow the Holy Spirit to work, changing their mind, changing the way they think and perceive Christ our Lord.

Verse 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

For to summarize verse 21, it's conquer evil with good.

Conquer evil with good.

Think about that for a moment.

When evil's been exhibited to you or expressed towards you, and your response or retaliation to it is evil also, you have been overcome by it.

And there's a lot of times that we do that in our lives.

We are conquered by evil in that moment.

We've not expressed discipline.

We have not shown restraint or trust in the Holy Spirit's work in our lives.

We've kind of pushed, right?

You ever seen one of them fights where like uh it's about to break out, and you got those dudes who are trying to hold the one guy back, and then he's fighting off his own friends just to get at this guy?

He's casted off the restraint that's been put around him so that he can reciprocate evil for the evil that's done to him.

We act that way in our own lives all the time.

We allow ourselves to be overcome with evil when we retaliate with it.

It's a life that's not disciplined, a life that's not restrained by the Spirit and conforming to the image of Jesus.

You cannot overcome evil with more evil.

You can only overcome it with good.

But this is not a goodness of yourselves, it is a reflection of the goodness of the gospel work in you.

The reality that our Father made enemies his friends, that he made orphans his children, that he made strangers his citizens.

All of this points to the gospel truth that when God could have poured out his wrath on our evil, he instead extended to us his mercy by pouring his wrath out on his son in our place.

So, what is the mark of genuine love?

It's that it in no way seeks the benefit of the self.

If you were to qualify what genuine love looks like, it in no way seeks the benefit of itself.

Think about that even in when it's the call to hate evil.

Let me tell you something.

If you don't line yourself up with what God calls evil, and then you affirm that evilness in the lives of others, let me tell you where that's rooted in.

That's not rooted in your love for them, it's rooted in your desire to have them love you.

That's selfish.

That's not genuine love, that's selfishness.

We do this all the time.

We we want to masquerade it as genuine love.

We want to masquerade it as, oh no, I'm doing it for them.

No, no.

You're doing it so you can have the relationship.

You're doing it so that they can be in your life, so that you can be liked and not despised.

The mark of genuine love is that in no way seeks the benefit of the self.

So what here's our main idea.

Genuine love works for the good of others.

Genuine love works for the good of others.

A love that is reflective of the Father's love for us will at its core be selfless and actively seek the good of others.

Nowhere in the scriptures, nowhere in this passage, is this love we hold permitted to be passive.

It's not allowed.

It's unacceptable.

It's against the very definition of what this love is supposed to be.

It is active in both its response to evil and its commitment to the good of others.

The uniqueness of this love is that its response to evil is still known and grounded in the good of the other person.

You see, God never calls us to respond passively to evil.

Our goal in love is to not simply not participate in evil, but to be proactively against it through goodness.

You see, we think a lot of times as Christians, if I just don't do bad things, right?

If I'm passively against evil, then that's enough.

We just try to stay out of trouble, so to speak.

But that's not what the Bible gives us a call to do.

It's not what the responsibility that it puts on us.

It's not just to not do evil, but it's to be proactively against it with goodness.

To seek the goodness of others is to be after their welfare.

Welfare talks about this completeness.

Right?

We're actually, if we look at what does it mean to be for the good of others, then we have to understand about it being for their welfare.

When it talks about being for someone's welfare, it's to be so much, so generous toward them, so benevolent toward them, that you're working for their completeness.

But the truth of the matter is we only have completeness in Christ.

And so even all of our goodness, in opening our home, in the giving away of our things, in the service of one another, in the way that we engage and interact, in the rejoicing and weeping, all of that is for the endeavor to point them to Christ, who is the fullness of their welfare, because only in him are we made complete.

So the work of genuine love is to that end.

The only completeness we can have as broken people is in Jesus, submitting and conforming to him alone.

Yet many of us operate in a love that is disingenuous and hypocritical.

I would submit that it's because we often lose sight of the reality that for love to be genuine, it must do both.

Hate evil and be cemented to good.

It must be both things.

It cannot be one or the other, or else that love fails to be genuine as it's called to be.

For some of us, we do not hate what is evil.

This can express itself in different forms.

One way it can express itself is in not aligning ourselves and submitting to what God has called evil.

God is the author and the authority of good and evil.

Let me say it again.

He is alone the author of and the authority of what is good and what is evil.

He alone dictates our ethic through his holiness, and we have an obligation to affirm and to submit to it.

What God has called evil, we too often call good.

Or we are simply apathetic and indifferent toward it.

Evil has consequence.

Evil has such a consequence that we see the necessity of the Son of God crucified to overcome it.

How can we say we love a Savior and we don't hate the very thing that caused him to have to come and die?

There is no just indifference, there is no neutrality, there is no passiveness, there is good and there is evil.

God has revealed that to us through his word because he has the authority and the authorship to be able to do so through his holiness.

God alone is holy.

We are not.

God alone is completely other.

In his holiness, he is able to dictate what is evil and what is good.

We have an obligation and responsibility to submit to it.

Another way this expresses itself in that we actually celebrate what is evil.

Not that we just don't align ourselves with it, but then we go off and we celebrate what is evil.

You see, our culture is working tirelessly to be the gospel of this age, the God of this age, to be the definer and authority of virtue.

Right?

If you look at any news, uh if you if you see any stories and headlines, if you look at whatever's trending on Twitter, they're trying to tell you what is virtuous.

They're trying to tell you what is good and what is evil.

They are trying to be the author and authority of our ethic.

That's what's happening in our culture and society.

Many of us bow our hearts to their self-proclaimed revelation.

It is fundamentally a battle on the origin, inspiration, and authority of Scripture.

God has said.

Yet we allow the enemy to fool us again with the notion, has God said?

That is the oldest trick in the book.

That is exactly what happened in the garden.

The serpent came in, and the first thing that he wanted to do was to make us doubt the authority of the revelation of God that he gave to us as his image bearers.

Where God had said, the serpent come in and asks, but has he?

Has he really said that?

And that is what you and I will face as a battle every single day of our life.

In our walk of Christianity, in our process of sanctification, you want to know where the attack is at?

It's not over your bank accounts or the economy.

It's not over your freedoms and your constitutional privileges.

The enemy is going to come in with a sharp-witted tongue and make you wonder did God really say that?

We believe we have transcended the scriptures and come to an age of enlightenment and progress.

So we cast the Word of God aside and declare a word of self-authority on what is good or evil.

We must actively be against evil.

What God has declared is evil because we so genuinely love others.

It is our evil that has made us broken and far from God.

But it is God's goodness that has such a hatred for evil that he confronts it with a cross.

I talked about this with somebody in our mission group a while ago, but uh they were dealing with a work situation where they felt like they could not work on certain projects because of what those projects stood for.

Those projects stood in direct contradiction to what God has called good or what God has called evil.

And he believed as a Christian that he couldn't support those things or put his hand to them, right?

And so we talked about the propensity of the culture is that when you say, hey, I can't support that, I can't be for that, what you're saying is you hate those people.

I understand where that propensity comes from.

Sometimes that's the very thing we've communicated, unfortunately, within the church.

But what I was trying to shepherd him around to help him see is what if you communicate in another way?

What if you went to your boss and your supervisor, you said, brother, you don't understand.

I love them so much, I can't work on this because I'm so committed to the truth that this is harmful to them, that this kills them, that this separates them from the true life that they have in God our Father through Jesus Christ.

What if it wasn't a posture of us hating them, but we so much hate evil that we express it in radical, relentless love toward them by fighting against it.

Because we want to see them live and not die.

We want to see them have life and not perish.

We must be actively against evil.

What God has declared evil.

But some of us, it's not that we don't hate what is evil, it's that we don't cement ourselves to what is good.

We do not cement ourselves to good.

While we may find ourselves hating what is evil, we don't automatically find ourselves cemented to good.

It's a life that is fused to seeing good lived out in all circumstances.

The Christian life is not simply about not doing bad, but about actively seeing the good, beautiful, impure, cultivated in the life of others.

Often we can become passive in our Christian walk by just staying out of trouble, but not pushing for the good.

We do not only sin in ways of commission, right?

So when we sin in ways of commission, that means that we don't do or we do the things we're not supposed to do.

That's a sin of commission, but we also sin in ways of omission, meaning that we do not do the things we know we should do, right?

So this tension of commission and omission.

The sin of commission is that we do what we're not supposed to do, but the sin of omission is that we do not do what we are supposed to do.

And many times in our lives we probably practice the sin of omission more than the sin of commission.

But we have a lighter posture, a lighter heart toward that.

Hey, it's okay.

Just try to do it next time.

Being cemented to good is not just praying, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

But laboring to have the kingdom expressed in our lives, transforming the culture, and causing them to open their mouths to taste and see that the Lord is good.

So our hope of the gospel this morning is this Jesus conquered evil through ultimate good.

Jesus conquered evil through ultimate good.

This is the way our evil has been dealt with through holy confrontation.

You see, Jesus didn't sit by.

He didn't just look at our evil and say, hey, I have no responsibility here.

I'm not doing anything evil.

So, hey, I'm just gonna kind of sit up there in heaven and let them just destroy each other and destroy themselves.

No, Jesus comes with holy confrontation.

He did not seek to repay our evil, instead, he overcame it at Calvary.

A selfless love that was cemented to the good of others has been poured out on us.

Let's look at 2 Timothy 1, 9 through 10.

It says this, who saved us, speaking of Jesus, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who what?

Abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

This is what selfless love that was cemented to good has called for us his people.

The abolishment of death and the bringing of life.

It was his commitment to our good expressed through genuine love that evil, sin, and death has been abolished through the gospel.

Sorry, thank you.

Somebody have a cap anywhere?

No?

Okay.

I'm about done.

It was his commitment.

We may fail to express genuine love to others, but Jesus overcomes our failures by perfectly loving us.

Amen.

And it's abiding in this love.

This love only known and experienced through the gospel.

That we're then able to joyfully pursue conformity to his standard of love and our love for others.

Church, we can never love one another nor the world the way that we are called to without the transformative power of the gospel.

The process of sanctification and the pursuit of conformity to the one who saved us.

How do we live this out?

Number one, foster genuine love.

Foster genuine love.

Look, we're doing a preaching lab right now.

We got uh uh nine guys in this preaching lab that we're doing, or maybe there's more, I don't know, but uh awesome time.

And one of the things that we talked about in our work of exegesis or extracting from the scriptures what's there is we talked about praying over the text.

Actually praying the text.

I I would love to see you guys make a habit of it this week.

This week, take Romans 12, 9 through 21 and labor yourself in prayer over the text.

Here's what that would look like.

Uh let love be genuine.

Father, cause my love to be genuine.

Father, help me to hate what is evil, what you have called evil.

Let me affirm and recognize it.

Let me hold fast to what is good.

Father, let me have a love for one another that's built on brotherly affection.

Cause me to outdo one another in showing honor.

Help me to be uh not lazy but fervent, serving you and serving one another with the gifts you've given me.

Just work through 9 through 21 in a posture of prayer.

Soak yourself in this, foster genuine love within yourself, and then express it and demonstrate it to the church and to the world in the ways that we've been commanded to.

This is gonna take work.

This doesn't come uh uh easy for us.

This is gonna be a commitment, not just a commitment to obedience to it, but a commitment to not being um really hurt or offended uh when you're called out for not doing it.

You know what?

If I love you, I'm gonna tell you how your love's not very genuine right now.

And if you love me, you're gonna tell me how my love is not being very genuine right now.

You know why?

Because we hate what is evil and we cement ourselves to what is good.

So it's not just fostering it in isolation through prayer or discipline, but it's also fostering it in community.

Church, we have to love one another.

Number two, love one another.

Uh I want you to realize the weightiness that this is a different love than what we show to the world.

This is a familial love.

This is an eternal bond love that we do not share with the world.

Our love for one another is to be so extravagant that it makes them jealous and want it.

Lastly, let's heap coals on their heads.

As we work to do good, as we work to labor in love and show genuine love to one another, let it heap coals on their heads.

Man, how wonderful would it be if our gospel witness was not marred by our absence of gospel practice?

If we lived faithfully to the truth that we confess, we would have opportunity by the power of the Spirit to heap coals on their heads for the glory of God and their joy forever.

Amen.