Ecclesia Princeton

Romans [Season Two]: Romans 12vv9-21- Wesley Tenney-Free: Loving What Is Good

• Ian Graham

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Wesley Tenney-Free unpacks Paul’s exhortations in Romans 12.

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Speaker 1:

Let's hear the word of the Lord together. Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil. Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal. Be ardent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering. Persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Extend hospitality to strangers. 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.

Speaker 1:

Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all Beloved. Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, the word of the Lord.

Speaker 2:

Thanks be to God. Thank you, ian. Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see, ears to hear and tongues of fire to proclaim your word. Amen. Good morning church.

Speaker 2:

When I opened up the scripture passage for this week, I was met with a slight surprise. Our passage begins with a direct three-part instruction Let love be genuine. Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good. This passage surprised me because it just happened to be a Bible verse I've been trying to reckon with in my own faith life over the past few years God's funny that way Particularly the instruction to hate what is evil. I'll be honest, I've used this verse as an excuse at times.

Speaker 2:

There are a few passages in our scriptures that lend themselves so easily, when taken out of context, to justify righteous anger and establish ourselves as holding a moral high ground Hate evil. It feels incredibly simple and particularly relevant when the world around us is so full of wrongdoing. But if one pauses for a moment and reflects on either of those two words, the verse begins to feel a little more opaque. What is evil exactly? And is Paul, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, really uplifting hatred as a virtue? What would that do to our souls?

Speaker 2:

This past week, like the past few years has felt unusually full of political shock. From immigration raids and citywide protests to threats of wider war in the Middle East and military parades in our nation's capital. The devil has crammed a lot of suffering and confusion into like six days and I know I'm not telling you all anything new. Maybe you came to church this morning in hopes of a reprieve from these things, and I fully understand this desire. I respect that. But I assure you a reprieve through dissociation is only going to be temporary. A healthier approach, if you have the bandwidth to join me this morning, is to process these things with God, not to spiritually bypass them. This, I hope, is what we can begin to do together in the next 30 minutes. My aim this morning is to help us begin clinging to goodness a genuine, authentic love possible in Christ. So, with care and gentleness, let's dive in. Hate what is evil. This is an emphatic admonition to us church.

Speaker 2:

Paul uses strong vocabulary here Hating literally apo. Stugontes means to position oneself away. Apo, in disgust and loathing. Stugontes Paul applies it to a word for evil, paneros. That references evil's effects and felt power in the world, its injury toil harm For my graphic designers or physicists in the room. You can consider panairos like a vector quantity for evil. It has a direction to it, a velocity. To complicate matters, the root of the former word for hatreds, digontes, only appears one other place in our scriptures, in Titus 3, among a list of vices one should avoid.

Speaker 2:

So what the heck is Paul doing here? What is he suggesting? Why the strong language? It feels to me like Paul is utilizing this language for two reasons. First, the wording works well as an antonym to the following phrase hold fast or cling to what is good, as opposed to be turned away from and discussed. Paul identifies two different directions. We can will our emotions and he matches them with words of equal intensity and velocity. Second, I want to suggest that Paul is being realistic, having seen both sides of persecution himself, the giving and the receiving of it.

Speaker 2:

Paul was no stranger to strong hatred. He knew its power personally and had fallen for the enemy's temptations in it. He knew the facade benefits of hatred for both the oppressor and the oppressed. If you've been feeling deep anger in your bones at what's going on in the world, then please know this language is for you. Paul knows you're burning. May you feel seen by the Holy Spirit in these verses.

Speaker 2:

Our culture, I've noticed, seems to have two competing narratives for hatred. The first is to outright reject it. Hating, I've noticed, seems to have two competing narratives for hatred. The first is to outright reject it. Hating, in this view, is wrong under any circumstance, since it is an act of the will which necessarily corrupts the agent. Any Star Wars fans in the room yeah, I see a couple. Ooh, force be with you, mer, and I have been watching through this franchise. We just finished the Clone Wars TV show. It's pretty good. But this view of hatred is exactly what Star Wars suggests. Take, for example, jedi Master Yoda's famous quote Fear is the path to the dark side, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Juxtapose this with the tempting exhortation from the bad guy Sith Lord Sidious, later in the series Good, use your aggressive feelings, let the hate flow through you, give you power. The franchise as a whole posits that any use of hatred, any use at all, is necessarily an embrace of evil. And Star Wars isn't alone. As I mentioned above. Even the Book of Titus lists this as a vice.

Speaker 2:

One particular thinker I want to uplift from this narrative is Howard Thurman, an influential mystic and pastor from this past century who held the deep undercurrent to the United States' civil rights movement. Raised by his grandmother, who was a slave and pastorally the mentor of MLK Jr, thurman encountered the temptations of hatred frequently and he writes a whole chapter on it in his book Jesus and the Disinherited. This text was itself written in the context of challenging conversations Thurman had been having with Gandhi in India, who was suspicious of Christianity's capacity for recreating caste systems and was curious why Thurman would so deeply believe in the God of those who had enslaved his family. Thurman describes hate as one of those hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the disinherited, in season and out of season.

Speaker 2:

Hatred often begins in a situation in which there is contact without fellowship, contact that is devoid of any primary overtures of warmth and fellow feeling and genuineness. To put this in Paul's terms of our scripture today, hatred would be void of the mutual affection verse 10, and the hospitality we are to extend to strangers verse 13. It would be fully contrary to genuine, authentic love. The header for our passage, thurman, continues to identify hatred's development. Contact without fellowship leads to a lack of sympathy between people, for I can only sympathize when I see myself in another's place. The absence of sympathy enables the expression of ill will between people, which becomes the embodiment of hatred.

Speaker 2:

After long resentment and bitterness, hatred can become a sense of vitality for a person, an energy shifting one's whole personality, if you let it. Star Wars shows this well in the transformation of characters to the dark side, where they can even get new names, reflective of their personal kinds of hatred. Indeed, once a person begins to source their vitality and sense of self through hatred, hatred enables the conscience to, as the prophet Isaiah woes, call evil good and good evil, put darkness for light, and light for darkness put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Thurman summarizes the effect as such. Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts burning in white heat, its effects seem positive and dynamic, but at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one's fellows. It blinds the individual to all values of worth, even as applied to oneself. Hatred, by its essence, destroys, and this cannot be from a God who bears life. So again, what might Paul be doing here?

Speaker 2:

The second cultural narrative I see for hatred is where I think Paul can give us a little clearer guidance. I'll summarize the narrative as such If one does not hate evil, one is complicit in evil. Charges of complicity resound over social media and indeed here in our streets in Princeton. This narrative for hatred is in many ways what drove the student encampments and counter protests in our town, multiplying the bad fruits of xenophobia, particularly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. This narrative for hatred that one will necessarily be on the wrong side of history unless one does something against it has helped radicalize a generation in one direction or another, following the exact descriptions of lost fellowship Thurman names above.

Speaker 2:

It's a phenomenon of our times that children cut off parents and siblings cease to speak with one another because of political difference, because of a felt immorality or power of evil upon our oss influencing the other. This is not the kind of authentic love Paul uplifts for us in our passage to live in harmony with one another, to, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. No, this kind of narrative for hatred that threatens complicity has in many ways been distortedly warped by the devil. For one, it condemns, and we know from earlier in Romans 8 that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So if this hatred is authentically loving, it should be empty of any condemnation from the Christian's mouth. That's a good first check for us church. Are we condemning others? If so, our love is not genuine. A pure hatred of evil will not beget condemnation.

Speaker 2:

So what does it mean to hate evil?

Speaker 2:

Is hatred not that which births evil, that which condemns us to complicity in the complex sins of our times? Or rather, is hating evil merely to recognize evil for what it is, namely the undoing, the nothingness, the lacuna exposed in separation from God? I want to suggest to you all this morning that, for Paul, hate is the proper affection, emotion one feels in response to this separation from God. Hate is the emotion of perishing, of depravity, of chaos, of sin exposed in evil. It is what we should feel when we encounter the vectors of injury, toil and harm.

Speaker 2:

When we see evil for what it truly is and by this I mean how it's, that which is not of God, we should feel some repulsion, a distancing of sorts away from this lacuna and back into the loving arms of the Father, the one who is the source of all that is, of all life, of all creativity, abundance, existence, virtue, goodness, the one who heals injury, calms toil, bears peace. Truly, paul highlights the directionality of hatred from evil and to goodness in God. Hatred in this sense is a marker of genuine, authentic love, for it pushes us back into mutual affection for one another Literally Philadelphia in the Greek familial love, brotherly love and supports us in holding fast to what is good. Hence Paul writes to us how authentic love, hatred of evil, holding fast to what is good necessarily results in blessing those who persecute you verse 14. Associating with the lowly verse 16.

Speaker 2:

Offering hospitality to strangers verse 13. And not repaying anyone evil for evil, verse 17. Indeed, paul goes so far as to quote Proverbs 25, 21. If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this, you heap burning coals on their heads. That's how we are to satisfy the burning of hatred within us, church. A purifying kindness for those who've brought us harm.

Speaker 2:

Nevertheless, the concern of Titus Thurman, star Wars, remains. What does this hatred do to the soul? The critical distinction church lies in where hatred directs our attention. Does the vitality energy of hatred originate from evil or in cleaving to God's goodness? In his earlier letter to the Philippians, paul exhorts us, brothers and sisters whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just pure pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. We are to turn towards the good, the true and the beautiful. This is a good second check for us, church. Are our hearts and minds continuing to dwell on evil? If so, our love is not genuine. A pure hatred of evil, rather, will turn us to God, and this is precisely how chapter 12 of Romans begins. Verse 2 reads do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. This is God's will for us. In our hatred of evil beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God verse 19. This is the whole point of Paul's long list of virtues in today's passage. They are to give us guidelines and boundaries to help see what constitutes a genuine, authentic love and, in turn, what it is to, as the psalmist says, hate with perfect hatred.

Speaker 2:

Over the course of my life, I don't know how many times I've heard others plainly tell me angry, give it to God, yet leave unexplained how exactly to do this. It doesn't feel all that easy, after all, when the anger is building up in my bones. Giving anger to God and thereby ignoring my anger is again a form of unhealthy spiritual bypassing. Similarly, I don't know how many times I've seen this theological cliche used to justify the passive reception of abuse. Let me state this clearly church, if you're in a circumstance of abuse, giving it to God means something tangible. God can empower you to pursue safety and help If it is so possible. Paul writes in the prior verse live peaceably with all. Paul and the Holy Spirit, who gave Paul these words, recognizes the establishment of healthy boundaries.

Speaker 2:

Furthermore, simply giving evil to God or giving your hatred to God does not justify political or systemic inaction. We are not like Pilate to see that we can do nothing than wash our hands before the crowd saying I am innocent, see to it yourselves. No, we are to be involved politically and systemically. The prophet Amos tells us, like Paul, hate evil and love good. Next line establish justice in the gate. When we hate evil and love good, this is to have an effect on the public realm in such a way that renews the society around us. That's why Paul's list of virtues for us this morning has so many one another's and instructs us to extend hospitality to strangers.

Speaker 2:

Hating evil and loving good is a communal practice. This is a third good check for us, church. Are we bypassing our emotions and circumstances in the name of giving our hatred to God? If so, our love is not genuine. A pure hatred of evil, rather, will enable us to overcome evil with good verse 21, and recover an ability to love one another verse 10. Only when we've given our hatred of evil to God genuinely, tangibly, through the actions Paul lists for us here. Are we able to hate virtuously? I'll repeat the concern what about our souls? How does this kind of hatred affect our formation?

Speaker 2:

To respond directly to this critique, hatred catalyzes a kind of vitality. Yes, hatred offers an energetic vivification and self-actualization. It does change our whole personality. However, when truly given to God, hatred does not catalyze the energetic personality from evil. When truly given to God, hatred's power is directed towards goodness. God's goodness becomes the fuel for how our personality shifts and grows. In this way, it repels us from evil and helps us cling to the good. Its fruit indeed does look like zeal and being ardent in spirit, yet nevertheless serving the Lord.

Speaker 2:

Its emotions. This is where the simplicity of God can be helpful. It's a theological concept that all these different parts of god are the same. God's love is god's mercy is god's righteousness. Godly hatred looks and feels like all the other fruits of the spirit. It must beget love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulnessleness and self-control in our souls. This is a fourth good check for us, church. Do we feel like our souls are deteriorating in sin? Are we or others noticing bitterness in us? If so, our love is not genuine. A pure hatred of evil feels like the peace of Christ and all the other fruits of the Holy Spirit. If it helps, imagine the way a kid might be repulsed by their broccoli and turn joyfully towards the chicken nuggets. Their emotion is less about the repulsion, more about the yummy bite they're about to take. The same goes for our hatred of evil it's less about the power evil has over our lives and more about God's power over our lives as such.

Speaker 2:

The author from Psalm 139 above immediately writes, following the claim to hate with perfect hatred, an invitation to God. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test, test me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting. Again, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Church, verse 21. I welcome you to invite God to search your hearts, for our God Jesus Christ has indeed overcome evil with good. The Psalms encourage elsewhere you who love the Lord hate evil. He guards the lives of his faithful. He rescues them from the hand of the wicked Church. God's got you, yes. This brings us to the core of an authentic love which hates evil and clings to good, our Lord Jesus.

Speaker 2:

Have any of you ever wondered how to pray those angry psalms. Again. This is one of those things. After being in church for a long time, I've heard people offer to me pray the psalms. It brings the whole of your emotions before God, and I agree this is true. The psalms can do this, but nobody ever really explained to me how to use the psalms for all my emotions.

Speaker 2:

The cursing psalms, or imprecatory psalms as the scholars call them, can at times feel wrong to pray. If we're praying earnestly, however, our prayers do need to be the whole of our experiences, including our hatreds, for our prayer is our primary means of taking on the mind of Christ and becoming one with his spirit. Our ability to pray these angry psalms comes not from our own will alone. If the prayer is earnest, it comes in the spirit, and these psalms are the word of God breathed by the same spirit. In this way, the psalms not only bring the entirety of our human experiences before God. The psalms reveal how God has brought the entirety of God's self before us in Christ. At the end of our passage in Romans today, paul quotes the song of Moses Moses' farewell address to the young nation of Israel Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. And indeed this is what happens on the cross.

Speaker 2:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, another deeply faithful Christian from this past century, a martyr of the Holocaust and no stranger to hatred, himself writes in his book Life Together, insofar as Christ is in us, the Christ who took all the vengeance of God upon himself, who met God's vengeance in our stead, we too, as members of this Jesus Christ, can pray these psalms. Church, we can pray honestly and openly in our hatred of evil, authentically giving it to God through Jesus Christ, by recognizing the sacrifice Christ made for us and becoming one with him in it. That's how we pray the angry psalms. We go before God because God came before us. We can hate before God because God poured out hatred of evil on the cross. Hate before God because God poured out hatred of evil on the cross. In praying these psalms, we recognize not only our own emotions but the presence, the fullest depths of the incarnation of Christ among us. This is a beautiful mercy.

Speaker 2:

Romans 12 starts with this mercy too. By the mercies of God, paul instructs us present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. This is the heart of the matter. Church. Only when we've sacrificed ourselves. In light of God's mercy has our hatred been made complete? First, in sacrificing our own senses of hatred and justice, we've given it to God. Well, we've given it to the proper agent for vengeance. God will repay it, and actually God already has on the cross. We, church, are the body of Christ. This means we are a crucified people. Christ's cross is the weight and the form of our prayers. Second, church God has, in Christ's resurrection, hated with perfect hate, fully repulsed from the powers of evil, even evil unto death. Christ overcomes Church. Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. The source of all life overcame the loss of all life. He hated evil in a way we never could. He ended it. It is finished.

Speaker 2:

He says have you noticed that in our weak attempts to hate evil, we more often than not replicate it? Thurman noticed this Hatred, he concludes, cannot be controlled once it is set in motion Like fire beyond control that, burning in our bones, sets ablaze everything around us. If proper hatred is that felt recognition of the gap between us and God, there's nothing we can do to bridge that gap. The first psalm tells us the way of the wicked will perish. We must be humble to accept this.

Speaker 2:

Our imperfect hate, our attempts to end perishing can only replicate perishing. Christ, though, bridges the gap. God comes to us. Only by Christ can hatred perish perishing. Only by Christ can hatred uncoil toil, deprive depravity of its power. The only one who can bring an end to endings like sin and death is the one who is the beginning and the end. Our Lord Jesus. We, church, are the body of Christ. This means we are a resurrected people. Christ's victory is the perfection of our power to overcome.

Speaker 2:

So, church, let's pivot. Let love be genuine, hold fast to what is good. Augustine writes Our hearts, o Lord, are restless until they rest in you. It would be improper to read this passage of Romans proclaim for you all that good overcomes evil, yet leave untouched the many ways Paul explores goodness. So, church, if you would extend the grace of listening to me for just a little longer I know I've covered a lot of territory and depth. I want to offer three reflections on how we might rest in God by clinging to the good and loving authentically.

Speaker 2:

First, romans 12 follows a similar progression of thought to what we read in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, in the context of a discourse about the church being the body of Christ with many members and many gifts. 1 Corinthians 12,. Paul offers a list of ways that love appears when sincere. 1 Corinthians 12. Paul offers a list of ways that love appears when sincere. 1 Corinthians 13. Many of us are likely familiar with this passage from weddings or Hobby Lobby wall ornaments. So it might sound empty at this point in our American culture, but trust me, it can be a powerful reminder of God's desire for us. Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous nor boastful. Love is not arrogant nor rude. It does not insist on its own way. Love does not rejoice in the wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Speaker 2:

In Romans 12, 3-8, paul similarly writes of how we are one body in Christ with many members and many gifts. Then he offers the passage we've explored this morning. One biblical scholar expressed it this way they rewrote it a little bit. It's what they mean when they talk about form criticism. They like to play with the way it looks on the page. That looks a little bit more like a Hobby Lobby wall ornament than the first slide does.

Speaker 2:

But in all seriousness, the power of this parallel is that in both literary contexts, paul's exploration of love and goodness operates as a qualifying measurement of our life together as a church, community Prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, leadership, compassion these gifts that Paul names for us in Romans 12, 8, that we explored last week, are founded upon the solid rock of Christ's love. So this is a fifth good check for us, church. Do our gifts in our life together as a community, reflect the actions Paul lists for us in these verses 9 through 13? If not, then our love is not authentic and our gifts are false. A pure devotion to goodness expresses itself in these actions. So I invite you to pause for a moment and reflect. What are some gifts or talents you frequent? Head over to the next slide. Please, craig. Name one or two, maybe write them down Genuinely. Take a moment for this. You can think about them, identify them. What's a gift or talent you frequent? Now run through this list of actions. Is your gift, say, teaching as an example? Affectionate, honoring, diligent, zealous, joyful, perseverant, prayerful, generous, hospitable? Maybe one of these actions has room for growth? I invite you to pray over that awareness this week in your time with God.

Speaker 2:

Second church. I want to highlight that these marks of authentic love, made in living sacrifice to God are our spiritual worship, as it says in 12.1. So I ask, do we corporately can move to question two, utilize our gifts to draw out these qualities of love from one another? So I ask you to pause again just for another moment and reflect. Which of these qualities would you like to see more of in our church community? Which of these qualities do you already see our church doing well? Take a moment and write that down, or leave a note for yourself. Mentally. I invite you to pray over that awareness this week as well, maybe with a prayer partner from our church. That's a way we can pursue the good together and cling to it. I want to invite the worship team forward.

Speaker 2:

Third and finally, church. I want to offer us a chance to dwell in the goodness of perfect, authentic love, to practice what we've explored this morning. I invite you to identify a memory that was truly good and beautiful. Maybe it's that delicious smell of homemade cooking from when you were a child, that fun beach trip you took with friends back in college. Maybe, fathers, it's that first moment you held your kid Happy Father's Day. Once you have that memory, I invite you to pray and welcome Christ's Spirit to it, so genuinely. Let's take a second for that. I want to give you a minute. Identify that memory, open hands, offer it to God. Can you notice God's presence anywhere in it? How is God holding you in the beauty of this memory? Now listen, listen to God. If you could describe God's presence in one word what?

Speaker 2:

would it be mine's beauty. Anybody else have some words? Feel free to share them out. Loving Steady.

Speaker 2:

Enveloping, Enveloping yes, this church is authentic. Love, steady, enveloping, beautiful. This is how we overcome evil. Practice listening for God's presence in the midst of the good, the true, the beautiful, those sweet memories, those sweet moments with God like these that we explored together. Then, when you're ready, I invite you to do the same in circumstances that aren't as necessarily full of love, those ones that initiate that feeling of hatred in our bones, and don't dwell on the evil in those circumstances, but search for the Father's loving arms. Get to know God's presence. Listen for how the Holy Spirit may be moving us into redemptive, resurrected life together. Listen for the sweetness of God's words in those memories. No-transcript.