Romans 12
It’s true that you can tell a lot about yourself and a good bit about others by our choices of friends. I read a funny little poem about that recently, it’s called “Bad Company.”
One evening last October,
when I was far from sober,
And dragging home a load
with manly pride,
My feet began to stutter
and I fell down the gutter,
A pig walked up to me
and lay down by my side.
Then I mumbled, “It’s fair weather
when good friends get together.”
A lady passing by observed us,
with disapproval she did say,
“You can tell a man that boozes
by the company he chooses.”
Then the pig got up and
slowly walked away!
Here and in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the Church as being the Body of Christ, who is the Head. This is a rich image because it explains how we need one another, even depending on one another, to truly be a church. It is an image that disallows notions about church being optional and church being something that serves self without engaging in service to others. As the parable of the piggy showed us, we are known by the company we keep.
A church is built by believers who serve the Lord and each other before self.
1. Body-busting behaviors.
Verse Two = Copying worldly behaviors. Instead of conforming to the world’s values and methods, being transformed into the character of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
Verse Three = Egotism is related to self-centeredness; it results in having an inflated view of self, especially in relation to others. The opposing virtue is knowing your place and living in it.
Verse Nine = Merely pretending to love others instead of really loving them from your heart (1 Peter 1:22).
Verse Eleven = Laziness is arguably the original sin. It is toxic when we are lazy about our relationships.
Verse Fourteen = Cursing our persecutors instead of blessing them as Jesus commanded in Matthew 5:44.
Verse Sixteen = Having pride and showing prejudice are two sides of the same coin. One reason pride is an appealing vice is it elevates us above others. We become critical of others to feel better about ourselves.
Verse Sixteen = Being a know-it-all is one of the more common sins Christians commit against other Christians. It is an aspect of the sin of pride. In the original language this word literally means, “wise in your own eyes.” In contrast to being wise in God’s wisdom, the vice of being wise in one’s own eyes was such a concern that Paul mentioned it previously in 11:25.
Verses Seventeen and Nineteen through Twenty = Repaying evil with evil. We are to let go of any imaginary right to revenge there is no such thing. Instead, we leave the exercise of justice up to God, who will do it perfectly.
Verse Twenty-one = Allowing evil to conquer you means to surrender to temptations, doing everything your corrupt heart desires. This selfish behavior always works contrary to good relations with God and others.
2. Body-building behaviors.
Verse One = True worship is defined as an acceptable self-sacrifice that involves all of who we are. Why would anybody do this? In return for ALL HE HAS DONE FOR YOU. (Literally, “through all the mercies of God.”)
Verse Two = Learning God’s will requires CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK from a self-centered, worldly perspective to a Christ-centered, heavenly perspective. It’s not just a matter of recognizing the truth but requires full acceptance of the truth.
Verse Three = Honest self-understanding requires us to measure ourselves BY THE FAITH GOD HAS GIVEN US. Faith in Jesus provides us with a candid self-understanding.
Verses Four and Five = Everyone present and working together. 1 Corinthians 12:4-31is Paul’s other “body life” passage. The phrase WE ALL BELONG TO ONE ANOTHER describes the depth of our commitment to one another.
Verses Six to Eight = Using our Spiritual Gifts for our mutual benefit. Notice how Paul qualified the use of these Gifts: they are to be exercised with faith, done well, generously, seriously, and gladly.
Verses Nine to Ten = Real love. Verse nine uses the Greek word agape, which until now, has been used with God’s love for us. This is the first instance in Romans where it is our love for one another. Verse ten uses the Greek word philadelphia, implying that our love for each other takes different forms.
Verse Ten = Hating evil and loving good. Many of our moral failures can be traced to not hating sin the way God does. We tend to make excuses, especially for our own “pet” sins. It is difficult to “hate the sin but love the sinner.”
Verse Ten = Delight in honoring each other. If you must be competitive, try to outdo one another in honoring and encouraging each other.
Verse Eleven = Work with ambition and enthusiasm. We tend to save our ambition for other contexts, but we should be ambitious to love and do good works in church too. Our ambition should be to change our community for the better by first changing self first. The word ENTHUSIASTICALLY literally means, “boiling over, fervent in Spirit.”
Verse Twelve = Rejoicing in confident hope. This HOPE is primarily in reference to the Second Coming.
Verse Twelve = Patience in trouble. Can you think of a time when you need patience more than in times of trouble?
Verse Twelve = Persisting in prayer is, in a sense, patience with God. His plans and His timing are not determined by us. We want instant relief from our troubles, but God may plan to let us stew in them for a bit, until we learn to trust Him.
Verse Thirteen = Churches that show a readiness to help the needy, even if they an enemy (v. 20), are growing and maturing churches.
Verse Thirteen = Practicing hospitality. Hospitality wasn’t much of an industry in ancient cultures, so it was expected that individuals would provide support for travelers, especially fellow believers and traveling church leaders.
Verse Fourteen = Praying for God’s blessing on our persecutors. To “bless” and “curse” was taken more seriously in this culture, as these actions were believed to invoke divine power to help or harm the object of the blessing or curse. (For example, see Jesus’ instruction about “binding and loosing” in Matthew 18:18.) We need to recover their appreciation of the seriousness of our words; they have more than just psychological and emotional effects.
Verse Fifteen = Paying attention to others, to show empathy for them. This is one of several things in this list that require the virtue of humility and the practice of putting others first. Being proud or self-centered causes us to be insensitive to others, preventing our feeling empathy for them.
Verse Sixteen = Living together in harmony or, “have equal concern for all.” It’s easy to harmonize with loveable people, but this command calls us to a higher standard, loving everyone.
Verse Seventeen = Doing things in an obviously honorable way. This is not doing good to win the approval of others, but doing what God approves, which others also appreciate.
Verse Eighteen = Making every effort to live peaceably with everyone. Paul recognized that peace in relationships requires at least two willing participants to really exist. However, he also recognized that we can’t do anything about someone else’s attitude, we can only improve our own. Let peace begin with you and perhaps the others will join you.
Verse Twenty-one = Conquer evil by doing good. “Fighting fire with fire” just means everyone gets burned. If you love even the undeserving, you’ll do good to them and cancel their evil with your good.
3. Reasons to choose body-building. (11:36)
Gratitude: we owe our existence to God. Paul identified God as our origin when he wrote, EVERYTHING COMES FROM HIM. “Providence” is a word we use to describe God being at work in our world, including maintaining its existence = EVERYTHING...EXISTS BY HIS POWER.
Purpose: our existence is for His glory. GLORY is the visible manifestation of God’s presence. To give God GLORY is to make Him known in your present circumstance, to help others to know and receive Him. Glorifying God is the grateful and faithful response to all He has done to give us life and to save us.
A church is built by believers who serve the Lord and each other before self.
Roger Mohrlang summarized chapter twelve in this way, “For Paul, the Christian life is not a dreary obligation or the customary following of a set of moral-ethical rules but a joyful response to God’s kindness in saving us, a way of life based not on law but grace. How we live, then, is a measure both of how much God’s grace means to us, and how grateful we are.” (Mhorlang, p. 189.)
The opposite extreme is to treat the church like a social club, something that exists to benefit the members. We’ve used it as a self-help resource, like one of the many books in the discount rack at the bookstore.
In truth, a growing, healthy church is marked by love for God and one another. As such, church will always be, to one degree or another, counter-cultural and other-worldly.
Why was Paul inspired to go into all this detail about relationships within the church? One, for most of us, relationships do not come easily. We must work at it.
RESOURCES:
“Bad Company,” anonymous, Voice of Truth, Vol. 62, No. 2, April-June 2024, p. 7.
Roger Mohrlang, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 14, Romans, 2007, pp. 183-195.
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