Standards for the Christian Life
– Part 2
Romans 12:10-16
We are in
Romans, chapter 12 and this is actually part 2 on standards for the Christian
life. It's very important to understand that the Christian life is not a life
of libertinism or licentiousness which is the accusation against some people
who believe in grace. After the Apostle Paul taught about grace in Romans 1-5
the very first objection to it that he dealt with comes at the beginning of
Romans 6 where he said, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin
so that grace may increase?" Of course the answer is no, not at all.
There are
standards. We've now become members of God's royal family and just as in most
human families there are standards, there are guidelines, there are protocols
for the way in which you live as a member of your family so there are
guidelines, rules, and protocols for members of the royal family of God.
They're not rules to get into the family. They are not rules for gaining God's
blessing because Scripture says we've already been blessed with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenlies. They're rules that are guidelines so that we
continue to walk in the truth, walk by the Spirit, and abide in Christ.
When we violate
these standards, we're basically operating on the sin nature and we are out of
fellowship. Now many people believe that you can summarize all the Christian
life under the concept of love and there's a certain amount of truth to that.
That's how Paul starts out as we saw last time, going back over a bit of a
review of Romans 12:9 where he says, "Let love be without dissimulation
[hypocrisy]. Then he has two other points. These are not necessarily related to
each other.
As you go through these verses down through Romans 12:16, actually on down
into verses 20 and 21, you could argue like some have tried that all of these
say something about love. They certainly correlate to love. Love for one
another is a primary mandate for the Christian toward others in the body of
Christ. Paul begins with this in Romans 12:9, "{Let} love {be} without
hypocrisy." That means without any ulterior motives. The only way we can
do that as believers is to love on the basis of our relationship with God.
The Greek word that's used here AGAPE is one of two Greek words that are primarily used to
express two different kinds of love in the Christian love. AGAPE is the word that's used to describe the kind of love
that God the Father has toward all the inhabitants of planet earth, believer or
unbeliever. It is a love that seeks their absolute best and always performs on
the basis of righteousness and justice, totally consistent with God's
righteousness and justice. It's a love based on integrity.
One of the things that we see in this is that love is always connected
to an ethical standard. It's always related to a positive ethical absolute.
It's not an emotion. It's not sentimentality. It's not based on feeling. It's
based on a mental attitude that is grounded on the absolute righteousness of
God. That gives us the stability because the righteousness of God never
changes. It never fluctuates. It's never up one day and down the other. It's
never a little more one day, a little more diluted the next day. It's a never
changing standard. He is immutable and His immutability or the doctrine of
immutability applies to every characteristic in the "essence box.
So our love here is manifested on that. It's a love we sometimes
describe as being impersonal or unconditional, two adjectives describing love.
What I mean by impersonal is not that it is somehow restrained or somehow
distant or somehow not engaging with other people but it's a standard of
behavior that is true whether or not we have a personal relationship with the
person we love. That means it applies to the checker at the grocery store,
applies to the person who's driving down the freeway texting on their cellphone
and weaving in and out of lanes. It applies to everybody whether we know them
personally or not. We treat them the same way. We treat them according to the standard
of God's love. There's no ulterior motive. In other words, we're not trying to
get something from somebody. We're not being nice to them in order to
manipulate them in order to get something from them. We're doing it because
that is the right thing to do and we should treat everyone the same.
We saw the next mandate, "Abhor what is evil" which is APOSTUGEO meaning to abhor or detest. We should have a
revulsion toward that which is evil and on the other hand, we should cling to
that which is good. We should be like Velcro to that which is good. We adhere
to it.
Now I talked a little bit about evil last time and I got a couple of
questions last time after class. Every now and then you see someone who's been
sitting in the pew, listening for years, and a light goes off. They've heard
this same doctrine for I don't know how many years and this is true for all of
us. It happens to me. I'll look at a passage on something and say, "I just
never saw that from that passage before." In fact, I'm going to reference
a passage I probably read a hundred times this Sunday and never thought of it
in a particular context, never thought about a particular application of it and
we'll see that Sunday. The term evil is a term that describes those that are
living in rebellion against God. Those who live in rebellion against God are
not always performing what we think of as sins, negative actions, the kinds of
things that are described in various passages of Scripture as the works of the
flesh.
The term for evil is PONEROS and it's used of demons in terms of
their evil spirits. Later in 2 Corinthians 11 evil spirits camouflage
themselves and counterfeit righteousness and go about as if they are ministers
of light. So that which is evil can also do that which appears to be good but
it's a relative good. We use the term good in two senses. The Bible does as
well. There's one word in the Greek KALOS and a
different word AGATHOS.
AGATHOS usually
describes something that has an intrinsic value, something that is
intrinsically good. KALOS on the other hand might refer to
that which is relatively good. We know many people can do things that are
relatively good in comparison with the behavior in other people. But if they
are sinners, let me state that another way, if they're an unbeliever operating
on the sin nature then what they are producing is evil. An unbeliever can only
function in terms of his sin nature. He doesn't have any other nature. He only
has that corrupt nature so no matter how nice, friendly, wonderful a person is,
no matter how many relatively good things they do and there are many
unbelievers who do many wonderful things, they are operating on their sin
nature.
We often fall prey to thinking of unbelievers as only operating on wrong
things. The Pharisees were very moral but they were evil. They were
unbelievers. There are many people in cults who emphasize a self-righteousness,
a righteousness by works, so they're always trying to be as best as they can be
and yet, because they're not saved, then whatever they produce is just coming
out of their sin nature. So evil is used of the demon and the devil, and the
Pharisees. It's a synonym for disobedience in many passages and it describes
the inner, corrupt nature that we usually refer to as the sin nature.
In Luke 11:13 Jesus, when addressing his disciples, says, "If you,
then, being evil…" Now the disciples are regenerate and He's saying
they're evil and even when they're evil they can do relatively good things for
your children. He said the same thing to the Pharisees but they were
unbelievers. We can chart the sin nature as being motivated by the lust
pattern, whatever makes me happy. Self-absorption is the center of the sin
nature but it can either produce sins such as sins of the tongue, mental
attitude sins or overt sins or it can produce human good.
Now just because human good is a product of the sin nature doesn't mean
it's wrong. Human good is what unbelievers produce when they're following
establishment principles, when they're living a responsible life, when they're
married, when they're teaching their children good behavior, when they're
contributing to all manner of charitable institutions and causes. Those are
wonderful things. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that this doesn't
have any value in terms of the spiritual life or in terms of eternal life. But
they're beneficial for society, for the culture, and for other people. There's
nothing wrong with that.
Whenever we're out of fellowship and we're not walking by the Spirit
we're producing human good. That means that in the middle of teaching a Bible
class a pastor can get out of fellowship and then the rest of that Bible class
he's walking by the flesh and it has no eternal value but he's still teaching
truth from Scripture and God is still using it. I like to use examples that
shake people up. You can witness to someone out of selfish motives. You're not
walking according to the Spirit if you're doing that. We can read our Bible out
of fellowship. There are many Christians who read their Bible out of
fellowship. They don't know how to get back into fellowship but it's a work of
the flesh. It's good in that they still learn something and if they get in
fellowship, God the Holy Spirit can use some of that and transform it if they
apply it into Divine good, when they're walking by the Spirit. Human good is
not a bad thing in terms of relatively speaking. It has benefits for society,
for the family, for people and that's good but it's not the kind of good that
measures up to God's standard of righteousness so it has no eternal value.
The second thing I pointed out related to evil is that the first
occurrence of the word goes back to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which
indicates that now man would have an experiential awareness of both that which
is good and also, of sin. In the Old Testament, evil is a word that is used a
few times related to sin but the vast majority of its uses usually speak of
idolatry. Now idolatry isn't simply the worship of gods that are made out of
wood, stone, or some other sort of material. There are many sophisticated idols
of the mind. We worship money. We're greedy and the Apostle Paul says in
Colossians 3 that greed or covetousness is a form of idolatry. So there are
many different forms of idolatry and they're usually identified as evil.
Whenever we're operating on the sin nature, we're worshipping the self. We've
replaced God as the focal point of our life and replaced Him with self. That is
a form of idolatry.
Then the third point is that everything that proceeds from the sin
nature, whether it is human good or counterfeit righteousness or overt sin,
sins of the tongue, comes under the category of evil. That produces religion.
And then the passage I alluded to, 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 talks about the fact
that Satan himself transformed himself into an angel of light. He is the
greatest counterfeiter in all of history and he is trying to counterfeit God.
What makes Satan so devious is that he wants to produce good. When people are
producing sin and the works of the flesh in terms of overt sin that leads to
division and factions and violence and it tears apart society. It tears the
world apart.
Now one of the greatest testimonies of the fact that Satan can't do what
he wants to do is that he can't control human beings because when they operate
on their sin nature it leads to all forms of violence and criminality. That is
just the opposite of what Satan wants. He wants peace. There's no greater
advocate in history of peace than Satan. He just doesn't want peace on the
basis of God's plan. He wants peace on the basis of his plan and independence
from God. So we're to abhor what is evil, everything produced from the sin
nature and cling to that which is good. There's that word, AGATHOS, which means that which has intrinsic value.
So that takes us up to where we ended last time. Now in the next
section, Romans 12:10-13 there are mostly bullets related to standards for the
Christian life we lead, "Be devoted [kindly affectionate] to one another
in brotherly love; in honor giving preference to one another." This is
expanding on and giving a little more of a refinement to the command to
"love without hypocrisy". The last phrase further expands on
the idea of what it means to be kindly affectionate.
The next command is in Romans 12:11, "Not lagging behind in
diligence…" We are to be diligent. We are to be eager. We are to focus on
the object at hand which is living the spiritual life, "Fervent in spirit,
serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to
[continuing steadfast in] prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints,
practicing [given to] hospitality." So let's break this down. Beginning in
Romans 12:10, we're to be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly
love. As we'll see in a minute "kindly affectionate" and
"brotherly love" are different from the word AGAPE. They're based on the word PHILOS. PHILOS is the noun and PHILEO is the verb. This has to do with the more intimate
love. AGAPE is not as intimate as PHILOS
PHILOS is more of a family love, more of
an affectionate love so this is taking us to another level from what Jesus said
in John 13:34-35. If you recall the context there Jesus is talking to His
disciples the night before He went to the cross. They've already had the
institution of the Lord's Table with the Passover meal. He's kicked Judas out
of the room already which is a cleansing of the room from sin so that he's left
with the eleven disciples and they are all believers. He gives them a new
command. He says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one
another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."
Now in the Old Testament the command in the Mosaic Law is to love your
neighbor as yourself. So what's the standard for loving your neighbor? It's how
you love yourself. So the assumption of Scripture is that everyone loves
themselves. This gives the lie to the whole doctrine of poor self-image that's
dominated our whole culture. Because every sinner loves himself. That's the
focus of the sin nature. Your sin nature is in love with you. Whenever you feel
depressed it's because you're not living up the standard that's of your self
love and you've disappointed yourself. If you really hated yourself you'd get
up and say "I'm glad I'm a failure. Let's fail some more." So we need
to learn that we already love ourselves and we need to love others like we love
ourselves. That's the standard that God is saying here.
Now people like Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller and several
other false teachers and heretics who came along utilizing psycho-babble back
in the 20th century saying that before you can love others you first
have to learn to love yourself. They just turned Scripture upside down. They
said you need to have a good self-image. In fact, Robert Schuller was so
arrogant that he wrote a book called, "Self-Image: The New
Reformation". He sent a free copy of that book to every pastor in the
country. I think I still have mine. In his opening he said that the document of
substitutionary death and payment for sin was good for those backward people of
the time of the Reformation but we're much more advanced now. We know that God
isn't going to punish an innocent person for another's sins. In fact, he added,
sin isn't really the problem. The problem is we have a low self-image and Jesus
died so you could have a good self-image. That was his message. That was a message
that just reverberated throughout American culture back in the 80's and 90's.
There are all kinds of ramifications from that but that's not what God
was saying in the Old Testament. He said that everyone already loved themselves
so quit being so self-centered and learn how to love other people like you love
yourself. When Jesus came along he's going to ratchet the standard up just a
little bit. He said He didn't want us to love others like we love ourselves. He
wanted us to love others like He loved us. Totally different standard; a much
higher standard; almost an impossible standard apart from the Holy Spirit.
The fruit of the Spirit is what? Love. The first thing Paul mentions.
The fruit of the Spirit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness…"
It starts with love. So Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment to love
one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. He repeats
Himself here, several times. In John 13:35 He says, "By this all men will
know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." In fact
there are many who have argued, and they may be accurate, that the greatest
apologetic of the Christian life is the believer who demonstrates the love of
God in their life for all people. Because that can only happen as a result of
God the Holy Spirit. It's a supernatural fruit of the Spirit. That's how we
demonstrate the character of Christ in our lives. It's one of the greatest
evidences we can give of the Christian life. We are to love one another.
Again, Paul Jesus repeats it in John 15, "This is My commandment
that you love one another as I have loved you." And in John 15:17,
"This I command you, that you love one another." Now all through here
we have the verb AGAPAO. So this applies to people whether
they're responsive, not responsive, walking according to the Spirit, not
walking by the Spirit, doing what we want them to do, not doing what we want
them to do, and doing what we don't want them to do. This relates to that
principle we call impersonal love.
Jesus also said there is an ethical standard for love. It's not just
going out and saying I love you and there's such shallowness to the typical
Christian view of love. I've been in churches where you turn around and tell
the person next to you that you love them and then turn to the next one and
give them a hug. This is just so superficial. It just promotes a continuing
shallowness in the Christian life.
But Scripture says that there's an ethical standard. Notice what Jesus
says in John 14, "If you love Me keep my commandments." Love isn't
just an emotion. It is expressed through obedience. There's an ethical standard
there. In John 14:21 He says, "He who has My commandments and keeps them
is the one who loves Me." It's not the person who makes a show of it, not
the person who talks about it, not the person who has picked up the latest
Christian jargon talking about loving God. It's the person who quietly goes
about ordering their life according to the standards of Scripture. That is the
person who is showing that they truly love God. In John 14:23 we read, "If
anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will
come to him and make Our abode with him." I think this is more than just
the indwelling of the Trinity. This is talking about an increasing personal
relationship with the members of the Trinity for the believer who is walking in
obedience.
Then the flip side in John 14:24, "He who does not love Me does not
keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who
sent Me." John 14:15 is built off of the principle of the Old Testament.
This idea of relating love to obedience didn't just pop up in John 14. In
Exodus 20:6 we read, "But showing loving kindness to thousands, to those
who love Me and keep My commandments." That combination of loving God and
keeping His commandments is restated several times in the Mosaic Law in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Going on to the next chapter, in John 15 Jesus said if you keep My
commands you will abide in My love." Now he threw in a new word here. Did
you notice it? What's that new word? Earlier He said "if you love me
you'll keep my commandments." What's the new word here? You will
"abide" in my love. Abide is first introduced at the beginning of
John 15 when Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches. If you
abide in me, you will bear much fruit." Abiding is a key word meaning
fellowship, meaning enjoying the fellowship we have with Christ. If we abide,
which means stay in fellowship, then we abide in Christ's love. That is a
richness of our relationship, our personal relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ.
In John 15:12, He says, "This is My commandment, that you love one
another, just as I have loved you." The command to love one another isn't
divorced from the mandate to keep His commandments or the fellowship. They go
together. In John 15:13 He then said, "Greater love has no one than this,
that one lay down his life for his friends." So that indicates that there
is a sacrificial element to it. By sacrificial element what we simply mean is
that rather than just do what we want to do out of self-absorption we want to
do what's best for someone else. That's the idea in using the term sacrificial.
Then in 1 John 4:20-21, "If someone says, "I love God,"
and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother
whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we
have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also."
Remember that 1 John is a commentary, as it were, by the Apostle John probably
some 50 years after He heard the Upper Room discourse in about 33 A.D., the night before Jesus goes to the Cross and then
some 50 to 60 years later the Apostle John writes the 1st epistle of
1 John which is basically a commentary or an expansion on what Jesus had taught
them. You can't really understand 1 John unless you've gone through the Upper
Room discourse and understood that.
So John says here that if someone says he loves God but hates his
brother he's not going to be what is called a "Philadelphian",
someone who loves his brother here in Romans 12. If you hate your brother you
are a liar because he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he
love God whom we he not seen? Loving God is related to obedience to God so if
you're being disobedient and hating your brother then you don't have a
relationship with God, you're out of fellowship. By relationship I mean
fellowship, not salvation.
So we go back to Romans 12:10, "{Be} devoted [kindly affectionate]
to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in
honor." Now as I got into this it was difficult to deal with this in terms
of the Greek. It appears in the English that there's a command. Every version
translates this as a command but you'll notice that the word translated
"kindly affectionate" is PHILOSTORGOS. The last part refers to a stork. A mother stork has a great motherly
affection for their young and so STORGEO was a word
used to describe motherly love in Greek. Now this is a compound noun based on
that, meaning devoted to someone, loving them, having a tender affection,
particularly a family affection. So that's the first word but notice that this
word is an adjective. It's not a verb. It's not an imperative. The next word is
ALLELONE, one another, which is not a verb,
and then you have PHILOS for brotherly love. Where do you
find a verb in that?
So last week I was scratching around, digging around, reading footnotes
and all these heavy commentaries trying to find someone who'd give me a clue as
to why everyone is translating this as a verb and I found a reference to a book
that I went and grabbed out of my books in print. There's still a few books you
need to have in print because they're not electronic yet and I found in a
footnote [there's some great stuff buried in footnotes] which said there was an
idiomatic use of the adjective in Greek that had an imperatival value. See you
can express an imperative as we do in this section with a participle but a
participle is a verbal adjective so apparently in the use of language they
slipped over from using a participal in an adjectival sense to just using an
adjective as an imperative. This is one of the few place in the New Testament
where we have this kind of an idiom but it's expressing this as a command that
we are to be devoted like a family-member, a loving family member.
I always have to qualify this because some people come out of really
messed up families. This is a really good family where the family members
really care and love each other and so we are to have that kind of care and
concern for other believers. Even when they're not worth it. It's really hard
to love the unlovely and there are unlovely people in every congregation. But
there's not an asterisk that says you need to love them afar. That's not in any
textual variant I've found. I haven't found anything in the margin. It's not
qualified here. It says to be kindly affectionate or devoted in love to one another.
It's simply there and it doesn't say except for that one person you don't
really like, that one person who just fell off the watermelon truck yesterday.
It doesn't have that. There's no exception. There's no qualification. We are to
love everybody in the body of Christ the same way because our love isn't based
on who they are. It's not based on who we are. It's based on the character of
God that doesn't change. Sometimes we have to do it by the numbers and say,
"Okay, I really don't like this person. There's something about them that
just really grates on me but God loves them with an infinite stable unchanging
love so I'm just going to focus on following God's pattern and just trip along
on that."
So we're to be devoted to one another in terms of family love to one
another with brotherly love, from PHILASTORGOS to PHILADELPHIA and then it's explained further in
the last phrase, "in honor giving preference to one another." This is
the opposite of self-absorption. You can't do this when you're operating on the
sin nature. The sin nature is saying it's all about me and this command is
saying it's all about the other person no matter how much you dislike them.
We're to give preference to one another. The verb here is PROEGEOMAI which
means to go before to give them preference, to elevate them, and to make them
the focus of attention and not put that focus of attention on yourself.
Paul goes on in Romans 12:11 saying, "Not lagging behind in
diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." There are three different
principles here. Again he uses some different grammatical constructions. I
point this out because whenever you go outside the norm in a grammatical
construction it really strikes the reader in a different way and it catches
their attention. In the ancient world they used these kinds of things to
emphasize, to highlight, to boldface. They didn't have the ability to do those
things so they did it with grammar.
The word for "not lagging" is the Greek word OKNEROS meaning that you shouldn't be hesitant; you shouldn't
lag behind; you shouldn't be timid; you should be aggressive; you should be
outgoing in other words in your diligence. You should make it a point to be
diligent. The word for diligent here is SPOUDE. The verb is SPOUDAZO. This is the word translated in the KJV as "study to show yourself approved unto
God." That word translated study really doesn't mean study. It means to be
diligent in the NASB, the NIV, and the other modern translations. But the context
in talking to Timothy was that he should be diligent in a particular area,
which is his study of the Word so it's appropriately translated study but the
verb form of this noun means to be diligent, to have a zealous pursuit of
something, to exert yourself 150% in a certain direction. So we are not to be
hesitant or timid in our diligence. We're to have a passion about our spiritual
life and a passion about the Word of God. We should be excited about it,
"not lagging or not hesitant or not timid in our diligence".
Then the next phrase says, "Fervent in the Spirit." Now this
does not mean we're to be jumping pews and having some sort of Charismatic
experience. It's talking about having a passion for our spiritual life. The
word "fervent" is ZEO a word that is used literally to
mean bringing something to a boil and figuratively it has the idea of being
ardent, aggressive or passionate about something. Then it's followed by the
phrase EN PNEUMATE, a phrase Paul used many, many
times. Here in this passage, at least in the NKJ version the spirit is translated with a lower case
"s". There is a lot of debate in this passage whether this really
isn't the Holy Spirit but is the human spirit, that you should be passionate in
your human spirit about the Word. I tend to favor the fact that since Paul uses
the phrase in numerous places to describe doing something by means of the
Spirit, in dependence upon God the Holy Spirit, being filled by the Spirit,
walking by the Spirit, and a number of other passages that what he's talking
about here is not just getting all worked up and being just passionate about
something but it is a passion that comes from walking by the Spirit. It's again
something produced in us through God the Holy Spirit. We have a passion, a
desire to live the Christian life serving the Lord.
I didn't put the Greek word up for serving. It means in a broad sense of
the term walking in obedience to the Lord, serving Him, and doing what it says
to do in terms of the mandates for the Christian life. So notice that the
"fervent" here is a present active participle. It's not an adjective
used like an imperative here. It's a participle used like an imperative. That's
what we're going to see in the next verse. You have three participles, all
present active participles, rejoicing, being patient, and continuing
steadfastly. So the first one is "rejoice in hope". Hope is a
confident expectation of something. Every time you see the word hope you need
to think of something in the future, because of a future reality we can have a
present optimistic attitude that no matter how negative the circumstances are
around us, no matter how difficult things may appear, because we have an
expectation of knowing God has a plan for our life and God is taking us through
trials and tests and difficulties to bring us to spiritual maturity we can
rejoice now because of that future hope.
James 1: 2-4 says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you
encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces
endurance. And let endurance have {its} perfect result, so that you may be
perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." It's not the normal human
reaction to be joyful over difficulties. The normal human reaction is anger or
fear or anxiety but it's not joy. For Christians, we're not joyful because
we're masochistic and we just want to revel in the negative. We're joyful
because we know that God has a plan as James is pointing out. The testing of
our faith is not necessarily fun or enjoyable but because we understand that
this is how we grow and this is how the Lord has designed us to mature we can
have a hope and joy now because we understand what the game plan is.
So that connects it to the next phrase in Romans 12:12 which is
"persevering [being patient] in tribulation". Now the word here for
patient is a word that is familiar to those who have gone through the James
study, HUPOMENO and its noun HUPOMENE relate to endurance, to hang in there. HUPO is the prefix and MENO is the verb which means to abide or remain so it
means to remain under, to stay in the circumstances. It doesn't mean to think
that when things get tough you can bail out and go somewhere else. Sometimes
the greatest growth that occurs in our Christian life is when we're going through
really intense suffering, when we're going through intense difficulty and it
just seems like things are hitting us left and right, one thing after another,
and there's no letup and we're just ready to scream and yet that's when we're
going through an intensified period of spiritual growth if we take advantage of
it and walk by the Spirit and we keep on target so that's what HUPOMENO refers to.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has overtaken you but such
as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted
beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of
escape also, so that you will be able to endure it." To escape it doesn't
mean to avoid it but to escape the aversive consequences of the adversity so
that we may handle it. Often you hear this little truism that God wouldn't let
you go through it unless you could handle it. There's a certain amount of truth
to that but too often I hear people saying that to people who haven't a clue
and probably aren't even believers. If you're a member of God's royal family
God does have a plan for you and He is taking you through things and if he's
taking you through it He knows you have the resources. Why? Because you have
the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit; you have the filling of the Holy Spirit;
you have the Word of God, and you should have been taught at least the
rudimentary principles of the faith-rest drill of trusting in God,
claiming promises, to get through those difficult times. That's how we can bear
it as believers.
Then the last phrase is being "devoted [continuing steadfastly] in
prayer". That's PROSKARTEREO which means to persevere. It's a synonym for HUPOMENO but it means to continuously do something and that
you're not going to get distracted from it. You're not going to get thrown off
balance and off-target. It's the word used in Colossians 4:2 when Paul says to
continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving. That's PROSKARTEREO. It means to hang in there, to be steadfast in
prayer, day in and day out.
How many times have you had this experience? I'd had it and I think
every Christian has when you say, "Okay I've got to set up a specific time
every day where I'm going to pray and I'm going to read my Bible."? The
next morning something happens. The next morning something happens. It's just
anything to knock you off course. But the point is that we need to set up a
regular disciplined schedule in our lives for prayer and to read the Word of
God. That performs a personal foundation for us in our walk with God.
Christians need to read the Word. Every now and then someone asks me a
question as I was asked in the Bible Study Methods class recently, "What
is the role of personal Bible study in the life of the believer with reference
to the pastor-teacher?" There are some people who get the idea that they
shouldn't read their Bible. I've heard little timid Christians who think,
"Oh if I read my Bible. I'll get confused." Let me tell you, if you
don't read your Bible you will get confused even here on Tuesday night,
Thursday night, and Sunday morning because you don't have a frame of reference.
Every believer needs to read their Bible.
Now you're going to come across verses and say, "Now that really
doesn't sound like what I've been taught." I run across verses like that
and there's all kind of issues related to hermeneutics and related to language
and related to the traditional way in which some verses have been translated.
You just put a question mark there and move on. You don't let it cause you to
stumble. We all grow at different rates and we learn and resolve problems at
different times. I tell you, with all the years I've studied and if I live to
be a hundred with a clear mind I will have a list 200 yards long with questions
about the Bible to take to the Lord. We're going to be discussing some of these
things for a long time.
Some passages are just difficult to understand. That's true for
everybody. We need to be knowledgeable. We need to know the stories of the
Bible. They need to be familiar. As you read through them, you'll underline
passages that come across and see that it's a great promise that you need to
remember. You ought to index things. If you see a great little verse related to
the angelic conflict, make a note in the margin or top of the page and write a
word. If it's about the omniscience of God, write omniscience in the margin so
that the next time you wonder where you read a great passage you can thumb your
way through and find the note. So you write down notes, you underline passages,
you're reminded of promises and you memorize that. Let me see, "Jesus
wept. Maybe I can remember that tomorrow." Or how about "pray without
ceasing"? That's really the shortest verse in the Bible because it's only
two words in the Greek. So we need to continue in prayer, focus on these basic
things, pray, read your Bible every day. If you read five chapters a day, which
takes about eight minutes, some are longer, some are shorter, and you'll read
through the whole Bible in a year. It doesn't take long. Anyone can do it. You
do that through three or four years and you're going to have a pretty good
understanding of the flow of Scripture. You'll be surprised at what you know.
All of a sudden things that are said on Sunday morning, or Tuesday or Thursday
night, will make little light bulbs go off all the time as you remember. It'll
start making sense.
We need knowledgeable congregations so you need to pray and you need to
read your Bible every day. In Romans 12:13, Paul says, "Contributing
[distributing] to the needs of the saints." It's the verb KOINONEO which means to have fellowship or to share or take
part in something so you should share with the needs of the saints. This also
relates to love being without hypocrisy and being kindly affectionate as you
help one another, those who are having difficulties. Someone's having trouble
with the job. It's not necessarily financial. Someone has trouble finding a
babysitter. Someone is a young mother and they really don't know what to do
with a kid. You can help them out. There are a lot of ways in which we can
share in the needs of the saints.
Then it says, "Practicing [given to] hospitality." The
pastor's conference is a great time for this. There are a couple of pastors I know
that come to the conference that are great individuals but they work jobs that
barely take care of their families and they come to a conference which is not
inexpensive, which is one reason we don't charge. Someone has to pay. There are
those that God has provided for who help with donations and that supplies the
needs but some can't afford three nights at a hotel room which costs $300.00
plus their airfare and whatever. It's a great opportunity for folks to open up
their homes and to provide a place for them to stay.
The word for given here is DIOKO. Now DIOKO has two meanings. Its core meaning is to pursue
something rigorously but when you do it in a positive sense that's helping, and
when you do it in a negative sense it's persecuting. The word can go either
way. In fact, it's translated in Romans 12:14 as persecute. Here it's positive.
It's not persecuting people when you open your home to be hospitable. That's
not what it says. You're pursuing hospitality. You're looking for opportunity
to help out those who are in need. They're strangers.
The word for hospitality is PHILOXENIA. That's PHILOS the noun for love and XENIA like xenophobia, someone who is fearful of a stranger
or of someone of a different race, like the French are. I'm not making a nasty
comment about the French. I just always thought it was interesting that in
English we refer to foreigners as aliens. In French, they're strangers. I
always thought that said a lot about the French mind-set. If you're not French
you're a stranger. If you're English, if you're not English, you're an alien.
So we should be given to hospitality, ready to open up our homes to others.
Then in Romans 12:14 Paul sums it up, "Bless those who persecute
you; bless and do not curse." Now this reminds us of what we covered just
a couple of weeks ago in our passage on Sunday morning in Matthew 5. See this
thread runs all the way through Scripture. Loving one another and loving others
who are not believers doesn't necessarily refer to those who are being nice to
you. We're to bless those who curse you.
Now the word here for bless is the word EULOGEO. This is where we get our English word eulogy. It
means to say something nice. It's not the word MAKARIOS which is in Matthew 5 and means to be happy. It's
translated blessed are those who are persecuted. Here it means to say something
genuinely nice. Remember love is without hypocrisy. It means it doesn't have a
hidden agenda. Here it's saying something good and meaning it to those who
persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Say something positive to them and do
not speak ill of them. So we're to speak well of those who persecute us.
Just to remind you of Matthew 5:43 and following. "You've heard it
said that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I [Jesus] say
to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate
you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." So Paul
is saying the exact same thing that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Why?
That you may be sons of your Father in Heaven. A mature son. You have to learn
how to have impersonal love for all mankind, even those who hate you and
persecute you if you're going to reach spiritual maturity and "be sons of
your Father in Heaven."
Matthew 5:47, "For if you love those who love you, what reward is
it?" How difficult it is to love people who love you, who treat you nice,
who take care of you? But to love someone who spitefully uses you and ridicules
you. Now that's where it's difficult. We'll stop at Romans 12:14 tonight and
we'll come back with verse 15 and probably be able to finish the rest of this.