Be Devoted

At our old house in Suffolk, we used to watch something wonderful happen.

Each year, during the spring, two or three pairs of Canadian geese would fly in from the lake and hobble around the backyard, eating whatever Canadian geese eat.

As the weeks progressed, we’d see these pairs waddling around the yard. It was fascinating to watch, because two or three of the geese would stand motionless and watching in various directions, as their mates picked among the blades of grass.

After a period of time, the ones that had been eating would stand and start watching, while the others grazed. They would alternate this way until something startled them or until one of the watchers saw something that worried them, and then they’d all waddle off back to the lake or fly away.

And after a few weeks of this, suddenly, instead of four or six geese, there would be 10 or 12 or 14, including a bunch of little goslings.

And they’d all wander around the backyard, eating bugs or grass or whatever. But there would always be two or three adult geese stationed around the perimeter, watching while the rest ate. And soon enough, like they had done all along, the adult geese would trade roles.

Everybody had a chance to eat. And everybody had the responsibility to watch. They watched out for one another. They shared their meals with one another.

And, aside from the squawking we heard periodically at night, when the snapping turtles would catch one of the goslings from below the lake’s surface, everybody stayed safe, and everybody thrived. I can attest to that from the amount of goose poop we had in our backyard during those years.

These geese were devoted to one another. Certainly the mother and father geese were devoted to their own goslings. But what was incredible to watch was how devoted the community of geese were to one another, how committed they were to one another, even outside of their own family groups.

This week, as we look at the fourth of the Apostle Paul 13 imperatives for the church from Romans, chapter 12, I want you to keep that image in mind of the Canadian geese looking out for one another in our backyard.

Let’s read the passage together this morning:

Romans 12:9–13 NASB95

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11 not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, 13 contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

You may recall that we said the first two of Paul’s imperatives of commands for Christians and the church are sort of umbrella commands. They set the tone for the interactions between Christians and the world — and more particularly, among individual Christians.

“Let love be without hypocrisy” and “abhor what is evil.”

In reality, these two commands are two sides of a coin. Genuine, self-sacrificing and choosing love — agape love — seeks the best for the object of that love, regardless of whether it is returned and separate from any emotional component.

God showed this love when He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us as a man and to give Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus showed this love when He willingly and obediently went to the cross to bear our sins and their just punishment so that those who believe in Him could have eternal life.

He died for your sins and mine. He died for the sins of those who unjustly condemned Him to the cross. He died for the sins of those who tortured Him in the hours before He was marched to the top of Mt. Calvary. He died for the sins of those who drove the nails into his hands and feet.

As Paul puts it in verse 8 of chapter 5:

Romans 5:8 NASB95

8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

This was the fullest expression of agape love. This was the love of God poured out upon us and offering us salvation, WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS. While we were still rebels against Him. While we were His enemies.

Jesus did this for us, because God hates sin. He abhors it. And God will not allow sin to go unpunished.

But, because of Jesus’ agape love for the world, He gave Himself as a substitute for us at the cross, bearing the punishment that we deserve for our rebellion.

But He also did this because He loves us. Because God loves us. Because God wants the best for us, even when we have rejected Him, even when we have rebelled against Him.

What He wants for you and for me is for us to be reconciled to Him, for us to be saved from the just punishment we deserve for our rebellion against Him by faith in the sacrificial death and supernatural resurrection of His Son, Jesus.

What He wants is for us to be saved and then to be conformed to the image of Jesus — to become new creatures whose character is being changed into that of Jesus.

And evil things are in direct opposition to the character of the sinless and perfectly obedient Christ.

So, if we who follow Christ are going to have this kind of agape love for others, then we must also hate the things that turn them away from Jesus. Like I said, two sides of a coin.

And the rest of the 13 imperatives in this passage should be viewed through the lens of the first two. All these other commands flow out of the command to exhibit genuine love.

Last week, we talked about clinging to what is good as an example of the replacement principle. If we abhor what is evil, especially in our own lives, then we must turn away from it.

But if we’re going to be successful at turning away from evil, we have to replace the evil with good things. And we have to cling to them as if we’re welded to them.

So, now we come to this week’s imperative: “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.”

You may recall that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there are several words for “love” in the Greek language.

Agape is one of those words. It’s the highest form of love, and the word was almost unused outside of Christian writing in ancient Greek.

That’s because this kind of love was culturally foreign at that time. Indeed, it still is, for the most part.

For the most part, people can’t conceive of a love that is set apart from emotion; one that gives of itself without expecting something in return; one that chooses to love, regardless of the response it gets.

What the Greeks understood — and what most of the world understands now — is the affection family members have for one another (storgos) and the love of brothers (philadelphia).

I realize that this isn’t true of all families, but I think we would all agree that the conventional expectation is that family members will have affection for one another, that brothers and sisters will love one another.

“Blood is thicker than water.” That proverb goes back to 12th-century Germany. It means that family bonds are closer and deeper than those of other relationships. But the idea behind the proverb is far more ancient than that. Family relationships have always been the closest.

But what Paul does here in verse 10 of chapter 12 is to tell us that things are different for those who have followed Jesus in faith. We who have been saved by faith in Jesus have been adopted into the family of God.

There’s something special going on when we Christians refer to one another as “brother” or “sister.”

When we use those terms for one another, we are declaring that we have a new family. We have a new Father, God Himself. And we have new brothers and sisters — those who likewise have placed their faith in Jesus.

And Paul suggests these family ties in two ways in the first part of verse 10. He uses versions of the two Greek words for love — storge and philadelphia — that deal with family relationships.

Philadelphia, which is a derivative of the Greek word, philos, refers to the love of a brother or sister.

And the word that’s translated here as “be devoted to” is a compound of both philos and storge, which refers to natural or instinctual affection, such as that between a parent and child.

Some translations render it as “be kindly affectioned toward.” We might well think of it as cherishing.

So, we can render Paul’s command here like this: Love your brothers and sisters in Christ as if they were your brothers and sisters by blood.

Indeed, as we recognize that we who have followed Jesus in faith are adopted brothers and sisters in the family of God only because of the blood that Jesus shed at the cross, we can see how apt the metaphor Paul uses here really is.

And when we see how this clause is ordered in the Greek, Paul’s command to us takes even more force: In brotherly love, be TO ONE ANOTHER devoted.

In brotherly love, be TO ONE ANOTHER devoted.

Now, this is a huge departure from what the world expects. The world tells us that blood is thicker than water. But what Paul tells us is that our thickest relationships as followers of Christ should be among one another.

And what he says here wasn’t some new revelation. Here’s what Jesus said about it:

Luke 14:26 NASB95

26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Now, this has always been a hard verse for folks to understand. And as we talked about during our Zoom Bible study on Wednesday, part of the problem with our understanding is that we don’t really get what Jesus meant by “hate.”

I don’t have time today to go through everything we discussed on Wednesday, but let me give you the thumbnail picture.

All the way back to the Old Testament, when the Bible talks about God hating something, what it means is that He rejects it.

You see, God isn’t controlled by His emotions, as we are. And so, He can choose to love us — He can demonstrate agape love for us — even when we do nothing to deserve that love, even when we reject Him and His love.

That’s good news for us, because if our salvation depended on us loving God, none of us ever could have been saved.

The Apostle John puts it this way:

1 John 4:19 NASB95

19 We love, because He first loved us.

We only love God, because He first loved us. We CAN only love God, because He first loved us. He CHOSE to love us so that we can love Him.

So, looking at it from the other angle, when the Bible says God hates something, it’s the opposite of His loving it. Instead of choosing it, He rejects it.

When the Bible says God hates evil, I would suggest that there’s no more emotion involved in His rejection than there is in His choosing.

So, looking back at what Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke, substitute that word, “reject” where you see the word “love.”

If anyone comes to Me and does not reject His own father and mother and wife and children, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

In the context of that passage, Jesus was speaking to large crowds that were following Him, and He had just left a meal with a Pharisee, where He told a parable about a man who had invited many people to dinner.

When the time came to eat, the man sent out his servant to gather the honored guests. But they all came up with excuses for why they could not attend.

So the man sent his servant back out to invite all of the outcasts of that place to come and take the places of those who had given excuses.

And as Jesus spoke to the crowd that had gathered following his meal with the Pharisee, He told them they needed to count the cost of following Him.

He said they needed to be ready to give up everything to follow Him. He said they needed to cherish their relationship with Him more than they cherished anything else, including family relationships.

And so, looking back at our passage in Romans, what we see Paul saying is really just an extension of what Jesus had already taught.

For the Roman church — and for us — the deepest love we should have, outside of our love for Jesus, should be our love for one another.

Now, I recognize that this is a hard thing for us to understand. I recognize that this goes against our natural tendencies. I recognize that this kind of thing is foreign to us.

But we who have followed Jesus in faith have become part of a kingdom that is not of this world. We have become part of a family that is eternal. We have been called to a faith that ISN’T natural. We have been called to a love that is DIVINE.

Warren Wiersbe put it this way: “Christian fellowship is much more than a pat on the back and a handshake. It means sharing the burdens and the blessings of others so that we all grow together and glorify the Lord.” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 556.]

Outside of the New Testament, the word philadelphia appears in Greek literature ONLY in descriptions of love between flesh-and-blood siblings. What Paul calls us to here is something completely new and different in the world.

Indeed, it’s so different from what the world expects that Christians who have showed this kind of love throughout history have been mocked, persecuted, and even killed.

A philosopher from Syria wrote about this kind of love, shown by Christians to a man who had called himself a brother and had been imprisoned around 165 A.D.

“They are always incredibly quick off the mark, when one of them gets into trouble like this—in fact they ignore their own interests completely. Why, they actually sent him large sums of money by way of compensation for his imprisonment, so that he made a considerable profit out of them! For the poor souls have persuaded themselves that they are immortal and will live for ever. As a result, they think nothing of death, and most of them are perfectly willing to sacrifice themselves. Besides, their first law-giver [that is, Jesus] has convinced them that once they stop believing in Greek gods, and start worshipping that crucified sage of theirs, and living according to his laws, they are all each other’s brothers and sisters. So, taking this information on trust, without any guarantee of its truth, they think nothing else matters, and believe in common ownership—which means that any unscrupulous adventurer who comes along can soon make a fortune out of them, for the silly creatures are very easily taken in.” [Michael A. G. Haykin, “Love of the Brethren in First John and Church History,” ed. Joel R. Beeke, Puritan Reformed Journal Volume 1 1, no. 2 (2009): 39, quoting from The Passing of Peregrinus, trans. Paul Turner, in Lucian: Satirical Sketches (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1961), 11–13.]

Are we foolish when we welcome strangers into our midst? Are we foolish when we give to others without checking them out?

Several years ago, when my family and I were members of a church with an overcomers ministry, one of the young ladies in that program was hit by a car and had a long recovery ahead as she healed from her injuries.

She lost her apartment, and she needed help anyway, and we took her in and gave her a place to stay and treated her as family for several weeks as she healed.

When she got better, she left our house, left the church, and — from what we heard — went back to her addiction. Were we foolish to help her?

Maybe so. But the Bible tells me this:

1 Corinthians 1:25 NASB95

25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

And then....

1 Corinthians 1:27 NASB95

27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong,

Here’s the thing. The world may mock us for this love we are called to show for one another. The world may even persecute us for it one day.

But Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John that this love, this special devotion that we have for one another is also powerful.

John 13:34–35 NASB95

34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

That philosopher from Syria may have mocked those Greek Christians for their love of a brother, but one thing was clear to him: They were followers of Jesus. They were disciples of Jesus.

THIS is how we testify to the world about who we follow. THIS is how we declare that we are disciples of Jesus, by loving others, and by cherishing one another.

By devoting ourselves to one another in brotherly love. By making the eternal relationships among one another the deepest and closest ones we have.

And in a world where so much that is called “love” is superficial, where “love” is so often transactional and self-serving, where it is so often a pretense for self-gratification, THIS REAL love is desperately needed.

This real love is what points people to Jesus, to the Savior whose real love for us caused Him to choose to love us all the way to the cross, to death itself, so that we might have life and LOVE in Him.

THIS is the love this church must be known for. It’s a hard commitment to make, but the blessings from it are immeasurable. Just as those Canadian geese thrived in their devotion to the community, we will thrive in our devotion to one another.

And if this kind of love sounds like something you want in your life — if you have never experienced this kind of perfect love, come down here this morning, and let me tell you about the one who loves you this perfectly.

Come and let me tell you about your Savior, who loves you and who wants to bring you into His family of love and devotion.