Sermon Tone Analysis

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:

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:

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:

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:

We only love God, because He first loved us.