Romans 12:9

Loathe Evil and Cling to Good

by James Lincoln on October 22, 2006

 

Try to imagine a world without any universal or objective good or evil. Try to imagine what it would be like to live where things like injustice, dishonesty, rape, murder, cheating, stealing and infidelity were matters of indifference or preference decided only by each person's individual personal feelings. When Israel fell into moral and religious chaos the prophet described the culture this way: "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." Judges 21:25

Some are saying today that there isn't such a thing as a universal or objective moral standard. But I have a question. If there is no universal standard that stands outside the individual what standard do offended spouses and partners on Jerry Springer or soap operas appeal to for their moral outrage? Why is anyone upset? If there is no objective moral good or evil what is the basis for the moral outrage of those who demonstrate against the World Trade Organization, genocide in Africa or the crooks at Enron? If all morality is only one's personal preference why is one person's preference more right than another's? Why can't everyone do what Paul McCartney sang about and "Let it be?"

Did I have the right to get upset when the two men my neighbor hired to clean up his leaves blew them with the leaf blower into my yard? Look, we function on the basis of universal objective moral realties a thousand times a day without even thinking about it. The man who cuts in line, runs a red light, tailgates, throws trash and garbage along the road.¹ As much as the culture attempts to say things like, "Don't impose your values on others...that's exactly what everyone does much of the time. We have been created in God's image and through His common grace God has given all of us a sense of universal and objective good and evil. And by the way, this is a precious gift. The attempt to deny this will be the beginning of personal and cultural ruin. The prophets grieved over people like this by saying that they didn't know, "their right hand from their left." That was code for saying that they didn't know universal and objective good from evil. Later the prophets charged even greater culpability saying, "Woe to those who call good evil and evil good." (Isa.5:20)

Now, in Romans 12:9, Paul begins to talk about love. Last Sunday we noticed two things about love. First, he used the word agape to describe the Christian love. Agape love is present when the safety, satisfaction, security and well being of another is more important to you than your own. Before you say to someone that you love them, you want to ask, "Am I willing to make their well being, safety, security more important than my own?" If not, then you aren't using this word the way the early Christians used it.

Second, God calls us to love each other without hypocrisy. This word came out of the theater and was the term used for the masks that actors wore. It speaks of cloaking something or giving appearances. Jesus said that hypocrisy is present when we seek to have others to think of us as better than we actually are. He said, "You hypocrites! you worship Me with your lips but your hearts are far from Me." Or "You hypocrites! you clean the outside of the cup but neglect the inside". Hypocrisy is the attempt to have others think more highly of you than reality calls for. And we all do this. Jesus also taught that we are being hypocritical when we seek to hide from our own sins by pointing out the sins of others. The ruler of the synagogue was angry with the woman whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath. He pointed out that she had broken the Sabbath and told her to come back another day for healing. Now, he wasn't seeking to APPEAR better than others. What he was doing was using his zeal for the law to hide his own enormous lack of zeal of compassion for people. This woman had been bent over for eighteen years. He had no compassion for this woman that Jesus loved and healed. Jesus reveals that we are capable of hiding our own sins or missing the log in our own eye by being consumed by the speck in the eye of another. Hypocrisy is thinking too highly about yourself (cf. v.3) by cloaking reality so that you can either appear to be better than you are or in hypocrisy we can deflect our own sins by spending most our time pointing out the flaws and sins of others.

Both of these will cause our love to run cold because hypocrisy is a preoccupation with self. Love happens when the satisfaction and well being of another is more important to you than your own. But if your life orbits around seeking your own satisfaction and well being, making yourself look better than you really are and pointing out the sins of others there won't be any energy left over for loving others. You will simply be too occupied with yourself.

So, love is without hypocrisy when it puts Christ and the well being of others at the center. It happens when you dip the cup of your soul deep into God's love and mercy and drink yourself full of His tender mercies. It happens when you taste and see that the Lord is good to you in Christ that you come away from that banquet table so full and so satisfied in Christ that you become self-forgetful (not self-condemning) but self-forgetful. Christ's love for you is so sweet to the taste, His grace is so uplifting, His promises are so stabilizing, His word and wisdom are so encouraging and wondrous, His forgiveness is so complete and eternal, His mercies are so new every morning, His gifts are so extravagant, His destiny and inheritance for us are so beyond imagination and good and glorious that you begin to be so consumed by the riches of His grace, beauty and wisdom you discover that you can actually begin to love someone else as Christ loved you! Hypocrisy puts self at the center. Agape love puts Jesus and the well being of others at the center.

Today let's look at another characteristic of agape love. It's something you rarely if ever hear spoken about love today. He says, "Abhor what is evil and cling to what it good..." Right off the bat he tells us that agape love is about a commitment to an objective and uncompromising universal moral standard. Now, this is not the way we usually think about love. We often think about love as being primarily an emotional dynamic. It is that and I'll come back to this.

But notice that Paul begins by defining love in objective moral terms. He says,

"Here's what love is: Abhor evil and cling to what is good."

Now I can imagine why he does this. When we associate love with how we feel about someone, our love for them can easily become vulnerable to our ever changing feelings. God's universal and objective moral standard of love liberates you from the vulnerabilities of every changing feelings, circumstances and expectations. Paul wants us to be free here to really love others. He doesn't want us in bondage to our feelings and circumstances which can be so ephemeral and mercurial.

A number of years ago someone close to me had an affair. He was married with several children and his new attraction was much younger and also married. But they had lost 'that loving feeling' with their spouses. Both were professing Christians. I was asked to be involved. His new girl friend told me that she was certain this affair had to be God's will for them because neither of them had ever felt such a deep and spiritual love for their spouses as they did for each other. She said that even though they were both married the reality of true love was in this new relationship. She said, "Jim, you just can't believe how much real love there is between us. It's unbelievable and amazing neither one of us has ever felt this way with our spouses or anyone else." She said, "This is without question a Divine love. To stay with our mates would be hypocritical. " Ah...can you see what Paul is getting at. People think,..."If I've lost that loving feeling... then my love for my mate is unreal and to avoid hypocrisy I need to abandon my covenant with my wife so that I can be free of hypocrisy." Paul says that your love is hypocritical when you don't hate evil and don't do good to your spouse. This sort of rationalization is more common today because we've defined love primarily as an emotion.

I've counseled dozens of believers who abandoned their commitments to pray, read their Bibles, attend their church because they didn't feel like it any more and they justified their actions by saying that they didn't want to be hypocritical. Some think, "To do something that at the moment I don't want to do is hypocritical." Beloved, this is so foolishness.

Love is constantly about doing things that at the moment you don't feel like doing. That's not hypocrisy! That's love. That's Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane saying, (at an emotional level), "I don't want to become sin and be cut off from the love of the Father. I don't want to endure the pain and suffering of what is before me; however, not my will but Thine be done." His love triumphed over his momentary feelings. He placed the well being of others above His own. He loved us! Was Jesus a hypocrite for doing something he didn't feel like doing? Of course not! He was liberated from the vulnerable nature of his feelings to actually love us. His love abhorred evil and clung to what was good. He obeyed the Father and the covenant He made with the Father on our behalf. He was free to love us by doing good. Most of you do a countless number of things all the time that you don't want to do at the moment. And the reason you do them is because you want something even more that what you want at the moment. You want to be like Jesus and you want to love as He loved others. So, you suck it up and you do the right thing and ask for God to remind you that there is no greater joy than to obey God and enjoy Him.

Love isn't authentic when it leads a person to do something evil or to avoid doing the right. My counsel to the couple I mentioned earlier wasn't difficult to discern. Without any contradiction I could say, "You must know that what you are doing isn't love nor is it God's or a divine love. I can say that with certainty because you are encouraging each other to do bad things to your spouses. Also, it's not love for God because Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commandments. So, whatever it is that you call this, please don't call it love." I think it probably did feel good to escape a difficult and challenging marriage. Endurance and nobility are hard things. My guess is that it felt good to have someone adore you who didn't really know you. I imagine the endorphins and adrenaline that accompanies disobedience and rebellion added to the excitement. Just so you know...that adoration and "divine" love lasted about a year.

Love always does what is good and avoids evil; it seeks the good of another person. In 1 John 5:2. John writes, "By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments." How do you know that you love others? By loving God and keeping his commandments.

In the next chapter Paul writes that authentic love is the fulfillment of the law.'

Rom 13:8-10

"Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9 For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

You love others when you are fulfilling these commandments. In fact, Jesus summarized the two halves of the Decalogue by saying, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind and strength and then love your neighbor as yourself." The first half tells us what love for God looks like and the second tells us what love for others looks like. So, beloved, authentic love is about a commitment to do good to others not evil.

Abhor...and Cling...

One last thing we need to see here in verse nine. Notice what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say, "Know the difference between good and evil. He doesn't say, "Point out the good and evil in others." Or, "Avoid evil, choose good and don't choose evil." He doesn't say, "Discuss, debate, sermonize and write papers on good and evil (although he has done just that). All of these things are implied, They can be good things and we need them. But what does he say? He says,

"Abhor evil and cling to good." Love is not merely a matter of choosing and doing what the mind knows is good for others. Love is also a matter of the heart including our emotions being fully persuaded, engaged and with the deepest love and hate possible in the pursuit of another's well being. Paul is calling us to get engaged emotionally to the fullest extent in this love.

There is nothing stoic about Christian love. Agape love is a matter of the deepest affections of the heart. Notice Paul's verbs: "ABHOR what is evil; HOLD FAST to what is good." These are the strongest words available. "Abhor" means to "hate" evil or "loathe" or "be disgusted" or "repulsed" with evil. 1 Corinthians 6:16, "Cling" is used for sexual union between spouses. It refers to the ratification of the marriage covenant through sexual intimacy.

Christianity isn't the same thing as moralism or simply a matter of choosing a moral standard and by sheer will power adhering to it. Christianity is about worship; it's about loving God and hating evil. It's about grace that changes your heart so that you more and more come to love what God loves and hate what God hates. That would be one of the best prayers you could ever pray for each other. "Lord, help my friend to hate what you hate and love what you love."

Paul is not calling us to do what our deepest desires as believers don't want to do. He's calling us to discover the transforming grace of God that takes a stony heart and transforms it into a heart after God's own heart. Yes, at times love does what it doesn't want to do - at the moment. However, it does this because as born again believers we have a deeper "wanter". We've been born of His Spirit our deepest desire is to love God and hate evil. Paul is calling us to discover this grace that will fuel and fund love for God and others. There is a negative side to Christian love. You cannot love without hating some things. This is true because love protects and defends against evil things. There are things God himself hates. Proverbs 6:16-19:

"These six things the LORD hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
A proud look,
A lying tongue,
Hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that are swift in running to evil,
A false witness who speaks lies,
And one who sows discord among brethren.

Beloved, I wonder if the reason why many of us fail too often in the face of temptation is that we have not yet learned to hate or loath or abhor evil. Do you know what I mean? We hate the consequences. We hate the embarrassment. But do we hate evil or are we just trying to do our best to avoid it. Pastor, "What do I do if I don't hate it?" Pray! Jesus said that we have not because you ask not. Let's start by praying. "God, here is my heart. I agree with you about the unrighteousness of this thing, but I ask your Spirit to conform me more and more to the image of Christ. Help me to despise and abhor evil like You do so that I can love the good. And if your heart is slow to catch up with your resolve to go then do good until it does. And recognize what Thomas Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a greater affection." The more you learn to love God and the good the more you will despise evil.

Finally, Paul says to "cling to what is good." The word for cling is first used in Genesis. It refers to covenant love. Moses wrote, "A man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife." It's used of Ruth when Naomi told her to return to Moab. Instead Ruth clung to Naomi and made a covenant with her to stay with her. She said, Naomi's family would be her family and Naomi's home would be her home. It's used of the sexual union between a husband and a wife that ratifies the loving covenant they have made before God. Cling to what is good. In other words, make a covenant with your heart or with good to what is good. Job said, "I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look (inappropriately) upon a young maiden." (Jb.31:1) .

In Tolkien's, Lord of the Rings, I love the debate Tolkien writes between Elrond and Gimli just before the fellowship of the nine embarks on their treacherous journey. Elrond discourages them from making an oath. He knows they don't know how dark and treacherous the journey will be. In his mind an oath would be meaningless because they have no idea of the harsh realities ahead. Gimili disagrees and believes that there are times and circumstances that are so agonizing that the only thing that can keep you faithful is your oath.

Elrond:

"The further you go, the less easy it will be to withdraw; yet no oath or bond is laid on you to go further than you will. For you do not yet know the strength of your hearts. And you cannot foresee what each may meet upon the road.

Gimili retorts,

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

Elrond:

"Maybe, but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall."

Gimli persists,

"Yet, sworn word may strengthen quaking heart,

Elrond:

"Or break it."

David once said, "Blessed is he who swears to his own hurt." Your covenant with good may indeed break your heart. But that's alright. Jesus loves the broken hearted and He loves to lift them up.

Paul is just showing us something of how Christ loved us. He loved us with a love that makes our satisfaction and well being more important to Him than his own. He loved us without hypocrisy - without appearances and with nothing to cover up. He loved us by hating evil and clinging to covenant love (the covenant of love he made with the Father and us in the new covenant in his blood)--And he loved us by covering a multitude of sins. And He still does.

As Christ loved us so we now have been called to love one another. By the power of His Holy Spirit and enduring grace may He continue to make it so.