Raise Your Standard of Living

One of the most beautiful passages in Scripture shows us how to live well.

Previously I wrote a commentary on 1 Corinthians 13, the “love passage” in which the Apostle Paul detailed how a person with mature agape love behaves. Woven through that passage is the tacit understanding that people living that most mature form of love also have mastered themselves, allowing God’s Spirit to transform them and live selflessly toward others.

There is a second passage, this one in the book of Romans, that serves as a complimentary pairing with the Corinthians text. This passage became a favorite of mine many years ago when a colleague in a staff meeting spoke from it in a devotion given before we got down to the meeting agenda. It is beautiful and straightforward in its simplicity.

Joined together with the Corinthians text, passages like these are my motivation for this series on behaving in Christlikeness. There seems to be a dearth of teaching on these passages on how we, as believers in Christ, should conduct ourselves day to day. In 46 years of being a Christ follower, that devotion from my friend in staff meeting is the only time I’ve heard this passage taught in any setting.

Here is the text from the Apostle Paul in God’s Word to us:

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.—Romans 12:9-21

Observations and commentary

Verse 9: Let love be genuine is bookended with love one another with brotherly affection. Recall in my previous posts, Let Me Count the Ways and Restoration that the Greek language in which the New Testament was written has different words for love, with various shades of meaning. Agape love is the highest, most noble form of love: selfless, unconditional, seeking the good of the other. Phileo love is brotherly love, a fond affection as one would have for a close friend.

At the start of this passage, Paul begins with the command to let agape, selfless, mature love be genuine, not feigned, then says to show that love with phileo, brotherly affection. In this wordplay, I believe that agape is the inward motivation fueling our love and phileo love is the outward expression. We show our unselfish love by acts and words of affection for one another.

In between he commands to abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Why is that inserted between the two forms of love? I believe the connection is that when we allow ourselves to fraternize with that which is coarse, carnal, manipulative and tawdry, we become jaded and cynical. We develop spiritual and emotional callousness, from which selfless love can rarely emerge.

Verse 10: Outdo one another in showing honor. What a standard Paul sets in relating to each other! If you do some act of kindness toward me, I will do you one better! Let no one outshine you in how you serve and care for one another.

Verse 11: Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Do not allow your passion for the Lord to languish, but keep it stoked daily through acts of worship, prayer and service to Him. Keep the fire burning. Live your passion continually.

Verse 12: Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. This verse is progressive in its parts. Rejoice in hope because you know with assurance that your life right now has purpose and your life hereafter will be eternal joy. Therefore, with that assurance, you can be patient in tribulation, while you are constant in prayer through your trials.

Verse 13: Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. We are called to have a generous heart, to share our resources and be hospitable. Generosity of heart leaves no quarter for cynicism. Generosity is also a strong antidote against worry and fear in difficult circumstances because it ignites joy within when we give to others. It’s hard to stew on your own troubles when you are serving the needs of others.

Verse 14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Is there any other command in Scripture more difficult than this? It follows Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. This goes against every human instinct. Every fiber of our being cries out against someone who hates us. But we are called to rise above human instinct to something higher.

This is important: the command to love our enemies is the strongest evidence that love is not primarily a feeling, it is a choice. There are some days the people around you are not so lovable, and you are not always so lovable yourself. Sometimes there are people who actively despise and abuse you. But mature, selfless agape loves anyway, prays for the person anyway, and does not hurl invective at them either verbally or in mental storms of animosity.

Verse 15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. When someone you know enjoys a great victory in life, enter into the joy of that moment without the need to compare what they have to what you have. Congratulate them without inserting any commentary of how you once had something similar or wish you had their kind of blessing. It is their moment. Affirm their joy.

Likewise, when someone is going through crushing loss, grieve along with them and resist the inner pressure to feel like you need to say something comforting or wise to help them through. Almost anything you say will be awkward, perhaps even inadvertently hurtful, so just be present in the moment with them and hold your tongue.

Verse 16: Live in harmony with one another. Learn the liberating habit of letting go of little offenses, inconsequential disagreements and trivial differences. Let it go. If you always have to be right, to always have the last word, you can either be right, or be in relationship, but not both. The urge to always be right in conversations drives people away.

Also verse 16: Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. A telltale sign of a person’s character is how they treat people in a lower station of life. Just as an example, consider service workers. In college I waited tables to put myself through school. I waited on people who were gracious, were kind when the restaurant was jam packed and they had to wait, and who tipped well. I also met people who viewed server workers like minions to be bossed around. People like that think more highly of themselves than others and are, quite frankly, bullies. Don’t be like them.

Last part of verse 16: Never be wise in your own sight. As God grows you in wisdom and maturity, a snare awaits: you can begin to inwardly revel in your own wise discourse with others. That is a self deluding trap that a can bring you crashing down to earth.

Verses 17-21: Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Revenge not only destroys its target, it destroys the doer of the revenge. Despite what an enemy might do, protect yourself only as is needed for self preservation and that of loved ones. Beyond that, do no seek payback. It is dishonorable. Let the Lord deliver justice. Meanwhile, as we saw back in verse 14, pray for your enemy that he might come to the Lord and repent of his evil.

Commentators differ on the meaning of “heap burning coals on his head” by serving your enemies. Most likely, it means that your example will instill shame in the enemy by your service to him and refusal to sink to the level of revenge.

In summary, the life God calls His followers to live is wholly other than that of the world. We can either promote or hurt the advancement of God’s good news through Christ by the testimony of how we live. Paul in two crucial texts, from 1 Corinthians and from Romans, gives us a detailed portrait of the life to which God calls us.

Next post: The most reliable indicator of our maturity.