May 13, 2007: Romans 12:9-12

ROMANS M 12 MESSAGE

TEXT: ROMANS 12: 9-21

Big Idea: We love our enemies because God us loved us when we were God’s enemies.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Nov. 13 issue of TIME with the story God vs. Science.

Last fall TIME Magazine featured a debate between scientist Dr. Richard Dawkins, author of the God Delusion and Dr. Francis Collins, who led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project which mapped the entire human DNA.

Richard Dawkins in his book the God Delusion has argued that altruism is part of survival of the fittest instinct. If you help a family member, there’s a better chance that your family gene pool will survive. If you help someone, they may help you survive later.

But, Dr. Francis Collins argues that there are many acts of altruism that are directed to people who are not part of our family or who can pay us back. He cites Oskar Schindler risking his life to save more than a thousand Jews from the gas chamber during World War II would be the opposite of this. He risked his life help others who don’t belong to his clan.

One of the great proofs that a person is not merely a product of naturalistic evolution alone, but has been animated by the spirit of the living God, is that he is able to love as God loves.

And Paul gives us a window into how this happens in Romans 12:
Paul says:
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship.
Paul in Romans 12:1 urges his listeners, in view of God’s great mercy to them, to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. In view of God’s mercy to us in becoming a human being and dying on a Roman cross, to absorb our sin in his body so that we could be forgiven, welcomed into God’s living room without shame as God’s sons and daughters, receive God’s Spirit, become new people, Paul says let us offer our whole selves to God as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is true worship.

As we saw two weeks ago, part of what it means to offer our whole selves means that we offer our minds to God. And as we saw last Sunday, another part of what it means to offer our whole selves is to offer our talents and gifts to God.

Today, we’re going to unpack a third part of what it means to offer our whole selves is to offer our “love” to God.

Notice vs. 9:
Love in Action
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. [a] Do not think you are superior.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," [b] says the Lord. 20 On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." [c]
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Paul in verses 9-21 describes what it means to love for a person who has given his or her life to God.

Paul says we must hate what is evil and cling to what is good (vs 9). Discernment is needed in love. Love is not merely blind sentiment. It is discerning. It is so devoted to the well-being of the beloved that it hates every evil which is incompatible with the beloved’s greatest well-being. Love is also patient when it’s hard to love (vs 12). Paul says that love must be hospitable (vs. 13). Henri Nouwen defines “hospitality” as creating space in our hearts for others.

We tend to think of love as an emotion, and there certainly is an emotional part to certain kinds of love, such as eros. But when God calls us to “agape” love, as he does in Romans 12: 9-11, is he is not calling us primarily to muster up a warm emotion. He is calling us to do something—to act in a way that reflects the character of God—the God who has Paul points out in Romans 5:8 even when we were his enemies, served us in the greatest way building a bridge at greatest of costs to create a way for us to come home.

This morning we are going to focus on verses 14-21. In these verses, the apostle Paul calls us to love our enemies. He calls to love our enemies, reflecting the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

When Paul calls us to bless and love our enemies and to not exact vengeance on them, Paul is not saying that it is a sin to experience anger against those who hurt us or those we care about. Paul makes it very clear in Eph. 4:26 that it is possible to be angry and to not sin. The Bible also tells us that God gets angry at sin, evil, injustice, oppression. God is a perfect being, and so if God is perfect and God gets angry, we can deduce that all not all anger is sinful. Sometimes anger is not only appropriate, but a helpful emotion to have. Anger can move us to appropriately resist evil being done to us or others. Anger can show we care about something that really matters, like justice…

When Paul calls us to bless our enemies and to not exact vengeance, he is not saying that all anger is evil. Nor is Paul saying that people who perpetuate injustices against us and others are not culpable. The Bible clearly teaches that the wicked will be held to account for what they do. And while Paul calls us in Romans 12 call us to refrain from personally exacting vengeance, in Romans 13, as we will see next week as Mardi leads us through this text, God has ordained government to punish evil-doers. Paul in Romans 13:4, tells us that governments are ordained by God to bring punishment to wrong-doers. Governments of course don’t always punish wrong-doers appropriately or justly, but Paul’s point is that government has been ordained by God in part to hold wrong-doers to account.

The Bible teaches in our passage, where Paul says God will “avenge” the evildoer and the book of Revelation and other passages of Scripture, that God will also hold those who are evil to account—if not in this life, certainly on the final day of judgment.
The doctrine of God’s judgment, in general, and hell in particular, are unpopular doctrines today. Some people say, “I can’t believe in a God who judges. I only believe in a God of love. Some people think that believing in a God who judges is a very primitive notion of God.
Miroslav Volf is a theologian who teaches at Yale and who is originally from war-torn Croatia. He spoke here in Vancouver in the fall. Professor Volf says you can only say “I won’t believe in a God who judges and avenges if you have grown up in the quiet seclusion of the suburbs. You cannot say that if you have been with people as I have been with people, whose cities and villages have been first plundered and then burned to the ground, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit, and whose daughters and sisters have been raped.”
He says, “In that kind of world, the only thing that can keep a person from taking up the sword is a belief that God will take up the sword.” Volf is saying that when we believe that God will judge the wicked in this life or the next, then, and only then, will we be able to refrain from taking up the sword of vengeance.

In March, in Cambodia I stood at Pol Pot’s grave along with some of my missions teammates from here at Tenth. Pol Pot was the ruthless dictator in Cambodia directly or indirectly responsible for the killing of 2-3 million of his fellow Cambodians. Every family in Cambodia has a father, brother, cousin or loved one killed in the Khmer Rouge massacre… John, a missionary in Cambodia, stood by Pol Pot’s grave with tears coming down his checks, he prayed “God help me to let go and trust you are the God who will one day bring Pol Pot and all who do evil to account.

So when Paul calls us to not exact vengeance on our own, he is not saying that evil-doers are not culpable, that they will not be held responsible. No, God has ordained government to exact judgment on evil-doers and that God, himself, will enact judgment in this life or the next on the evil.

When we know this—then we are freer to let go and live out God’s call to love our enemies as God loved us when we were his enemies.

Part of the reason God calls us to love our enemies as God loves his enemies is for our sake, so we don’t become like our enemies.

Ironically, we tend to become what we most hate.

Carl Jung said, “You always become the thing you fight most.”
Nietzsche when we fight monsters we must be careful that we don’t become monsters.
And whether in Rwanda or the Balkans, people fight against other brutal aggressors and they themselves become brutal aggressors. When a son or a daughter passionately hates a father, they are susceptible to becoming like the father they hate.

So when God calls us to not take vengeance upon our enemies, part of the reason is for our sake--so that we don’t become like them.

When Jesus, in his great Sermon on the Mount, calls us to love our enemies, he calls us to not only care for them and pray for them, so that we are not like our enemies, but also so that we are like our father in heaven--who blesses his enemies and prays for those who persecute him.
In Romans 12:20 Paul calls us to love our enemies. He cites Proverbs 25:20 when he says, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him/her; if he is thirsty, give him/her something to drink. In doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head.”

Why is Paul saying these strange words? What do they mean? Does it mean that if we love our enemies, God will zap them with fire?

Augustine, Jerome, and more recently, Waltke and other great commentators have pointed that when we offer good deeds in return for evil done, it can have the effect of creating “burning pangs of shame.” Not that I know from experience, but if you were to put hot coals on someone’s head, that person would turn red. And if you show kindness to someone in return for evil, he or she may turn red with shame.

Paul’s central message in the book of Romans is the Gospel of God. The Gospel of God is the good news that even when we were God’s enemies, God sought to reconcile us to himself by demonstrating his love for us on the cross by bearing our sins in his body so that we could be forgiven. And through that act of amazing love, as Paul points out in Romans 2, God wills that all people will repent (i.e., turn from their sin) and seek God.

We are called to be imitators of the living God. We are called to embody the Gospel. God is calling us to act in a kind of third way that will help the perpetrator repent and turn to God. Why? Because this is how God loved us when we were His enemies.

Walter Wink, in his excellent book, The Powers That Be, describes how the followers of Jesus can engage in practical non-violence. Wink points out that women who are beaten by their husbands or sometimes told by Christian leaders to “turn the other cheek” and let men continue to brutalize them is a total misunderstanding of Jesus’ words which if understood in the cultural context actually empowers the powerless (when Jesus says turn the other cheek he is referring to something slapping the right side of your cheek with the back of your right hand—if you turn the other cheek as some commentators point out you you avoid being slapped again) .
We are called to love others. It is not a loving thing to allow other people to continue with their sin by letting them abuse us. Wink points out that we would instead do better to counsel the abused woman to move to a shelter for battered women, expose her husband’s behaviour publicly and thereby break the vicious cycle of humiliation, guilt and bruising.

Wink points out that many social workers says the most loving thing a battered wife can do is to have her husband arrested. This will bring the issue out in the open, it will put him under a court injunction that will mean jail if violence continues, and positions him so that his self-interest is served by joining a therapy group for batterers. This could begin a process that might not only deliver the woman from being battered, but free the man from a spiral of battering, as well. This is a creative way to love an enemy that may lead to reconciliation.

Another way to creatively love our enemies that may lead to their restoration and reconciliation with God and others is to refuse to act like a victim.

Angie O’Gorman (also cited in Wink’s book) points out that often assailants work from a definite set of expectations as to how the victim will respond. They often need the victim to act like a victim. Angie O’Gorman points out that provoking a sense of wonder instead of acting like a victim may diffuse the hostility.

O’Gorman herself describes being awakened late one by a man kicking open the door to her bedroom. The house was empty. The phone was downstairs.

“He was somewhat verbally abusive as he walked over to my bed,” she says. “I could not see his eyes in the darkness, but could see the outline of his form. As I lay there feeling fear and vulnerability like I had never before experienced, several thoughts ran through my head—all in a matter of seconds. The first was the useless of screaming. The second was the fallacy of thinking safety depends on having a gun under your pillow. (Somehow I could not imagine this man waiting patiently while I reached under my pillow for my gun.) The third thought, I believe, saved my life. I realized with a certain clarity that either he and I could make it through this situation—safely—or would both be damaged. Our safety was connected. If he raped me, I would be hurt both physically and emotionally. If he raped me, he would be hurt as well. If he went to prison, the damage would be greater. That thought disarmed me. It freed me from my own desire to lash out and at the same time freed me from my own paralysis. It did not free me from feelings of fear but from fear’s control over my ability to respond. I found myself acting out of a concern for both our safety which caused me to react with a certain firmness but with surprising little hostility in my voice.

I asked him, “What time is it?” he answered. That was good sign. I commented that his watch and the clock on my night table had different times. His said 2:30; mine said 2:45. I had just set mine. I hoped his watch wasn’t broken When had he last set it? He answered. I answered. The time seemed endless. When the atmosphere began to calm a little I asked him how he had gotten into the house. He’d broken through the glass in the back door. I told him that presented me with a problem as I did not have the money to buy new glass. He talked about some financial difficulties of his own. We talked until we were no longer strangers and I felt it was safe to ask him to leave. He didn’t want to,he said he had no place to go. Knowing I did not have the physical power to force him out, I told him firmly but respectfully, as equal to equal, I would give him a clean set of sheets but he would have to make his own bed downstairs. He went downstairs and I sat up in bed, wide awake and shaking for the rest of the night. The next morning we ate breakfast together and he left.”
By treating her intruder as a human being, Angie O’Gorman caught him off guard. Conversation defused his violence. Through the effects of prayer, meditation, training in non-violence, and the experience of lesser kinds of assault, she had been able to allow a context for conversion to emerge. Such a response could come to her because she had been rehearsing non-violence beforehand.

Angie Gorman demonstrates a creative way to love an enemy that neither encourages his violence nor condones it, but enables her to respond to him like God responds to His enemies in ways that foster his restoration and reconciliation.

This third way is the way of the Gospel and it is not easy. Walter Wink cites the story told by Janet Wolf, a Methodist pastor. Janet describes having a Bible study during the middle of the week.

She said we try to use it as a time to both hold each other and hold each other accountable. I mean, how have we done in loving this stuff out.

And John came in one night. John is homeless, as are a number of the folks in our congregation. And he said, alright I’m gonna tell this story on myself before anybody tells it….you all know I’ve trying to turn my life around and it’s not been easy. What you don’t know probably is how bad I was. I was so bad I had all the cars and the women and the money and the power that anyone could want. I was so bad that when I walked down the street folks crossed to the other side just to get out of my way.

I’m trying to turn my life around and my life’s gotten worse. Last night I spent the night at the Mission—nowhere else to go. I wake up this morning and someone has stolen my shoes. Youall hear what I am talking about? Someone stole my shoes…So I get my knife out. I hadn’t given up that part of my old life yet. It’s a big knife and everyone knows that I might just use it again. I get out my knife and I’m walking down those tables ’cause I mean to get my shoes back. And Jim starts hollering from the other side of the room.

“You remember what we talked about in Bible study ‘bout if they take your cloak and you get another one give ‘em that one too. John, put down that knife. They took your shoes; give ‘em your socks.”

And I tell them, huh-uh, I’m not giving ‘em my socks. I want my shoes.

And Jim keeps hollering and he hollers and he hollers, “Put down that knife; give ‘em your socks.”

So I folded up my knife, slowly, but I folded it up. I put it in my pocket. I walked barefoot to the service centre this morning. I begged another pair of shoes. Damn, if it isn’t hard to live this stuff out.

We are called as followers of Jesus to be filled with the very wisdom and character of God to love our enemies as God does. But as John points out, “Damn, if it isn’t hard to live this stuff out!”
Why do we love our enemies and bless them? We do so because, as we bless them and pray for them and love them, they stand the greatest chance of being restored to themselves and reconciled to God.

Why would we do that instead of just condemning them to hell? Because this is what God is like. Romans 5:8 tells us that God demonstrates his own love for us in this: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” While we were still enemies of God, God loved us to the point where he was willing down his life for us in Christ to reconcile us back to him. We love our enemies because God us loved us when we were God’s enemies:

Paul says, “In view of God’s mercy, offer your whole selves as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” this is true worship. Offer your mind, your gifts, and offer your love as well.

(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)