“Let love be without dissimulation (be sincere). Abhor (hate) that which is evil; cleave (cling) to that which is good.”
I suppose that the cheapest, and the most irritating thing in the world is unsolicited advice. It seems sometimes that there are people who always know more about what we should be doing than we do. If this advice that I am about to give was from me, you could call it cheap, and you might even call it irritating, but it is not from me. It is from the Bible. When I read Romans 12:9 just now, I said to myself that this is some very good advice. I plan to take the advice given here and I hope that you will. “Let love be without dissimulation,” or “let love be sincere” is good advice. It is so easy to say “I love you.” Today, we say it almost on a whim, not realizing the implications of it. In the New Testament sense of the word love, it is not to be taken lightly. This is especially true for Christians. Jesus said in John 13:35: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for each other.” The kind of love that Jesus was talking about was not the kind of love that simply says “I love you,” it is the kind of love that is sincere and is realized by the object of love. In other words, people know whether or not we truly love them, or if we are simply saying “I love you.” In John 15:13, Jesus said: “Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Now, that is serious love isn’t it? This is the kind of love that Paul wrote about in this text. It is the kind of love that Jesus has for us. No one could ever accuse Jesus of being fickle in His love for us. He set the example of sincere love by sacrificing Himself so that we could be saved. When we tell people that we love them, let’s be certain that we are sincere. “Abhor (hate) that which is evil.” Love is to be sincere and we are to be sincere in what we hate. You will observe that I did not write that we are to be sincere in who we hate. We should hate that which is evil. The problem is that we have a shallow view of evil. We know that adultery is evil. We know that lying, cheating and stealing is evil. We know that hating people, is evil. Because we might not do any of these things, we might think that we do not have to worry about evil. However, there is a lot of hidden evil that Satan loves to snare us with. One example of such an evil is pride. The Bible is death on pride. It never has anything good to say about the false pride that we will have if we are not careful. Perhaps you remember the prideful prayer of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11-12 in which he prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 12. I fast twice in the week. I tithes of all I possess.” On the other hand, a publican present there prayed, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus said that the Lord did not hear the prideful prayer, but He heard the humble prayer of the publican. We need to learn to hate false pride like we hate murder or lying. I could give you many other examples of hidden evil, but I think that you get the idea from what I have shared. “Cleave (cling) to that which is good” is good advice. People have a tendency to cling to things that are not good. That is what drugs, alcohol, or whatever addiction is about. We tend to cling to that which gives us momentary pleasure instead of that which will give us real soul satisfaction. For example, we need to cling to doing unto others as we would have them to do to us. (You know, the Golden Rule.) We need to cling to being patient with people instead of being impatient with them. (This might be about the most difficult of all.) We need to cling to saying uplifting things to people instead of putting them down. We need to cling to loving other people instead of hating them. I could go on and on with this, but I think you get the idea. Remember, this is not advice from me, it is from the Bible. I need to take it to heart myself, and I hope you will. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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