The Renewed Mind Begins with Genuine Love: Romans 12:9

The Renewed Mind Begins with Genuine Love: Romans 12:9.

“Genuine love keeps on hating evil and continues to embrace good.” (Romans 12:9).

St. Paul talks about the process of transformation in Romans 12:1-2, and how important mind-renewal is in that process. One could paraphrase Romans 12:1-2 this way:

“Brothers and sisters in Christ, I beg of you to respond to God’s many mercies by surrendering your whole human nature: spiritual, physical, mental, emotional; and your entire human selves: eyes, ears, mouths, feet, and hands; offer everything of who you are to God as living sacrifices. This will set you apart and show you to be holy and pleasing to God. Having everything about you and your lifestyle offered to God is the most sensible and reasonable way to worship. Do not allow yourselves to be molded into the shape of the culture around you with its values and opinions and worldviews. Don’t just copy the world without thinking, but continue to resist letting the world form you into its image, its way of thinking and acting. Instead, give free reign to the Lord and His Spirit as He completely changes you from within, as He transforms you through a radical renewing of your minds. Allow God to transfigure your mind into a completely new way of thinking, into a mind filled with the transfigured light of Christ. This is truly the only way you can discern His will and understand His desires for you and each other. For we know that His plans for us are good, and acceptable, and perfect.”

But what does that look like in practical terms? Our transformation seems to depend on our minds being renewed, and the starting point and finish line of that renewal is love.

“Genuine love…” Not just any love, but agape love in particular. The love comes to us straight from the bosom of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The love that is the supreme of all the loves, the love that desires the highest good of another. The love that we don’t have naturally but must be poured into our hearts as a gift through the Spirit of God (Romans 5:5). This divine love, Paul teaches, is not a hypocritical love, an insincere action that wears a mask which hides another attitude altogether. This love is sincere, not a pretend love merely playing a part to look religious or righteous. This love is not a staged love, an empty love merely making appearances. This love is not merely sentimental, emotional, or superficial. This is not a fake love that is an outward act, or a virtual love that is not quite real. This is agape love, an unconditional love that comes from the very center of who we are at the deepest level as followers of Jesus. This passage’s opening phrase, Genuine Love, is the organizing principle of the phrases that follow in verses 9-13. This is the theme, the heading, the suitcase that is unpacked as we study those remaining words of Paul’s long run-on sentence. What does genuine love look like? It looks like this, Paul proclaims, and off we go with the various qualities of genuine agape love. The traits of love that follow are all stated in the continuous present, implying that the believer needs to keep moving in the direction of these qualities, that these traits are part of an ongoing process, a gaining of habits in the Spirit, intentional actions that flesh out the love of God. These traits become a part of the personality and lifestyle of the believer, aspects of our transformation. Love is not a one-time decision but is continuous and daily and a necessary part of the race until we reach the finish line.

“…Keep on hating evil…” The thing Paul mentions first about this genuine love is hate?! That’s the first principle in his teaching, the starting point in discussing divine love? Yes, it’s true that in Christ, God is giving each of us the capacity to hate, but the object of the hatred is evil. Abhor evil, Paul is shouting, hate anything that is contrary to God’s character, anything that disfigures God’s image in us, anything that works against the advancement of His Kingdom on earth. Yes, anything that distorts or mars or twists the goodness of God’s moral universe is wicked and we are to grow in finding such things repulsive. We are to hate what God hates, which brings us to an old-fashioned word that perhaps should be resurrected… abomination. In Scripture, an abomination is that which God finds disgusting and detestable; something He loathes with a passion and finds abhorrent; anything He finds spiritually dangerous or morally unacceptable; anything that is deeply offensive to God’s unerring sensibilities; anything that God finds revolting in His presence and alien to His nature; all those actions and attitudes from which He recoils, that He turns away from in horror. Following God means we trust His judgment on what is evil, on what we should hate for His sake. Scripture is clear on what God finds disgusting and thus provides believers our marching orders when it comes to hating evil:

(1.) Religious activities that are insincere and without a lifestyle of justice and mercy. Amos 5:21-23;

(2.) The ignorant prayers of those who won’t listen to Scripture. Proverbs 28:9;

(3.) Child sacrifice. Deuteronomy 12:31.

(4.) Idolatry. Isaiah 41:24;

(5.) Witchcraft, sorcery, spiritism, spells, mediums. Deuteronomy 18:9-12.

(6.) Violence. Psalm 11:5. 

(7.) Wickedness such as boasting, speaking falsehoods, being bloodthirsty, deceitful. Psalm 5.

(8.) Perverse hearts: ruthless, cruel, deceptive, pursues evil. Proverbs 11. 

(9.) Prideful extravagance. Amos 6:8.

(10.) Homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22.

(11.) Cheating others in business. Deuteronomy 26:13-16. 

(12.) Worship with selfish intent and mixed motives. Proverbs 21:27.

(13.) Judges who justify the guilty and condemn the innocent. Proverbs 17:15.

(14.) Self-exaltation. Proverbs 16:5. 

(15.) That which is honored and applauded in the world’s value system. Luke 16:15. “What society sees and calls monumental, God sees through and calls monstrous.” (MSG).

(16.) Denying justice to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow. Deuteronomy 27:19. 

And we can’t forget God’s little list of things He finds disgusting, in Proverbs 6: 16-19: 

… a proud look: arrogance; pride; a haughty bearing; an air of superiority.

… a lying tongue: dishonest; can’t tell the truth; deceptive; deceitful.

… hands that shed innocent blood: murderous in attitude and action; bloodthirsty; violent.

… a heart that devises wicked schemes: loves to plot evil plans; feet that are swift in running to evil.

… a false witness who utters lies: pours out lies; kindles injustice; is deceitful even under oath.

… who spreads strife in the family: causes quarrels and dissension; a troublemaker in the home.

“… Continue embracing good.” As we are engaged in the process of mind-renewal through Christ, we develop a love/hate relationship with the realities of life. While hating evil, we are loving good. Many translations offer the world “cleave” in this phrase. The word in Greek means literally to become permanently glued to, to form an inseparable union with. So to cleave to good means we intimately embrace good daily, we make a habit of clinging to good as if our lives depended on it. We superglue ourselves in a permanent connection to whatever is acceptable to God, the Source of all that is good. We tightly bind ourselves to what is morally excellent, spiritually beneficial, intrinsically good. We hold onto truth, goodness and beauty for dear life. We hang tightly to our moral compass. We fix the mind on what is worthy of God’s approval. We fill our minds with thoughts that help us flourish in God’s eyes. We fasten our focus on ideas that help us to develop integrity, an inner core of goodness that can be demonstrated to a watching world. We intentionally strengthen our mind’s muscle to do some heavy lifting in a largely immoral world.  Putting our best mind forward would have to include a focus on arete, on thoughts that We live into our growing desire for an exceptional character that reveals the very character of God Himself. So we embrace good while rejecting evil. We continue training our moral taste buds to discern between rotting garbage and delectable food, between inedible roadkill and a heavenly feast. As St. Paul said later in 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, “Examine everything carefully: hold fast to that which is good, and abstain from every form of evil.” 

And now the rest of the story… The remaining phrases in Paul’s astounding run-on sentence in Ro. 12:9-13 looks like this: Continue living into genuine love as the Lord continues to transform your character and renew your mind. Keep moving in the direction of putting the needs of your brothers and sisters ahead of your own, fully devoted to one another with a wholesome affection; keep trying to outdo one another as you speak in ways that honor the other person; keep stoking your spiritual zeal and fervor, aglow with the Spirit as you serve the Lord; keep rejoicing in hope and being patient in your suffering; keep growing in your prayer life, fully devoted to developing a lifestyle of prayerfulness; keep contributing to the needs of God’s people around you; keep practicing hospitality as you care for strangers and welcome them into your homes.