Romans Chapter 12:9-21
“This section is not an exhaustive handbook on ethics, though, but rather a list of some of the more basic characteristics of the transformed life” (Cottrell p. 329). Romans 12:9 “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good” “Let”: We have control over this. “Be without hypocrisy”: “Your love must be genuine” (Gspd). Literally it means that love must be without a mask. 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us something about love. “There's nothing sentimental about it for sentiment costs nothing and leads to no commitment. We are not to feign love so as to gain advantage. We are not to profess what isn't our heart. Apparently Christians in the first century also had problems with pretended love (1 John 3:18; 1 Peter 1:22). Many young people need to read this verse often. Do not tell someone you love them, when you don't, and don't use a “I love you” to gain selfish and sinful pleasure. Such love is hypocritical, and we all know where the hypocrites are headed. “Murray notes that there is no vice worse than hypocrisy, just as there is no virtue surpassing love; thus hypocritical love is the ultimate moral contradiction” (Cottrell p. 332). “Abhor”: To detest utterly. “Christians cannot just passively ignore evil, but must actively and aggressively oppose it and speak out against it. The hatred of sin, especially one’s own, is the starting point of repentance” (Cottrell p. 332). “An intense sentiment is meant: loathing” (Vincent p. 158). “Regard evil with horror” (Wey). “Abhor comes from a word which means ‘to shudder from’. It isn't often we come across people who shudder at evil” (McGuiggan p. 367). The love under consideration is real and genuine and doesn't wink at sin. “It must not countenance moral weakness or allow mutual indulgence” (Erdman p. 148). Our love is not up to the required standard, unless it moves us to abhor evil (Ephesians 5:11), and not just our favorite evil that we like to pick on, but all forms of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22; 1 Corinthians 13:6). “Love is not a principle of mutual indulgence; in the Gospel it is a moral principle, and like Christ, Who is the only perfect example of love, it has always something inexorable about it. He never condoned evil” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 691) (Heb. 1:9). “Cleave to that which is good”: There is such a thing as good and evil. “Only the believer can consistently speak of good and evil” (McGuiggan p. 367). “Cleave”: This means glued or joined firmly to. “Cling to the right” (TCNT). “But to abhor evil does no good if one does not cleave or hold fast to that which is good” 1 “We cannot hide behind some alleged moral 1
Gospel Anchor. 'Love Manifested' Ken Green, August 1992, p.