Christian Love
Lesson 22 Notes: Romans 12:9-21
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)
What is love? Who gets to define it? Movies and media portray love as stirring sentimentality. Some cultural narratives define it as unthinking emotion that embraces all and requires nothing in return. Social norms commonly associate love with likes on social media and warm feelings. Yet these versions of love fail to satisfy our deepest longings. We desire love that perseveres when difficult circumstances arise. We applaud love that rescues the helpless from crisis, like a parent pulling a child from a burning building. We quickly label love that remains aloof in danger or distress as hypocritical. Human hearts crave more than sentiment, tolerance, and social grace.
As Paul explained the impact of God’s mercy on believers, he turned his attention to love. Ultimately, God’s character and actions define love. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection display what real love looks like. Love led Jesus to come down from heaven and become human like us, yet without sin. He did this so believers could know Him, receive His love, and become more like Him in how they love others. Jesus demonstrates and offers God’s love to all people: love that is righteous, outward, devoted to others, serving, enduring, and forgiving. In this week’s passage, Paul describes the type of love Jesus commands from those transformed through faith in His death and resurrection. With Jews and Gentiles now brought together in the body of Christ, Romans 12:9-21 pictures how this new community of people who have tasted the mercies of God can demonstrate sincere love in their relationships. God calls His people to love like He does.
Love’s Expression – Romans 12:9-13
In Romans 12, Paul taught that God’s mercy should lead believers to transformed lives that differ from the world’s patterns. As believers surrender to the Lord and renew their minds, they become more like Jesus, reflecting His righteousness in their relationships.1 God’s love, expressed most clearly in Jesus, contradicted the pattern of the Roman world and continues to clash with our world today. After teaching about spiritual gifts, Paul taught believers to reflect God’s love in their motives and actions.2 Through union with Christ3 and the Holy Spirit’s enabling,4 believers can experience a renewed quality of service and love.
Sincere Love (12:9) – Sincere love does not pretend. Anypokritos, the Greek word translated as “sincere,” means “to act without hypocrisy.” Like those who wear masks to hide their true identity, hypocrites disguise themselves and pretend to be someone they are not. However, Paul began chapter 12 by calling believers to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”5 Living to please God and benefit others opposes self-focus and hypocrisy.
God models and offers sincere love to fallen, sinful people. Through the costly sacrifice of His Son, God proves His love is not half-hearted or earned by good behavior. God’s love is always whole, pure, and genuine in every way. God calls and equips believers to love others with His sincerity. As imperfect people who still battle sin, believers cannot love this way on their own. Sincere love grows as a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit.6 As believers become instruments of righteousness and renew their minds, the Holy Spirit develops God’s love in them.
After calling for sincerity, Paul went on to say, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” Why did Paul include the word “hate” when describing sincere Christian love? Christian love reflects God’s pure love, which cannot tolerate evil.7 God hates sin and the damage caused by “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.”8 God’s genuine love distinguishes sincerity from hypocrisy and good from evil. God sees the heart and despises insincere, superficial religion.9
Devotion to Others (12:10) – Paul instructed, “Be devoted to one another in love.” Genuine love begins with God and flows from Him. Believers love because God first loved them.10 God chose and adopted believers into His family by grace through faith.11 In view of God’s undeserved mercy, members of His family put others’ needs above their own. Mutually supportive family members do not seek praise for themselves. Instead, they seek to honor others without regard for earthly status, wealth, position, education, or ancestry. Believers’ devotion to and honor for one another contrast with the world’s pattern of flattery and selfish ambition.12
Serve the Lord Fervently (12:11) – With God’s wondrous saving mercy in view, Paul continued describing what sincere, others-focused love looks like in action. Paul commanded believers, “Never be lacking in zeal.” The fervor Paul called for comes from a word meaning “to boil.” How can a believer maintain zeal and bubble over with spiritual fervor? Only through the Holy Spirit’s power. Believers cannot love and serve as God commands without the Spirit’s transforming work. The Spirit leads believers to serve the Lord and love others as Jesus did.13
Be Joyful, Patient, and Keep Praying (12:12) – Paul described how living sacrifices can show love amid hardship. The joyful hope Paul described is not naive optimism but steadfast assurance based on eternal reconciliation to God through Christ’s saving work. God’s love and certain promises anchor a believer’s hope. God’s children joyfully anticipate their blessed hope—the glorious appearing of their great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.14
Paul added patience in affliction because believers experience both joy and suffering as they await God’s promised glory.15 God does not call His children to a fatalistic attitude toward suffering. Believers can patiently persevere through suffering, knowing that God will reward good, punish evil, and bring His plans to pass in His own time. God will work all things together for His glory and the good of His children.16
What did Paul mean when he instructed faithfulness in prayer? This command issues a call to continue constantly in prayer. Jesus taught His followers to pray and never give up.17 Paul also encouraged believers to pray continually, assuring them that God’s Holy Spirit would help them to pray for God’s will.18 Prayer deepens a believer’s trust in God and love for others.
Share and Be Hospitable (12:13) – At first glance, Paul’s instruction to “share with the Lord’s people who are in need” and “practice hospitality” might seem like two separate commands. Since Paul had already discussed the spiritual gift of financial giving,19 perhaps sharing and hospitality involve more than giving money. Members of Christ’s body are to practically care for one another, whatever their needs. Hospitality involves seeking opportunities to meet the needs of others. Jesus addressed humanity’s needs throughout His earthly ministry. Christian love generously invests in sharing time, resources, and knowledge that help people thrive. The gospel opens our hearts to love, our hands to give, and our homes to welcome with abundant hospitality.
Love’s Objects – Romans 12:14-16
Paul’s instructions on sincere love transitioned from relationships among Christians to love for people who hate or persecute believers. As God mercifully loved by sending Jesus to die for sinners,20 Paul called believers to show God’s love to people who are not yet Christians. Paul also taught believers to think of themselves with sober judgment and live humbly with everyone, just as Jesus did.21
Paul clearly instructed, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” Paul’s teaching echoes Jesus’s words: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”22 This kind of love should distinguish Christians. The world’s pattern tempts believers to strike back spitefully when they are persecuted for their faith. However, Jesus showed God’s love for the lost when He asked God to forgive the soldiers at His cross.23
Believers can answer God’s call to bless their enemies in various ways. They can ask God to do good to their enemies rather than harm or curse them. God’s children can actively do good for their enemies as Jesus did for all people suffering under sin’s control. Even without warm feelings toward persecutors, Christians can extend God’s sincere love to them through Jesus.
Jesus taught His followers, “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”24 Many world religions express a negative version of Jesus’s teaching: “Do not do anything to others that you do not want them to do to you.” In other words, the world’s pattern says, “Do not hit someone unless you want them to hit you.” In contrast, Jesus taught His followers to reflect their heavenly Father’s mercy and actively seek the good of their enemies. God actively seeks the good of His whole creation.
In verses 14 and 17, Paul referred to those who persecute believers. The verses form an inclusio, a literary form in which a repeated idea frames an important theme. Therefore, the commands in verses 15-16 are to be exercised toward everyone, including believers’ enemies. Believers need God to transform their attitudes toward their enemies. As God’s Spirit renews their minds, He helps them discern and desire God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will.25 Jesus followed God’s will when He died for His enemies.26 Now risen and glorified on high, He leads us to carry our cross and refuse any thought, word, or deed contrary to God’s person, words, and will.
Rejoice and Mourn (12:15) – Paul commanded believers to love by making the joys and sorrows of others their own. When God’s children identify with other people closely enough to be touched by their experiences, they demonstrate God’s costly compassion. The Lord Jesus graciously took on human likeness, including the weaknesses and suffering of a human body, so that He could identify with us, live the sinless life we could not, and die in our place.27
Harmony and Humility (12:16) – Paul encouraged believers to live in harmony with all people. Christians should not seek conflict. Believers live out and call for truth. However, they win even their enemies to Christ through His love, not their natural affections. Pride and conceit corrupt Christian love. Whatever believers’ worldly positions or statuses, they are not to think of themselves more highly than they ought and are to actively honor others above themselves.28 We cannot remain proud or hostile when we understand our sin and the price Jesus paid to save us,29 “for even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”30 Jesus died for people from all social, economic, educational, and vocational backgrounds and from every generation, nation, tribe, people, and language.31
The Believer’s Cross and Christian Love
Jesus gave us the greatest expression of God’s love at the cross. Because God loved the world, Jesus willingly laid down His life to provide God’s enemies the way to escape God’s wrath.1 Jesus calls everyone who follows Him in faith to take up their own cross, crucifying selfishness and fleshly desires.2 Following Jesus includes renouncing plans and priorities that distract from full obedience to His will. As believers carry their cross, the light of loving self-sacrifice shines into this world’s darkness.3 God intends for believers to demonstrate the beauty and transforming power of the gospel by denying their own interests to follow Jesus and reach out to the world.
Paul explained that sincere love leads to selflessness. His teaching aligned with Jesus’s declaration that “whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”4 Believers willingly take up their cross in response to Christ’s loving sacrifice for them. Jesus calls believers to love Him more than their lives in this world.5 Following Jesus and loving as He loves does not come easy for us. By the Holy Spirit’s power, believers crucify their old nature, which is enslaved by the world’s sinful patterns and destined for judgment.6 The believer’s cross brings death to self-rule but freedom from sin’s bondage.
When believers refuse to take up their cross and sacrificially love like Jesus, they cease to shine the gospel’s light into the world. Lives lived selfishly are not living sacrifices and instruments of righteousness for the Lord. Believers who refuse to die to self hinder the Holy Spirit’s transforming power in their lives.7 Patterns of living for self will result in sin’s natural consequences, stealing the peace and joy that God desires His children to experience.
Believers who die to themselves and carry their cross invite the Holy Spirit to reprogram destructive thought patterns and habits. Through believers’ transformed lives, the watching world witnesses God’s love and power at work in His people.8 As believers express selfless love for others, they experience deep fellowship with Jesus and fellow Christians.9 The cross for the believer kills selfish desires and ambition and unites believers with Christ in a resurrection like His.10 How is Christ calling you to die to yourself, take up your cross, and live and love like Him?
1. God so loved: John 3:16
2. Take up your cross: Matthew 16:24; Luke 9:23
3. Believer’s light: Matthew 5:14-16
4. Cross necessary: Luke 14:27
5. Love Jesus more: John 12:24-26
6. Crucify misdeeds of the body: Romans 8:13
7. Grieve God’s Spirit: Ephesians 4:29-30
8. Known by love: John 13:35
9. Fellowship with Christ: John 17:20-21
10. Resurrection life: Romans 6:5-7
Love’s Results – Romans 12:17-21
Paul’s letter to the church in Rome contains treasured teaching on how God’s love, mercy, and grace allow sinful people to have peace with Him.32 The wonder of salvation in Christ33 propelled Paul’s commands about transformed living, including peace among people. Through union with Christ and the Holy Spirit’s transforming power, believers can avoid many unnecessary conflicts and divisions in their churches and communities. Paul offered practical teaching to renew believers’ minds and direct their steps toward love’s peaceful results.
Paul further described how to bless and not curse enemies: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.” Kalos, the Greek word translated as “right,” can also mean good, honorable, true, and beautiful. When a believer’s inner transformation produces beautiful outward behavior, the world witnesses the results of God’s love.
Paul challenged believers to live in peace with others. Believers have a God-given part to play in pursuing peace. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”34 Jesus’s brother James encouraged believers to “be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”35 The book of Proverbs also has much to say about Christian conduct that fosters peace.
“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you” warns that peace does not depend only on the believer. Others may choose to destroy peace. A believer’s rejection of the world’s patterns may make peace impossible. Christians cannot exchange truth, violate purity, or condone injustice for the sake of peace. James said, “The wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving.”36 God’s wisdom calls believers to maintain true love with purity, honesty, and justice. These essential commitments may make peace unattainable even when we sincerely pursue it. Nonetheless, as far as we are able, our goal is to live peaceably with others, even amid vast differences.
God calls His children to resist evil, sometimes even to the point of armed conflict.37 Paul taught that Christians may contribute to their countries’ defense.38 God calls Christians to forgive and love, but hating evil means they cannot always extend trust. Believers can trust God’s generous wisdom to help them choose a path that ultimately leads to God’s peace.39
Paul also instructed believers to give up their right to personal revenge: “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,’ says the Lord.” The world’s pattern rejects ideas of God, eternity, and judgment. The thought of leaving vengeance to God seems foolish to the world.
God’s love transforms how believers respond to mistreatment. Believers can express their desire for justice by prioritizing Christ’s righteousness over their personal desire to get even.40 They are called to defend the dignity of all people made in God’s image, but never by sinful means. God’s love, which hates evil, provides trustworthy, eternal justice.41
Following the passive command, “Do not take revenge,” Paul gave an active command: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” Believers become God’s instruments of righteousness when they do good rather than evil. Paul was quoting Proverbs 25:21-22, which says, “In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” What does it mean to “heap burning coals” on our enemy’s head? There are several interpretations. One thought is kindness can win over an enemy. Imagine yourself at a village fire pit with people who have come to seek warmth but have mistreated you. Rather than share only a few coals with them, you give them a full bucket of glowing coals to stoke their comfort. As God makes you more like Jesus, His Spirit enables you to choose to bless rather than to retaliate for previous wrongs.
Finally, Paul said, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Evil overcomes believers when they respond selfishly and sinfully. Not only are God’s children not to return evil for evil, but neutrality is not an option. They are to respond to evil with love. Jesus won us to Himself though His love. When we were God’s enemies—powerless and ungodly—Christ died for us.42 Jesus enables those who trust Him to overcome evil with good. Believers are more than conquerors through Jesus’s love.43 God calls His people to love like He does.44
Take to Heart
Paul gave believers a picture of God’s love expressed through their lives. A believer’s life of love does not conform to the patterns of this world. Paul called believers to express love motivated by sincerity and devotion to others. Love that prioritizes the good of others relies on the Holy Spirit’s help to serve fervently, remain steadfast in difficulty, and seek ways to meet the needs of others. Expressing God’s love includes pursuing peace with believers who view things differently than we do, loving our enemies, and welcoming the undeserving just like Jesus did. Recalling how God loved us when we were His enemies helps us to stay humble.
Sacrificial love gives up the selfish desire to seek revenge. Believers’ enemies need to know Jesus. Just as Jesus’s own cross produces lasting transformation in believers, sacrificial love like His impacts others. Old ways of living die, and new Spirit-led life takes their place. Paul invited believers to embrace their identity as overcomers and overcome evil with good.
Love sincerely. Honor others. Serve fervently. Practice hospitality. Bless your enemies. Live in harmony. Humble yourself. Associate with the lowly. Do what is right. Leave wrath to God. Overcome evil with good. We can read Paul’s list as worthy but unachievable goals. What happens when we read these commands in view of God’s love and mercy toward us through Jesus? Jesus calls believers to express their love for Him by living like Him. Paul was not giving believers a list of rules they must follow to keep their salvation or earn God’s love. God’s righteousness comes through faith in Christ, not works. God loved believers before they loved Him. When believers surrender their lives to the Lord, God’s Spirit transforms their thoughts, beliefs, values, and desires. How might this list prompt you to rejoice in God’s generosity, kindness, and love toward you through Jesus?
Honoring others above yourself, especially within the Christian community, demands intentional compassion, humility, and patience. How do you respond when honoring others is inconvenient or when you strongly disagree with them? Noticing the needs of others requires taking our eyes off ourselves. Honoring others means humbly taking the lowest place. Joyfully opening our lives to others derails personal plans and priorities. Whom are you willing to love this way? Whom is God calling you to love as He does? Ask God for the desire and power to love others. Then begin to obey Him. God will help you root out and replace your selfish desires with His selfless love.
The commands to do good to those who persecute, oppose, and hurt us clash against our natural habits. Do you feel pleasure when your enemies suffer? Unlike us, Christ actively sought His enemies’ good through humble service, passionate teaching, and death on the cross. How could you seek the good of those who oppose you today? Which enemies have you stopped trying to love? While the world applauds retaliation, will you ask God to make you a peacemaker? If you are struggling to trust God’s delayed justice, consider how His love and delayed justice have impacted you. God perfectly hates evil and clings to what is good. He calls us to do likewise.
How does Paul’s message reveal reliance on your own self-effort to be like Jesus? Self-reliance tempts believers in a world dominated by merit-based rewards. Perhaps you feel defeated because you have tried and failed to live like Paul described. If Paul’s list frustrates rather than inspires you, you might be trying to be good and reflect Jesus in your own strength. People cannot work to achieve God’s righteous standard. Only when the Holy Spirit transforms us by renewing our minds and establishing our path will we live the righteous lives God intends for us. Paul is not commanding believers, who are saved by faith, to make themselves like Jesus by discipline or will power. Instead, Paul described the life believers access through faith in Christ, loving fellowship with God, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Will you ask God to renew your mind and transform your life?
1. Conformed to Christ: Romans 8:28-29
2. Gifts and love: 1 Corinthians 12–14; Ephesians 4:1-16
3. Union with Christ: Romans 6
4. Enabling Holy Spirit: Romans 8
5. Living sacrifice: Romans 12:1
6. Fruit of the Spirit: Galatians 5:22-23
7. God hates evil: Psalm 45:7; Isaiah 61:8
8. God hates sin: Proverbs 6:16-19
9. Superficial religion: Isaiah 1:12-15; Amos 5:21
10. God loved first: 1 John 4:19
11. God’s family: Romans 8:14-17; 12:5
12. Known by love: John 13:35
13. Led by the Spirit: Romans 8:9, 14; Galatians 5:18, 25
14. Blessed hope: Titus 2:13-14
15. Promised glory: Romans 5:3-5; 8:17-21
16. For the good: Romans 8:28-29
17. Never give up: Luke 18:1
18. Help in prayer: Romans 8:26-27; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
19. Gift of giving: Romans 12:8
20. Love for sinners: Romans 5:6-8
21. Christ’s humility: Philippians 2:6-8
22. Love your enemies: Matthew 5:43-45; Luke 6:28
23. Prayer for forgiveness: Luke 23:34
24. Do to others: Matthew 7:12
25. Renewed minds: Romans 12:2
26. Jesus died for enemies: Romans 5:10
27. Jesus identified with people: Philippians 2:7-8; Hebrews 4:15
28. Believer’s humble attitude: Romans 12:3, 10
29. Humbled by sin’s cost: 1 Corinthians 1:28-31; Titus 3:5
30. Jesus’s humility: Mark 10:45
31. Died for a multitude: Revelation 7:9
32. Peace with God: Romans 1:7; 5:1; 8:6
33. Paul’s wonder: Romans 11:33-36
34. Peacemakers blessed: Matthew 5:9
35. Slow to anger: James 1:19
36. Peace-loving wisdom: James 3:17
37. Armed conflict: Deuteronomy 20:1-4; Romans 13:4
38. Government as God’s agent: Romans 13:1-5
39. God’s wisdom: James 1:5
40. Prioritizing Christ: Matthew 5:38-39; 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:8-10
41. Final justice: Revelation 20:11–22:21
42. Overcoming love: John 3:16; Romans 5:6, 8
43. Conquerors: Romans 8:37-39
44. Love as God loves: 1 John 3:11, 14, 16-18, 23
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