Romans 12, 9-21
Verse 13 in the GNB translation is an unhappy restrictive type of translation. It reads "Share your belongings with your needy fellow Christians, and open your homes to strangers",
It is much better read in the more accurate if less readily accessible format of the RSV where it reads: "Contribute to the needs of the saints, practise hospitality."
Now if we can compare the last part of these two translations then we can begin to get a fairly accurate understanding of the nature of what is meant here. In the RSV we read "practise hospitality" and in the GNB "open your homes to strangers". Taking these two together we get the idea of what is meant. In the original it is talking about the need to be hospitable to strangers and travellers. Now this sense of hospitality is in truth lost on us because it refers to a time before universal B&B's and easy travel.
From time to time we may have seen something similar when we have seen documentaries about nomadic Arabs where this kind of open handed hospitality is shown to passing strangers. A similar kind of chain of hospitality can be found in many places in the highlands and islands.
My mother tells a story from her student days that perhaps typifies what is meant by this passage.
She was a good Yorkshire lass, friendly and open hearted. She had ventured into that strange and alien territory of the South of England to attend teacher training college at Salisbury. With her friends she had been out for the day when a sudden downpour brought their day to an end.
They had to go for a bus. Next to the bus stop was a little cottage. They ran up to the door and knocked and when the old lady answered the door they asked when the next bus was due. Having been informed that it wouldn't be for over an hour the door was shut. As they stood there huddling under umbrellas shivering dark mutterings were forthcoming about how different Yorkshire hospitality would have been.
Ten minutes later however they were forced to swallow their mutterings as the old lady opened the door beckoned them in and there before was a a table spread with a traditional English afternoon tea and a tidy room with a blazing fire.
Now that story I believe captures the essence of what is mean by Paul when he talks of practising hospitality or when the GNB translates it as open your homes to strangers.
Now the beginning of this verse says "share your belongings with your needy fellow christians" and this is a true and accurate translation of the original thoughts of Paul in so far as it goes. It is also quite straightforward and needs little further amplification from this pulpit. But the RSV contains a deeper meaning when it translates it as "Contribute to the needs of the saints."
When we talk here of the saints we are of course talking of the church, of our fellow christians. And there is no difficulty in understanding this but the concept of "contribute to the needs" needs further exploration. For while it most certainly means the giving of money and goods to our needy fellow christians there is a deeper meaning to this.
Hodge in his excellent commentary talks of our fellow believers being "regarded as our own". Because we are all members of the body of Christ then we should have the same interests, feelings and destiny he says. And then he continues most helpfully, " The Joy of sorrow of one member is the joy or sorrow of all the others. The necessities of one are or should be a common burden. All of this continues to build on the foundation laid in verse 10 & 11 - "let love be genuine - love one another with brotherly affection" as the RSV puts it.
So sharing with our fellow christians becomes a duty that is joy because it follows on quite naturally from our love from one another. We are to care for one another in need whether that be spiritual or material just as we would for our own families.
Now you may think that we are dwelling on this one verse for rather a long time but I believe it is necessary. For we have laid before us a simple injunction to care for one another and to love one another and yet simple as it is it is not something we see in common practice. It is one of those instances which we were looking at last Sunday night at After Eight in our Bible Study on how to Study the Bible we read from James chapter 1: "Submit to God and accept the word that he plants in your hearts, which is able to save you" and then comes the part of the verse that is directly relevant to our study this morning:
"Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word: instead put it into practice."
Now there is the rub isn't it? How often we hear both in the readings from Holy Scripture and in sermons commands that are quite straightforward and yet we do not obey them. Well the warning in James is quite
clear isn't it? "Do not deceive yourselves by just listening to his word : instead put it into practice."
And the message here of caring for one another and loving one another is easily understood. Our problem comes in living it day by day here in the reality in which we live and find ourselves.
So we may ask why is it such a hard command to put into practice. Firstly it is because it doesn't come naturally. It is no part of natural fallen impulse of life. We are out to please ourselves and protect our own interests and families. We do not naturally regard one another on the same basis as we do members what we call our biological families.
So we are in a natural state of rebellion against that which is required by God. So we can hear and hear and hear the demands and claims of God and yet quite happily go on making excuses or else ignoring the word altogether.
That is the first reason, the second is linked to the first and addresses our spiritual state. For Paul here is talking to the regenerate heart. He is talking to those who have already submitted their lives wholly to God and got their priorities sorted out. He is talking if you like to those who are truly being reshaped, reborn, re built call it what you will in the image of God.
These were after all the very issues we were dealing with in Romans in chapters five through to eight. And it is the failure of many who would claim the name christian to be truly christian that makes this command difficult to obey. For those who do not have the spirit of christ and have not submitted to the authority not only of the word but of the living God will never truly hear this word of the Lord about brotherly love.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2v14 "Whoever does not have the Spirit cannot receive the gifts that come from God's Spirit. Such a person really does not understand them; they are nonsense to him, because their value can be judged only on a spiritual basis."
So we can hear this word with our human ears and fail to be either convicted or moved by it or else if we have the Spirit within us then we know what God is saying to us and we will endeavour with all our might to conform to that pattern of living that the Lord wants of us.
How I pray that we were all in this state of grace!
However this is to begin to take us away from our point and intrude into this passage that which is not strictly speaking there.
Now let's turn to verse 14. "Bless those who persecute you bless and do not curse them."
Again here is a command built on the foundation of love laid before in verse 9 & 10. "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection outdo one another in showing honour."
And this is essence a quite simple statement of truth. It once again goes against the grain of our natural instincts. Those who have a go at us because we are christians, those who pass anti-christian laws are to be blessed by us. We are to ask God to bless them we are not to call upon the lord to curse them. It is our natural way to curse or swear or name call those who are perceived to be against us.
But the Lord calls us to a higher and better way. We are to ask God to bless them. No curse against them is to pass our lips. This is the work of the saints and is a sore trial for most of us for it is so against the grain and yet it is to this high view of our fellow men and women that the Lord calls us.
And it all stems from understanding quite simply that all men and women are God's creation. We share a common ancestor. We are all sinners. And really the phrase "there but for the grace of God go I" is absolutely true and to be reckoned with. We have been saved from our natural state. We are being reborn and transformed by God and so we must begin to live as God directs.
We are not to blame or look down on our fellow human beings just because we know what they are and we have salvation.
We are to have sympathy, understanding and perhaps even pity for those who walk in darkness still and rail against the Lord. So when they instinctively attack the work of God and the people of God and the things of God we are to rise above this and ask God to bless them - not in mockery but in the hope that they will repent of their ways and come to know the Lord and come to very salvation that is ours.
And of course this all stems from those four words that begin our passage "Let love be genuine!"
Now I do not pretend that what is laid before us in this passage of scripture is easy - far from it but what I would say is that it is only attainable or even approachable when we seek God's help and grace. And I am reminded of the kind of tall order laid before new communicants.
The last question we ask of those seeking full membership is this : "Do you promise depending on the grace of God to confess Christ before men, to serve him in your daily work and to walk in his ways all the days of your life." Now that is a really tough promise to make but as I explain to each and every communicant the key phrase in here is the one that says "depending on the grace of God".
For it is in truth only when we depend day by day on God and his guidance and strength and renewing power that we are able to begin to live as he requires only when as we said last week we are constant in prayer only then will we begin to bear the fruit of the spirit and only then can we truly love one another and bless those who persecute us.