Summary of passage: Paul offers sage words for living: Love others. Honor others above yourselves. Always serve God. Be joyful, patience, and faithful. Share with those who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Questions:
3) That love is sincere. Cling to what is good. Hate evil. Be devoted to others. Put others above yourself. Serve God always. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with those in need. Practice hospitality. Remembering all this helps us to keep in God’s will and be of heaven and not earth.
4) Paul’s definition is all about sacrificing for others and doing for others. Love in our culture is all about how “you” feel and what is best for “you.” Part of hating evil is recognizing and acknowledging what is evil. So many today want to sugar coat sin. Sin is sin no matter how big or how small. Recognize for what it is, call it what it is, work to eradicate it from your life and the life of those around you. Only then can you sincerely love like God loves.
5) Proverbs 8:13: “To fear the Lord (here means righteous living) is to hate evil”. Evil includes here pride, arrogance, evil behavior, and perverse speech.
Proverbs 13:5: “The righteous hate what is false”. God’s Word is truth. False is Satan’s word. We are to hate falsehood and Satan and sin, which brings “shame and disgrace.” With Jesus, there is no shame nor disgrace. Only grace and glory and honor.
Ecclesiastes 3:8: “A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” Evil is a part of human nature.
Isaiah 61:8: The Lord says through Isaiah that He hates robbery and iniquity. This is the opposite of God. He is complete good. He cannot stand evil.
Amos 5:15: “Hate evil, love good.”
Luke 14:26: Jesus here says his followers should hate their earthly life and the evil inside of others when they are here on earth.
Evil is sugar coated in our culture. It’s made to be not so bad. These verses tell us how evil is against everything God and Jesus are and want. As we grow to be more like Jesus, we need to treat evil like Jesus: don’t abide it. Period.
Conclusions: So focused on verse 9 today and evil. BSF has a good point. So many people today think evil is too strong of a word. But all sin is evil. It is not of God. We must remember this and quit believing our little sins are okay. They’re not! Strive every day to eradicate evil from your life/nature.
End Notes: Other translations say: “Let love be without hypocrisy”. This isn’t real love at all. However, I firmly believe in “fake it till you make it.” Some people are hard to love, but treating them with dignity and respect can grow into love.
We are to hate evil AND cling to what is good. Most of time we pick only one to do.
Be affectionate and genuine to one another.
This is simply a call for good manners, right? A lot of kids nowadays have no manners at all.
We are also called to work hard.
“Spiritual fervor” can be translated as “boiling.”
The call to hope in the Bible usually has in mind the call to our ultimate home with Jesus. Everything we do must be with an eye towards heaven. Difficult times and troubles do not excuse us to abandon our hope and love and prayer. Just because we’re having a bad day doesn’t mean you should make others have a bad day. Always cling to Jesus and what he offers. It’s a cause for joy (1 Peter 1:3-9).
Leon Morris explains patient as: “denotes not a passive putting up with things, but an active, steadfast endurance.” Enduring triumphantly which is necessary for Christians because affliction is our inevitable experience (John 16:33; 2 Timothy 3:12) Tribulation/affliction: “denotes not some minor pinprick, but deep and serious trouble.”
“Faithful in prayer”: One must not only pray in hard times, but also maintain communion with God through prayer at all times (Luke 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:17).
God’s people is sometimes translated as “saints”, which all believers are. The idea here is practice what you preach. Put into action what you believe. The ancient Greek word for hospitality is literally translated “love for strangers.” In addition, “given” (translated for us as practice) is a strong word, sometimes translated “persecute” (as in Romans 12:14). The idea is to “pursue” people you don’t know with hospitality. This is love in action, not just feelings.