Sermons

Download .pdf

We have begun a new sermon series focused on the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans, chapters 12-15, entitled God's Vision for a New Humanity. In this particular section of Paul's letter, he reveals how the gospel transforms all of our relationships — not only our relationship to God, but our relationship to ourselves, to one another, to the state, to the law, to the times in which we live, to our enemies, and to the weaker members among us. In the passage before us today, Paul specifically reveals how the gospel changes our relationship to one another. 

Now, the word “community” has become a bit of a buzzword in recent decades. Everybody talks about community at school, in the workplace, in the neighborhood, etc. But what kind of community do we actually long for? It’s not a community where we're constantly being evaluated or measured or assessed. It’s not a community where people use us or discard us or diminish us. Rather, what we long for is a community where we are fully known for who we really are and are still loved. And what I would suggest to you is that here in Romans 12, Paul shows us that the gospel creates an entirely different kind of community: the kind of community that we were made for.

And so, as we turn to Romans 12, I'd like us to consider what the passage tells us about the centrality, the essence, and the gift of Christian community. In other words, why do we need it, what does it look like, and how do we get it? So let's consider: 1) the centrality of Christian community, 2) the essence of Christian community, and 3) the gift of Christian community.

⁹Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. ¹⁰Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. ¹¹Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. ¹²Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. ¹³Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.”

Romans 12:9-16

The Centrality of Christian Community

Well, one of the things that we often forget is that most — not all, but most — of the letters in the New Testament are written not to individuals but to a whole community of people. As modern day Americans, we tend to read the Bible through an individualistic lens. And the English language doesn't help us all that much, unless you speak Southern, because English doesn't differentiate between the singular and the plural second person pronoun. Therefore, when we read, "You should do this," or "You should do that," we assume that this is what we're supposed to do as individuals. We figure this is just how God wants me to behave. It's all about me. 

But what you may not realize is that all of these second person pronouns in Romans 12 are in the plural, and therefore, this is what y'all are supposed to do. This isn't all about me; this is about us. It's not written to individuals, but to a community. And you see, right from the start, and straight through the whole Bible, the Bible underscores the centrality of Christian community. Of course, each of us must personally respond to the message of the gospel. God calls us to personally put our faith in Jesus and commit ourselves to following him. But we're not only called to personally commit ourselves to him; we’re also called to form a community of people who are committed to following, loving, and serving God together.

Why is that? Why do we need Christian community? Why can't we just do it on our own? Well, the Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has written that organized religion has lost its monopoly on spirituality, and this explains the rise in the number of people who identify as being spiritual but not religious. As a result of this, Wuthnow refers to many modern Americans as “tinkerers.” He says we tinker with faith. We piece together different thoughts and ideas about religion and spirituality from a variety of different sources. And if you're a tinkerer, you don't think you need a church or a Christian community.

On the one hand, I would agree that if God were merely asking us to give intellectual ascent to his existence, you don't need a church for that. But God is asking us to do far more than merely believe that he exists. As the letter of James says, even demons believe in God. No, God isn't merely asking us to give intellectual ascent to his existence, but rather to love him with our whole heart and center our lives around him.

Christianity is not meant to be merely one more hobby or extracurricular activity that we tack on to our already busy schedules. No, our faith is meant to be the supreme passion of our lives, the center of the wheel around which everything else revolves. It's the fundamental basis of our identity. And you see, if Jesus has swooped down to rescue us from the consequences, the repercussions of our spiritual rebellion and failure, at great cost to himself, then everything has to change. Our values, our priorities, our commitments, the way we use our time, our energy, our money, our resources — everything has to change. Not just our spiritual life but our social life, our academic life, our political life, our economic life, our sexual life — everything has got to change. 

And now you realize why Christian community is so important. Because the Christian life is far too difficult and far too counter-cultural to live out on our own. We need other people invested in our lives who can help us work out the implications of the gospel for ourselves. All kinds of studies have shown that your friends significantly shape the way you think, feel, and act. You really are the company that you keep. 

The people that you spend time with, the people that you talk to are the ones who shape who you are and who you are becoming. And therefore, you will never become the person that God has called you to be on your own. You will only become the person that God has destined you to be through the Church, through Christian community. I can't think of a stronger reason why you should get involved in a Community Group or a Bible Study, or why you should join Jay Harvey and be part of his church plant, City on a Hill. We cannot live the Christian life without community. 

The Essence of Christian Community

So if we need this new kind of community, what does it look like? What is its essence? Well, the answer is easy. The answer is love. Love forms the essence of Christian community, but a very specific form of love. 

In 1960, C. S. Lewis published a book called “The Four Loves” in which he explored four different kinds of love based on four different Greek words: eros, agape, philia, and storge. And what you may not realize is that Paul uses three of those four words right in this passage, in the first two verses. Eros, of course, is romantic love or sexual love. Agape is the unconditional sacrificial love that is most often attributed to God. It's the kind of love that God has for us. 

Philia is the love of friendship, but friendship love can be as close, as strong, as enduring as the love between siblings, and that's why another word is often combined with philia to form “Philadelphia”: brotherly love. And then finally, there's storge, which is usually translated as affection. This is the kind of love that is often born out of happenstance and proximity. Most often it's used to describe the love that a parent has for a child or that brothers and sisters have for one another, because you don't choose your parents, you don't choose your siblings, but you grow up together, and because you share life with one another, no matter how different you may be, no matter what happens in life, there's a deep, unbreakable bond between you. 

Now, you choose romance, you choose who you're going to serve, you choose friendship, but storge chooses you. And this is what makes storge affection such a powerful, unique form of love. Have you ever met people who are so radically different from one another that you would never think that they would ever be friends, and yet there is a deep affection, there's an unbreakable bond between them? Why? Simply because they're placed in the same family, the same class, the same dorm, the same team, the same platoon. And as a result, no matter what differences exist, no matter what happens in life, there's affection. We witnessed this when we welcomed Professor Robert George from Princeton University and Dr. Cornel West from Union Seminary, two people on polar opposite ends of the political spectrum, and yet there's a deep affection between them because at one point they just happened to teach at the same university, and then they started teaching courses together.

So as we turn back to this section of Paul's letter to the Romans, up until this point, Paul has been talking about God's unconditional, sacrificial, agape love for us. But now he turns things around and says that once the gospel comes into our lives, then we are meant to love one another with that same unconditional, sacrificial, agape love. So it's right there in verse 9, "Let love be genuine.” Let agape be genuine. 

But then, along with agape, Paul goes on to speak of these two other forms of love: philia, the love of friendship; and storge, the love of affection. In verse 10, he says, "Love one another with brotherly affection.” Love one another — philadelphia — with brotherly affection — philastorge. So he brings philadelphia and philastorge together. And what is Paul, therefore, trying to show us? Well, what he's saying is that the moment that you put your faith in Jesus for your standing before God — the moment that you're no longer trusting in yourself and your own record and your own performance, but you're trusting in Jesus, his record, and his performance for your standing before God — the moment that you do that, God adopts you as his beloved son or daughter. And that means that the creator God of the universe becomes your father. But not only that; it means that you and me become brother and sister. We become family. 

Now, you might say, "So what? Big deal. I already knew that. I'm familiar with the idea that Christians are called to love one another as brothers and sisters. Tell me something I don't know.” Okay, I will. What you may not realize is that in the ancient world, the idea that Christians who are not related to one another by blood would love one another like family was shocking. And to people living in the Greco-Roman world, it wasn't just puzzling, it was threatening.

The reason why is because the Greco-Roman world was hierarchical. It was a deeply stratified culture. And that meant that most relationships were structured and very formal. People didn't relate to one another as equals. Are you kidding me? No, every relationship was marked by differences of status. And not only that, they were living in a culture that was dominated by honor/shame dynamics, which meant that relationships were also strategic. You might even say that they were performative to a degree, because what really mattered was public recognition in a relationship, not one's personal feelings. Reciprocity was key, and that meant that relationships were transactional. There was really no such thing as a free gift. Every gift created an obligation.

That's why the saying in the Roman world was, "I give so that you may give." Everything was based on reciprocity. There were always strings attached. And that's why it was alarming that suddenly there was a whole new society of people who weren't related by blood, but they were loving one another like family. They treated each other as equals. They radically shared their resources, and they were willing even to sacrifice for one another. 

So here's an example of someone who was threatened by this. Lucian of Samosata was a well-known author in the second century, and he critiqued Christianity. He sought to mock Christians. But even as he mocks them for the ways in which they relate to one another, he reveals the relational ethic of Christians from the very beginning. So at one point, Lucian writes this: 

Their leader, the Christian's leader, their first law giver, persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another. They despise all things indiscriminately and consider them common property, receiving such doctrines without any definite evidence. As soon as they hear that one of their number is in prison, they all come flocking to him. From the very break of day, widows and orphan children can be seen waiting near the prison while their officials even sleep inside with him. Money comes from them in no small amount. 

Now, he's mocking them because he thinks that the Christians are gullible. They're easily manipulated. It seems as if they'll give money, large sums of money, to just about anyone, so maybe you should try to take them for a ride. But while he is mocking them, he reveals how countercultural their relationships were, because the relationships of the early Christians were not status-based, they weren't performative, and they weren't based on reciprocity. Ancient people looked at Christians and they said the way in which they relate to one another makes no sense. It made no sense because Jesus introduced into the world an entirely new kind of love. And he pours that love into our lives and expects us to reflect it out to one another.

So in Romans 12, Paul defines the essence of Christian community as love, and he tells us about 12 different things about this love. So if you'll give me an hour, I'm gonna walk through each of them one by one. (Just kidding, I'm not going to do that to you…) We can group these 12 or so things into three categories. What Paul tells us here is that the essence of Christian community is love, and Christian love is: 1) real, 2) reordered, and 3) resilient.

Christian Love is Real

First of all, Christian love is real. It's not a performance. It's not an act. You're not just putting on a show that's based on pretense. In verse 9 Paul says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil, and cling to what is good." You see, this love is concerned with truth. So when he writes, “Let love be genuine,” literally what he says is, “Let love be unhypocritical.” Love has to be real. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. You should not be phony or fake in your relationships. You shouldn't be outwardly polite yet internally disdainful toward someone. 

In the South, there's an example of this. There's an expression in the South where, you know, if someone turns to you with a smile on their face and they say, “Well, bless your little heart,” what they really mean is “You're an idiot.” Now, in New York, we have a different way of expressing these things. If you sense that someone might be a little bit incapable or incompetent, you might turn to them and smile and say, “You are an idiot.” So we have a little bit less pretense to deal with here in New York.

This is important though, because any church (and really any community that's based on traditional values, like a social club) could develop what you might call a “culture of niceness,” where there is that veneer of pleasantness, but behind that polite niceness, what you're really masking is a culture or a spirit of bitterness, of gossip, of slander, of prejudice. But for love to be real, it means that we have to say what we mean and mean what we say. And for love to be real, it also suggests that we have to be willing to demonstrate tough love sometimes. We love each other enough to confront one another — to be direct about problems or sins in our lives or in the lives of others.

It's true: Clarity is kindness. We're called to be direct and clear, but with gentleness and respect. Now, some of us, by natural disposition, are confrontational. And right now I am not talking to you. If anything, you need to learn to be gentle. But many of us shy away from saying anything at all, even when we know that we should, because we don't want to rock the boat. We want to preserve the relationship. We don't want to upset the other person. And we think that's the loving thing to do, but that's not the loving thing to do. It's actually quite selfish. 

For love to be genuine, you have to hate what is evil and stick like glue to what is good. And that means you have to speak the truth in love. A classic example of failure in this area would be a parent who refuses to consistently correct or discipline a child because, “Oh, I just can't bear to upset my child! I can't bear my child's anger or tears!” Well, what's going to happen? That kid is never going to be able to grow up or mature. But it's not the child's fault; no, it's the parent’s fault for refusing to confront the issues in love.

This can show up in all kinds of relationships: with siblings, between spouses, and within a Christian community. If you're not willing to call someone out for something they did or said that was damaging to themselves or to others because you're afraid of losing their affection, well then what that reveals is that you're not really loving the other person; you're only loving yourself, because what you love about the other person is what you're getting from that other person: their acceptance and approval. Or maybe you love comfort, and you just want to maintain the status quo. But true love is willing to confront at the risk of losing the relationship in the short-term in order to help the other person in the long-term.

Christian Love is Reordered

So Christian love is real, but secondly, Paul tells us that Christian love is reordered. Christian love runs in reverse. In the Greco-Roman world, relationships were based on hierarchy, status, and reciprocity. People at the top were honored, and people at the bottom of the heap were ignored. In our own day, much the same thing still happens. We want to foster relationships with the people whom we think can be an advantage to us in some way. And so we gravitate toward the people who look like us and talk like us and act like us and live like us, and who make us look good. We want to enter into relationships with people who offer us something, not who cost us something.

But Jesus turned the values of the world upside down and inside out, and he threw love in reverse. See, if you want to create a pecking order, if you want to play the comparison game, if you want to compete with one another, Paul lays out your competition. Verse 10: "Outdo one another in showing honor." Rather than trying to win as much honor for yourself, try to give as much honor away as you can. Verse 13: "Contribute to the needs of the saints and show hospitality." Verse 16: "Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly,” with those at the bottom of the heap, and “never be wise in your own sight."

So rather than seeking personal advantage, you have to recognize that every single person possesses not only dignity, but equal dignity. And so you should see each person as infinitely precious, infinitely valuable, infinitely important, and they should be treated that way. But this does not come easily to us. We have to train ourselves. We have to train ourselves to concentrate more on the needs of other people than on the needs of ourselves.

The reason why we do this is because we belong to one another. We're family. And as family, we have a claim on one another. What we do with our time, our money, our resources, our relationships, our influence is not a private affair. It affects us all. Think about a small nuclear family. You couldn't just say, "Well, in our family, it doesn't really matter. I can do whatever I want with my time, my money, my energy, my resources." No. What you do with what God has entrusted to you is not a private affair; it affects everyone in the family. And that's true in the church as well. We are not our own. We belong to one another. 

So is that how we treat people? Is that how we treat one another within the context of the church? This comes as a real challenge to us, and it's made even more difficult by the fact that Christian community is one of the few institutions in the world that binds people together who would otherwise be enemies. Just think about Robbie George and Cornel West, who recently came to speak to us. Out there in the world, Robbie George and Cornel West should be enemies divided by race, economics, politics, and theology. But in here, in the Church, they're not just friends; they are brothers. The affection between them is unmistakable. There is an unbreakable bond of love. 

Christian Love is Resilient

So love is reordered, and then finally, love is resilient. Let's keep it real: There is nothing easy about loving people, especially across difference. But Paul acknowledges that if we're going to love each other like that — if we're going to love one another like family — at times, it will exhaust you. He knows that he's asking so much of us. He's asking everything of us. We may run out of steam. We may be tempted to give up. We might refuse to forgive that person for the thousandth time. He acknowledges that. But Christian love is resilient. Love doesn't quit when it gets hard. It sticks to it to the very end.

So are you feeling exhausted? Verse 11: "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord." Are you tempted to give up? Verse 12: "Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer,” because you're going to need it. Verse 14: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them." Verse 15: "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." 

Now in many relationships, you can just walk away when things get difficult. When things get hard, you can head for the exits. But not with family. Brothers and sisters may drive each other crazy — you can get in a huge fight with a sibling — but it doesn't change the fact that you're still siblings. And see, with family, we have to fight for the relationship. You keep fighting, and you keep forgiving, and you keep praying, and you keep pursuing. Love is resilient, and resilient love requires deep, deep empathy. It requires deep empathy to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.

Now, it's easy to rejoice with people if you're not competing against them, if you're not playing the comparison game with them. The hardest people for us to rejoice with are the ones who are the most similar to us — people the same age or in the same stage of life, people in the same profession. 

So if you're a musician, can you rejoice with a fellow musician who lands a big job in an orchestra? If you're an artist, can you rejoice with a fellow artist who's winning critical acclaim? If you're not married but you want to be, can you rejoice with the friend who just got engaged? If you want a family but you don't have one yet, can you rejoice with the friend that just gave birth? Can you rejoice with the colleague who got the big promotion that you wanted? Can you rejoice with the fellow pastor who's witnessed ministry success, whatever that might look like? Can we rejoice with those who rejoice, and can we weep with those who weep? Rather than remaining at a safe and detached distance, can we enter into their pain and make it our own, even if it reminds us of our own scars? 

The question is, can we become a church like that, that rejoices with those who rejoice and who weeps with those who weep? Some churches are very good at rejoicing and celebrating with those who are experiencing blessing and favor in their lives. Everything is positive. And some churches are really good at weeping with those who weep over suffering and sorrow and tragedy and injustice, but there's very little rejoicing. But can we do both? At the same time, can we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep? Can we be real? Because love is real, love is reordered, and love is resilient.

The Gift of Christian Community 

Well, if this kind of love feels impossible, that's because it is. The truth is that this love cannot be created. It cannot be manufactured. It cannot be achieved. It cannot be counterfeited. This love can only be received. The only way to love like this is to be loved like this. This love has to be given to you before it can flow through you. And you see, that is what Jesus has done for us. This is how Jesus loved us. 

The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is far superior to us. I mean, talk about hierarchy and status. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God; we're nothing in comparison to him! And yet Hebrews 2 tells us that despite who we are, despite our guilt and our shame, Jesus is not ashamed of us. He's not ashamed of you. He's not ashamed of me. He's not ashamed to be called our brother. 

And even though he is in the form of God, he didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, something to be seized, something to be taken advantage of for himself. Rather he emptied himself by becoming a servant. Being born in human likeness and being found in human form, he humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross. And he did it all not to gain honor for himself, but to give honor to you and to me. 

See, Jesus’ love is real. It wasn't performative. It wasn't all just a show. It wasn't an act. No, his love is real because he knows you to the core of who you really are, and he loves you. He stays. And his love is reordered. He considered your hopes and dreams, your fears and concerns, as being more important than his own. And as a result of that, he was willing to confront us about our sin and our rebellion and our failure. He was willing to risk losing that relationship in the short term in order to help us in the long term.

And that's why his love is resilient: because he didn't bail on the relationship as soon as things got hard. No, he stuck with it. He was willing to enter into our pain and make it his own, so much so that he endured the cross. And it wasn't because you and I are so lovely and so easy to love. No, he endured the cross in order to make us lovely.

You see, this love, it can't be manufactured. It can't be created. It can't be achieved. It can't be counterfeited. It can only be received as a gift. And when it is, it creates a whole new kind of community that throws love in reverse, where love is real, love is reordered, and love is resilient. The question is, can we here at Central receive this love and let it flow through us so that we might become an altogether different kind of community — the kind of community that we all long for, and the kind of community that we were made for? May it be so. 

Let me pray.

Father God, we acknowledge that apart from you, we are desperately lost. And there's simply no way that we can become the people that you've called us to be on our own. Christian community is central. And so we pray that you would help us to lay hold of the essence of this community: love — an altogether new kind of love that you introduced into the world. And we pray that you would give it to us so that it might flow through us, all to your glory. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.