Do Not Pretend to Love

And then the letter turns. The argument stops, all at once, and the rest of it is things to do. He hardly stops for breath. In the room in Rome, whoever was reading it out loud would have had to slow down, because from here on nearly every line is something somebody has to go and do in the morning.

“So I call on you, brothers, by the compassions of God: put your bodies in front of him as a living sacrifice — alive, holy, and pleasing to him. That is the sensible service you owe.” “And do not let this age press you into its shape. Be changed instead, by having your mind made new, so that you can test what God wants: the good thing, the pleasing thing, the finished thing.”

Nobody is to think of himself higher than he ought to think, he says. Think soundly, each with the measure of trust God handed him. In one body there are many limbs, and they do not all do the same job; and that is what they are to each other — one body, and each of them a limb belonging to all the rest. Then he goes through what people have been given, and tells each one to get on with it. If it is speaking for God, then speak, in proportion to your trust. If it is serving, then serve. The one who teaches, teach. The one who encourages, encourage. The one who shares out what there is, do it simply, with no fuss. The one who stands in front, do it carefully. The one who shows mercy, do it cheerfully.

And then comes a run of short commands, and the first one is this. “Let love be without pretending.” Hate what is evil. Hold on tight to what is good. Be warm to each other the way a family is warm. Go ahead of one another in showing honor — that is, each of you get there first. Do not be lazy about it. Boil, in the spirit. Serve the Lord. Be glad because of what you are hoping for. Hold up under trouble. Keep at your praying and do not stop. Share what you have with God’s people who are in need. And go chasing after strangers to bring them into your house.

“Bless the ones who give you a hard time and hunt you down. Bless them, and do not curse them.” Be glad with the people who are glad. Cry with the people who are crying. Think the same way toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things; go along with the people nobody thinks much of. And do not be clever in your own eyes.

“Pay nobody back evil for evil.” Plan out what is good in front of everybody. If it is possible — as far as it depends on you — live at peace with every person there is. Do not go getting your own back, dear friends; leave room for the wrath. For it is written: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. Doing that, you will heap coals of fire on his head.” “Do not be beaten by evil. Beat evil with good.”

Then he says something about the government. Every person is to put himself under the authorities that are over him, because there is no authority except from God, and the ones that exist have been arranged by him. So whoever sets himself against the authority has taken his stand against what God arranged, and will get judgment on himself for it. Rulers are not a terror to good work, he says, but to evil work. Do you want not to be afraid of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will get its praise. But if you do what is evil, be afraid — it does not carry the sword for nothing. So put yourself under it, not only because of the wrath, but because of your own conscience. “And that is why you pay your taxes, too. They are God’s public servants, working at this very thing. Pay everybody what you owe them: tax to the one owed tax, duty to the one owed duty, fear to the one owed fear, honor to the one owed honor.”

“Owe nobody anything — except to love one another. The one who loves the other has finished the whole law.” Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not set your heart on what belongs to somebody else — all of it, he says, and any other command there is, is gathered up under one sentence: love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor. So love is the law, filled full.

And you know what hour it is, he says. It is time to be hauled up out of sleep. The night has gone a long way on; the day has come close. So throw off the things that get done in the dark, and put on the weapons of light. Walk about the way people walk in the daytime: not in wild parties and drinking bouts, not in beds and shameless things, not in fighting and jealousy. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop making plans for the flesh and the things it wants.

Then he comes to the argument they were actually having in Rome, which was about dinner. Some of them ate anything that was put in front of them. Others would not touch meat, and lived on what came out of a garden. And some of them kept certain days as holy days, and others treated every day alike. Each side had decided the other side was a fool, and Paul takes hold of both of them at once and tells them to stop. “Take in the one whose trust is weak — and not so as to argue him into the ground about what he thinks.” The one who eats is not to look down on the one who does not eat. The one who does not eat is not to sit in judgment on the one who does. God has taken that man in. Who are you to judge somebody else’s house servant? He stands or falls to his own master — and he will be made to stand, because his master is able to hold him up.

As for the days: let each person be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who keeps the day keeps it for the Lord. The one who eats, eats for the Lord, and thanks God for the food. The one who does not eat, leaves it for the Lord, and thanks God too. Both of them are thanking God over the same table. For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. Living or dying, we belong to the Lord.

“So why do you judge your brother? And you — why do you treat your brother as nothing? We are all going to stand in front of the judgment seat of God.” Every knee will bend, it is written, and every tongue will say out loud who God is; and each one of us will give an account of himself. “So let us stop judging one another. Decide this instead: not to put anything down in front of your brother that will trip him up.”

Nothing, he says, is unclean in itself. But if your brother is hurt by what you eat, then you are not walking in love any more. Do not wreck, over a plate of food, the man Christ died for. “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. It is rightness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” “And do not let the good thing you have be spoken of as an evil thing.” So go after the things that make peace, and the things that build one another up. Do not pull down the work of God for the sake of a meal. It is a good thing not to eat meat, or drink wine, or do anything at all that your brother trips over. Whatever you are sure of about it, keep that between yourself and God.

And the ones who are strong, he says, ought to carry the weaknesses of the ones who are not strong, instead of pleasing themselves. Let each of us please his neighbor, for his good, to build him up — because Christ did not please himself either. “So take one another in, the way Christ took you in.”

Then he tells them his plans, which is how a letter ends. He had carried the news from Jerusalem round as far as Illyricum, and he had a rule about it: never build on another man’s foundation. So he was going to Spain, and he meant to see them on the way and be sent off from Rome with his stomach full and his heart glad. But first, Jerusalem. Macedonia and Achaia had put money together for the poor believers there, and he was going to carry it himself. He knew what was waiting for him. And he gives the reason it was owed, not merely kind: the nations had been let in on the spiritual things that came from Jerusalem, so they ought to serve Jerusalem back with the solid things — money, and food, and whatever else a hungry believer needs. “I call on you, brothers, to struggle along with me in your prayers to God for me — that I may be got safely away from the ones in Judea who will not be persuaded, and that what I am bringing to Jerusalem may be welcome, so that I can come to you with joy and be rested among you.” He did get to Rome. It took years, and he came up the road in a chain with a soldier fastened to his wrist.

And then the end of it, which is nothing but names — more names than in any other letter he wrote, in a city he had never been to. “I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who serves the gathering at Cenchreae. Take her in, in the Lord, the way God’s people ought to be taken in, and stand by her in whatever she needs from you; for she has been a help to many, and to me too.” “Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me — who put their own necks under the blade to save my life, and not only I thank them but all the gatherings of the nations — and greet the church that meets in their house.” “Greet Epaenetus, whom I love, the first man in Asia to come to Christ. Greet Mary, who worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my own relatives, who were in prison with me, who are well thought of among the apostles, and who were in Christ before I was.” “Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, who works with us, and Stachys, whom I love. Greet Apelles, who came through the test. Greet the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodion my relative. Greet the ones in the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord.” “Greet Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who work hard in the Lord. Greet dear Persis, who worked hard. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord — and his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.” “Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers with them. Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all God’s people with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

There is one warning stuck in among the names. Watch out for the people who split you up and put things in your way that are against the teaching you were given, and turn away from them; they are not serving the Lord but their own stomachs, and with smooth talk and fine words they take in people who mean no harm. Be wise about what is good, he says, and stay green about what is evil.

Then the greetings from the room he was sitting in while he said all this out loud. Timothy, who worked with him. Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, his relatives. Gaius, whose house he was staying in and where the whole gathering met. Erastus, who managed the city. Quartus, the brother. And then one line that is not Paul’s at all. The man who had been sitting on the floor all this time with a reed pen and a stack of sheets, writing down every word of the longest letter Paul ever sent, stopped, and put himself in. “I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord.” Then Phoebe rolled it up and carried it to Rome, and it was read out in a room full of people whose names were in it.