Will You Be A Villager?

This Sunday, we are wrapping up our Romans 8 series with an “epilogue” in Romans 12. This week we will be looking at Romans 12:9-21. Paul gives us a beautiful and challenging picture of what a community shaped by the mercy of Jesus looks like (Romans 12:1).

This invitation was radical in Paul’s time and it is still radical today. We are saturated in a culture of contempt and rage. Confession: I personally feel this most when I’m driving in San Diego. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like drivers have gotten more reckless lately. My personal response when someone does something crazy and unsafe is usually a thumbs down. It feels slightly more chill than honking and better than some of the alternatives. A few weeks ago, I gave someone a thumbs down when they almost hit me and they absolutely lost it. The whole interaction probably lasted five seconds and I couldn’t hear a single word they said. But I could see their face. The rage and hatred directed at me was honestly pretty scary.

Afterward I kept thinking about how strange that moment was. This person didn’t know me and I didn’t know them, but he deeply impacted me (and I to him!). In a matter of five seconds, we both experienced dehumanization of one another. While we may not all thumbs down drivers or yell at strangers through car windows, there are times that it can be easy to reduce people to the thing they did, the opinion they hold, the way they voted, the way they parent, the thing they posted, or the way they hurt us etc. Contempt tells us that some people are beneath our respect and eventually beneath our care.

Romans 12 offers us another way of life. Paul says, “Love must be sincere” (Romans 12:9). He then describes a community that gives honor away, welcomes people in, enters into each other’s joy and pain, refuses revenge, and even responds to evil with good. The love Paul challenges Christians to share extends to those we belong to, to those we differ from, and all the way to those that oppose us! YEW! My prayer is that we would become a community so saturated in the mercy of God that we are set free to love radically.