Romans 12:9-10 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 

We all know how to fake love and how to be polite. Even if our parents didn’t train us in proper social behavior, we’ve learned a version of it over the years. If we’re in contact with neighbors on a regular basis, we’re a regular churchgoer, or we’re part of a workforce, we know that we don’t have equal affection toward everyone we share space with. For us to go on in life, most of us have developed a way of interacting with others that stays away from deliberate offense and includes a level of acceptance somewhere between tolerance and affection.

Being polite is a good thing and has great benefits. To the degree that it reflects the love of God, it honors Him. But God has more for us…and not so much more to do as more to receive, enjoy, and communicate. We can read Romans 12:9-10 as a command that sounds somewhere between “that sounds wonderful, warm, and fuzzy” to “you gotta be kidding me…Lord, do you know those people I have to deal with here, and you’re telling me to act out of love!”

This is when we should follow Hebrews 3:1 and “consider Christ,” who 1) knows exactly what kind of people we have to deal with, and 2) had to deal with some pretty challenging characters in his own day (can you say “Judas”?) But that’s not the point God is making here in these verses. The second half of Romans 12:9 and all of verse 10 put out a vision of what loving behavior looks like: Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Sounds good, and can seem next to impossible.

But the first half of v. 9 tells the story: Let love be genuine. Focusing as we do in this series on the word “let,” we see that there is something we must allow to “let” come into and out of us. God didn’t say, “Make love be genuine.” He said, “Let love be genuine.” Genuine love is found in our Savior, and releasing the powerful love of God to others is a matter of tapping into His love for us, and then extending it outward. We don’t need to make anything happen; we just need to connect and let it happen.

We might say, “But Lord, I can’t feel that love, so how can I release it to others?” Feelings aside, we can open our hearts, turn to God, connect with Him as much as we’re able to, and receive and release His love. For those of who don’t feel it, remember that “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Love isn’t found in our feelings, either toward us or toward others. It’s found on the cross.

We need to connect with how much God loves the person or people we’re connecting with. Even a difficult person needs God’s love desperately and perhaps doesn’t get much of it in his or her life. Again, if we say, “But God, it’s so hard to love this person,” His response is to point us to His love for this person, which is, as v. 9 says, genuine. His love is not just a better version of ours, one that that’s nicer and more patient. It’s a whole other force that only gets released when we step aside and let something in and through us that is not originating from us.

As a minister friend says about relating to others, “Get the heart of God for this person, and then proceed.” We might need to repent of judgment and hard-heartedness. But then, as we agree with God that this person needs His love, we can get that loving heart of God for them. This is not anything that needs to be worked through. This is an exchange—our lack of love for God’s unfathomable love. No working up, no psyching up. We just receive His steadfast love and let it flow out of us.