Paul is not telling Christians to go searching for extraordinary opportunities to demonstrate holiness. Instead, he fills the ordinary relationships God has already assigned with extraordinary mercy.
Paraenetic passages like this epistle lesson from Romans 12 get abused by folks that love, love, love them some imperatives. I have heard preachers preach as if Paul suddenly forgets everything he has spent the front-loaded chapters saying, and, instead, decides to hand the Church a new Sinai. The result is a sermon that sounds suspiciously like, “Now that you’ve been justified, here’s your new list.” Preacher, that is not Romans, not by a mile.
The hinge of the entire epistle is still back at Romans 12:1: “Therefore, by the mercies of God...” Everything that follows is animated by mercy, not imposed by law. This entire section is pastoral exhortation, not a new covenant legal code. Paul describes the shape mercy takes once it enters a human life, and as a preacher, you are called to preserve that order. The commands are real and the imperatives matter, but they are fruit before they are duty. They are being taught here as vocations rather than being elevated as virtues!
One fruitful way into the text is to notice how nearly every command has to do with someone else. Honor one another. Contribute to the needs of the saints. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Associate with the lowly. Feed your enemy. Love, in Romans 12, is never an abstraction. It is a doing word, a transitive verb. It always has an object.
Which means Paul is not describing a personality type. He is not telling Christians to become nicer people. He is describing vocations. Through all of the estates God has instituted, in every station in which God has placed you, you live your Christian life within a web of neighbors: Husband, wife, parent, child, citizen, employer, employee, pastor, hearer, friend, stranger, and even enemy. Paul is not telling Christians to go searching for extraordinary opportunities to demonstrate holiness. Instead, he fills the ordinary relationships God has already assigned with extraordinary mercy. This is not a text of moral lessons! It is a recognition that God has placed you here. Congratulations! You as a preacher have hearers. This is a gift from God who gives you as many callings as you have neighbors. You do not choose your vocation. God chooses to place you there. Remind your people of how God has chosen them too!
You can remind them in the vein of Luther’s old observation: God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does. That sentence functions as a fitting commentary on all of Romans 12. None of these commands improves God’s opinion of you. None adds a single ounce to your justification. God lacks nothing. Your child, however, needs patience. Your spouse needs forgiveness. Your ageing parent needs your presence. Your congregation needs encouragement. Your lonely neighbor needs hospitality. Your enemy needs someone who refuses to become another enemy. Grace has already flowed vertically from Christ to you. Now, it flows horizontally from you to your neighbor (hear that cruciform shape?). The Christian life is profoundly inefficient if your goal is impressing God (it can never do that!). It is extraordinarily productive if your goal is loving the neighbor God has entrusted to you.
The Christian life is profoundly inefficient if your goal is impressing God (it can never do that!). It is extraordinarily productive if your goal is loving the neighbor God has entrusted to you.
Resist treating this reading as twenty disconnected proverbs. Yes, there are a lot of imperatives, but once again, this is not a moral lesson text. Preach its unity. Every exhortation asks the Christian to spend herself for another: Honor, serve, give, bless, rejoice, weep, share, feed, and overcome evil with good. The entire section is cruciform. The pattern of the Christian life is the pattern of the cross.
Which means the deepest way to preach the text is not to ask, “How can I finally become this kind of person?” The text is not asking that question, so neither should you. The text describes the fruit which reflects the tree, so get to the tree. That should prompt the question, “Who has already been this person for me?” The answer, of course, is Christ. This is where you as a preacher ought to reflect awhile yourself.
Think seriously about how Christ actively fulfills each of the exhortations Paul gives. Rather striking! Christ’s love was genuine. He abhorred evil and clung perfectly to what was good. He outdid everyone in showing honor. He was fervent in spirit, patient in tribulation, and constant in prayer. He welcomed strangers. He blessed those who persecuted Him. He associated with fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and all the lowly. He never repaid evil for evil. He lived peaceably as far as it depended on Him. He even fed Judas. Read this section slowly enough and you will find it is a Jesus biography.
No one should be surprised by that. The scripture is not divided into the stuff God does for His part, and the bits you must pick up as your responsibility. No, this is not a book that commands the Christian life. Jesus IS the Christian life (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:4). Every imperative first finds its fulfillment in Christ before it ever becomes fruit in you or your hearer. When you remember that, the Gospel will never be a tag-along at the end of a law sermon, a reduced gospel. Christ does not just show us what obedience looks like, an example to follow. He actually fulfills, He renders, He works, He does. This is why “God at work” is also a fitting phrase for this whole business of vocation. It is God who works through the callings, using you and all people as His masks, and working through the little things in family, in state, in church, to accomplish His good and perfect will.
Christ at work in this text comes to a climax at Romans 12:19-21, so dilate here in your own sermon craft. This is a rich Christological thread to weave through the entire sermon. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God.” Do not empty this of its richness by interpreting it simply as God saying, “Don’t worry. I’ll get ’em.” We are not talking about the wrath of God simply as some kind of postponed revenge. For the Christian, the wrath of God has its location in time and space, very precisely. It falls right on Christ. This is where the preacher can move from ethics to atonement almost effortlessly (told you it was not a passage just full of moral lessons; this is God at work!). Why may I relinquish vengeance? Because vengeance belongs to God. And what has God done with His vengeance? He has exhausted it on His Son. Every injustice committed against me must finally go one of two places: Either Christ has to carry it on the cross, or it remains on the one who rejects the crucified Christ.
It is God who works through the callings, using you and all people as His masks, and working through the little things in family, in state, in church, to accomplish His good and perfect will.
This is also why Christians are free to forgive. Forgiveness is not pretending evil never mattered. Forgiveness is refusing to collect a debt that Christ already carried or that God Himself will judge. The cross is not the denial of justice. It is justice fulfilled. Paul’s exhortation not to avenge ourselves rests upon the confidence that God has already dealt with sin in the only place where it can truly be dealt with: The cross of Christ.
It is not for nothing that Paul weaves in the proverb here: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him.” Christians do not hear those words without remembering the God who feeds His enemies too. Every Lord’s Day the Church gathers not as those who deserve it, but as those who were once enemies. The One whom we offended prepares the meal. The Host feeds those who nailed Him to the tree. The Crucified places into hostile mouths the very body and blood that purchased their peace. There may be no more vivid picture of Romans 12 than the altar itself. God does not merely command, “Feed your enemy.” He does it, week after week.
Do not miss Paul’s closing sentence: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” The temptation is to hear this as one final impossible assignment. Preach it first as the story of Christ. On Good Friday, evil appeared to overcome goodness. Hatred defeated love. Violence defeated peace. Death defeated life. But Easter reveals what was actually happening all along. It was good overcoming evil, by suffering, dying, rising, and forgiving. The resurrection is God’s declaration that goodness is stronger than evil because Christ is stronger than death.
This is what gives the preacher the power to return to the Christian. United to that crucified and risen Lord, Christians begin living Easter-shaped lives within the vocations God has assigned them. Husbands love. Mothers comfort. Children honor. Employers deal justly. Citizens seek peace. Congregations practice hospitality. Christians feed enemies. None of these works earn the Father’s favor. They are simply the fruit borne by branches which abide in the One who calls Himself the Vine! Mercy received becomes mercy given. The God who needed nothing, nevertheless, gave everything in His Son. Freed forever from having to prove ourselves before God, we are finally free for the people who actually need what grace produces: Our neighbors. Deliver the Christ to your neighbors this week, preacher, and trust God will work as He has promised!
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Romans 12:9-21.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you preaching Romans 12:9-21.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
