Scripture: Romans 12:10
Sermon Series: One Another – Doing Church Life Together – Sermon 03
Christian author, Keith Miller (picture) tells of an outgoing 40-year-old woman who was part of a sharing group he led. Here’s her story:
“When I was a tiny little girl, my parents died and I was put in an orphanage. I was not pretty at all and no one seemed to want me. But I longed to be adopted and loved by a family as far back as I can remember. I thought about it day and night, but everything I did seemed to go wrong. I must have tried too hard to please the people who came to look me over and what I did was to drive them away. But then one day the head of the orphanage told me that a family was coming to take me home with them. I was so excited that I jumped up and down and cried like a little baby. The matron reminded me that I was on trial and this might not be a permanent arrangement, but I just knew that somehow it would work out. So I went with this family and started to school. I was the happiest little girl you can imagine, and life began to open up for me just a little.
But then one day a few months later, I skipped home from school and ran into the front door of the big old house we lived in. No one was at home, but in the middle of the front hall was my battered suitcase with my little coat thrown across it. As I stood there it suddenly dawned on me what it meant—I didn’t belong there anymore.”
Miller goes on to say that when she stopped speaking there was hardly a dry eye in the group, but then she cleared her throat and said almost matter-of-factly, “This happened to me seven times before I was 13 years old….”
I doubt that anyone here has ever had such a horrible experience, yet many of us come from terribly broken, dysfunctional families. Because of that, when we talk about church as a family, or that this church is a family – that we’re to love and live like siblings, brothers and sisters in Christ, we still have baggage from our families of origin that can be barriers to us understanding and living as a spiritual family that Jesus designed us to be.
Dysfunctional is the buzzword of our messed-up generation. Usually we hear “dysfunctional” applied to human relationships—dysfunctional families, dysfunctional marriages. Dysfunctional can describe any intimate relationship that doesn’t work the way that it’s supposed to work.
Here’s a working definition of a dysfunctional family. It’s one in which there’s been a major breakdown in the basic relationships within the family so that the family no longer functions properly.
There are many symptoms of a dysfunctional family. Let me share five of the more common: Estrangement—Family members avoid other family members. Anger—It may be expressed or repressed. Distrust—Seen in faulty patterns of communication. Deception—Inability to speak the truth to other family members. Unhealthy Secrecy—Hiding the truth. Dysfunctional families aren’t new. The problem goes back to the very beginning. The real cause of dysfunctionality is the entrance of sin into the human race.
Ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God, every family has been dysfunctional to some degree. Yet because Jesus died for our sins, we can be born-again when we trust Christ as our Savior. Salvation is God’s plan so that at the new birth, we’re born into a new family, a functional one.
This morning we want to focus on Romans 12:10. “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” Or the NIV, “Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.”
In this verse Paul brings together two family words. “Be devoted” is the adjective philostorgos which describes natural affection for relatives, typically the love of a parent for a child. The other word philadelphia means brotherly love. It’s describes the love of brothers and sisters for each other.
Both words were originally applied to blood relationships in a human family. Because we are a new family, Paul reapplies them to the deep affection that’s to unite the members of the family of God in a church.
Yet like a family, a church can be dysfunctional. God’s plan is that we love each other like brothers and sisters. It’s not always the case.
This is so much more than friendship. We’re literally to be Devoted like family to one another. We’re to have a deep level of commitment to each other like a healthy family. As Joni Eareckson Tada (picture) said, “Believers are never told to become one; we are already one and are expected to act like it.”
Paul uses the body metaphor to illustrate that Christians are “members of one another.” It serves as a beautiful illustration of how the church functions. Every believer, like the parts of body, is necessary and important to God’s plan. But like all analogies, the “body” can only go so far in describing our new reality.
The “family” as God designed it to work gives us a greater appreciation of what a healthy church should be. This metaphor adds emotion, a dimension of tenderness, concern and loyalty – or human emotion and devotion.
When Paul used the “body” metaphor, he used the physical aspects to illustrate the necessity of every member’s participation in the church. When he used the “family” metaphor, he was illustrating the psychological and emotional aspects of relational Christianity. When the New Testament says we’re one body, it’s focusing on the unity we have. Being a devoted family focuses on the love, commitment and affection that brothers and sisters in Christ are to have for each other. If you’re taking notes…
1. This spiritual family devotion is to be normal in a local church family. The word “brothers” in the original language referred to the “Christian family.” It’s used some 230 times throughout the New Testament beginning in the Book of Acts. Brothers literally means “from the same womb.” It’s a distinctly “family term.” When it refers to Christians, it means “brothers and sisters in Christ.” We’re “born again” into God’s forever family and are to be vitally related to each other through a common birth. We’ve committed our lives to Christ and claimed God’s promise of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” We believed Acts 4:12: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
When it comes to devoted love in this spiritual family affection, details matter. Deborah Tannen (picture) writes about her great-aunt, a longtime widow who was obese, balding, and arthritic, and yet was dearly loved by an elderly man who lived in a nearby nursing home. Tannen writes:
“One evening she had dinner out, with friends. When she returned home, her male friend called and she told him about the dinner. He listened with intense interest and asked her, ‘What did you wear?’ When she told me this, she began to cry: ‘Do you know how many years it has been since anyone asked me what I wore?” When my great-aunt said this, she was saying that it had been years since anyone had cared deeply—intimately—about her. The exchange of relatively insignificant details about daily life sends a metamessage of rapport and caring.” When we’re family, when we’re committed to each other. We care so we want to know the details.
What do you think of when you hear the word devotion? Devotion is defined as “a strong feeling of love or loyalty.”
What’s an example of being devoted to someone or something? A professional athlete? A couple celebrating their 75th anniversary? Retiring after working the same job for 50 years? Loyalty to a brand or company? For the most part devotion is foreign to our culture. Ours is an era that promotes a lack of devotion. It’s a consumer-driven, self-seeking culture.
Bart Starr (picture) played for the Packers for 16 seasons. This is the time of free agency. One of the most sought after NFL players is 28-year-old, Yannick Ngakoue (picture). His ability to stop the run is probably why he’s headed to his 6th team in four years. He may be devoted to the game but no one would say he’s devoted to a team.
If you’re not happy in your marriage, get divorced. If your job doesn’t meet your needs, find a new one. If a teacher holds students to high academic standards, drop the class. If the coach doesn’t play your kid, find another team. A lack of devotion contaminates every molecule of our culture, even the church. If a church doesn’t do what you want done, find one that will.
Please understand, there may be good reasons to terminate a marriage, quit a job, drop a class, sign with a different team, or find a new church. Yet often these decisions are made with a drive to please our own selfish desires.
So this plea for loving devotion has profound implications for a church family. A Christian’s devotion to one another is born out of their love for one another as members of God’s family. We talked about our call to “love one another” last Sunday, yet love for each other can be vague. This command to “love one another” is lived out by being devoted to one another. We’re called to live lives of loving devotion because we’re a family. We’re “blood brothers and blood sisters.” We’ve been adopted into God’s family through the blood of Jesus. Our love for one another as spiritual siblings is a love that binds us together and produces a life of devotion to one another.
So let’s ask some hard questions: Are we devoted to one another as a loving family? How devoted are you to this church family? Would you leave our church because you didn’t get your way? Would you leave because your feelings got hurt? Would you leave because you disagree with someone over something or someone offends you?
Sometimes it’s necessary to leave a church if it’s abandoned orthodox doctrine, stopped preaching Scripture, or was unethical or financially irresponsible. That’s not the reason most leave a church.
This appeal for loving devotion to a church family is no doubt foreign to some of you, but it’s supremely biblical. Maybe you’re hesitant to be devoted to this church family because you’ve been hurt by some other church.
It’s noteworthy that most of us have had a bad job experience. It didn’t keep us from finding another job. In fact, when we leave a job, we usually give a two weeks’ notice. When people leave a church they often just disappear.
Please understand. We’re a family but we’re an imperfect family. We’re going to let each other down. We’re going to hurt each other’s feelings. We’re going to get on each other’s nerves. We’re going to stick our foot in our mouth. We’re going to sin. In those difficult moments we must commit to being a family – loving one another, forgiving one another, serving one another, comforting one another, and being devoted to one another in Christ.
And regardless of where you’re at, in the midst of your doubts, hesitations, fears, questions, vulnerability, or commitment – God is big enough to heal the hurt, help overcome the fear, and empower you to live out a life of loving devotion. God’s call is not to simply “attend” but to “belong” to a local church—lovingly devoted to each other as a family!
It’s worth the risk! It’s worth the sacrifice! If you risk living a life of loving devotion, you’ll have the joy of being a part of a church family that will care for you, encourage you, challenge you, and help you know God better, growing to be more like Jesus. You’ll have the joy of being a part of a church family that’s caught up in something bigger than ourselves so that we can fulfill our disciple-making mission and make Jesus’ name great in our community. It takes devotion. God commands us to be devoted to each other.
Tim Keller (picture) explained this in a succinct, powerful way: “We live in a culture in which the interests and desires of the individual take precedence over those in the family, group, or community. As a result, a high percentage of people want to achieve spiritual growth without losing their independence to a church or any organized institution…There is no way you will be able to grow spiritually apart from a deep involvement in a community of other believers.” Devotion is expressed then in…
Empathy. Empathy is a powerful tool for creating devotion in a church family. It’s the ability to understand someone else’s feelings, perspectives, and needs. It means being able to put yourself in their shoes and see things through their eyes without judgment or bias. How can you be more empathetic? Pay attention to the things that others say and do. When they make an observation or share feelings, try to see life from their perspective.
Quality Time. Devoted relationships take time to develop. Look for opportunities to stay in contact. Studies show that letting people know you care is essential to a healthy relationship. Talk with them at church. Meet for coffee or a meal. Serve together. Attend an event with each other, like a ball game or some other event. If you’re going anyway, why not go with someone from church to help build your relationship? We must spend time with each other if we want to deepen our fellowship. We must get involved in each other’s lives. It means being intentional in planning times to get together with those in our church family.
Be Sincere. Paul gives us a necessary control for devoted love in the beginning of verse 9. “Let love be genuine” The NIV translates it, “Love must be sincere.” In other words, phony love doesn’t cut it in the church.
The word sincere originally meant “no wax.” 1st century potters would sometimes take wax and fill in the gaps or holes in broken or cracked pottery, then paint over the wax and sell it. But once you put hot soup or water in that pot that had wax in the cracks, guess what happened? It cracked and fell apart. So when potters sold their pottery, they made this claim. They would say “sine cere,” no wax. It’s pure pottery. Sincere was good. When it talks about our love, there should be no cracks, no wax, no phony love.
There’s another word Paul uses to talk about this love, the Greek word “huprokritos.” We get the word hypocrite from it. It means no masks. It was a word from the theater. Oftentimes they wouldn’t use full costumes to play a part, but an actor held a mask in front of his face to play different roles.
The harshest words Jesus ever uttered, He directed towards hypocrites. He said, “You hypocrites, you bunch of snakes.” Our love must not be fake. It means you better not wear a mask when you tell somebody you love them.
2. The local church is God’s plan for reparenting. This family metaphor introduces us to both good and bad news. The bad news is that children often grow up not knowing what it feels like to be accepted, loved unconditionally or made to feel secure. They’ve not learned to trust others. They’ve developed habits that violate Scripture and don’t even know it – lying, cheating, rage, manipulating. Their values are based on how they were raised rather than God’s truth. They’ve learned to be selfish not generous.
Becoming a believer doesn’t automatically transform these attitudes or behaviors. They’ve been developed for a long time. Consequently, when they trusted Christ and became a member of God’s family, they don’t know what it means to be devoted and loving as a sincere brother or sister in Christ.
Here’s the good news. At salvation God gives us a new family. We’re being transformed from the inside out. God designed the local church—the family of God—to be a reparenting organism to bring about spiritual and emotional healing to those who grew up in dysfunctional, unhealthy families.
In a church many learn for the first time to love and care for others. They may never have experienced this kind of environment except in the church family. When the church family functions as God planned for it to, new believers see it modeled in their new spiritual family.
It’s a sin and a tragedy when a church is more of a religious social club than a family. Christians attend but they’re not devoted to one another in brotherly love. In those churches there’s little warmth and caring among the members.
Sadly, some people who come to Christ often come out of one dysfunctional family to be exposed to another “religious” dysfunctional family. When this happens, God’s plan for emotional and spiritual healing is aborted. It can even lead to disillusionment with Christ and His Church.
3. Spiritual family devotion is demonstrated in honoring others. Our spiritual family should be characterized by devotion, yet we’re commanded to go one step further, “outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10b) Understanding spiritual family eliminates competition. When another family member is blessed, we rejoice because that’s my brother or that’s my sister.
We often fail here because we think of ourselves individually, rather than as family. When we think individualistically, we breed competition instead of cooperation and honor. Getting this sense of family and community will resolve many interpersonal conflicts in the church family. It’s more difficult to be critical or jealous of someone you love and is related as family.
How does this work out? First, we consider others valuable. Then, we’re not jealous or critical. We don’t make verbal jabs or sarcastic comments.
Jesus warned us that whenever we promote ourselves, we’re in a dangerous position. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). In other words, instead of trying to step over someone else to advance ourselves, we’re seeking to honor and advance the other brother or sister. That’s what it means to give honor.
4. Spiritual family devotion requires replacing sinful dysfunctional patterns. Scott Peck (picture) identifies one of the greatest dangers in human relationships as “pseudo-community.” In pseudo-community, people are nice to each other, well-mannered, pleasantly agreeable. They tell little white lies to smooth things over and avoid conflict. They pretend. They quit noticing. It is an inviting but illegitimate shortcut to nowhere.
The only way out of this is to take risks, to enter into chaos. Real community requires having the courage to admit when I’m wrong, to share what I actually think, even though I don’t know how the other person will respond, and even though that not knowing scares me.
Entering into chaos is like diving into a cold pool. But when we speak truth in love to our brothers and sisters in Christ, we grow and we have the opportunity to know each other at a deeper, truer level. And God is glorified as we grow to be more like Jesus.
I’m convinced that one of the reasons so many Bible-believing churches are anemic is not that they lack love, but that they need to go deeper to family devotion. Many of us have a relative that drives us nuts but they’re still family. You’ll find many Christians leave a church and it goes back to this – devotion. They don’t plug in to the biblical reality that they’re brothers and sisters. They’re not leaving an organization. They’re leaving a family. It’s similar to a divorce. Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who jump ship easily won’t grow. So let me share some steps to help us get a firmer grip on all of this.
Be patient with your brothers and sisters. Is the Lord patient with you? Then, He expects you to be patient with your brothers and sisters. We’re all at different stages of spiritual growth.
Lovingly overlook minor offenses. 1 Peter 4:8, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” People say and do stupid and wrong things. Unless it really needs to be dealt with, let it go.
Biblically problem solve. Matthew 18 tells us to go privately to that individual if there’s an unresolved problem. We’re not to go to all of our friends and gossip. We start with the individual and usually that resolves it.
Expand the circles of your relationships. You’ll fail to grow spiritually if you fail to grow socially and stay in a safe circle of those like yourself who see life like you do.
The other day I had a candid discussion with a friend who doesn’t know the Lord and who holds the polar opposite of my values on transgenderism and homosexuality. We disagree but we’re good friends. And I remember he said something that resonated with me, “We’re two reasonable people having a discussion.”
The early church had large circles of brothers and sisters. It’s what the church is often missing today. I’m not talking about sacrificing truth, yet too many of us are opinionated rather than biblical. We are adamant instead of being Christlike and gracious.
Conclusion: Do you remember the lady who was abandoned seven times before she was 13 years old. She ended her testimony with this: “But wait, don’t feel too badly. It was experiences like these that ultimately brought me to God—and there I found what I had always longed for—a place, a sense of belonging, a forever family.”
Chuck Swindoll (picture) in his book, The Bride-Renewing Our Passion for the Church, writes, “The church was never meant to be merely a set of buildings where you come, sit, worship, learn, and leave. The church is a community of believers who demonstrate genuine concern for each other.”
He’s right. When we get our one-anothering right, when we understand deep family devotion not only do we benefit, a lost world does as well. Healthy one-anothering lifts Jesus up and draws lost people to Him. They’ve never seen anything like it. When we love each other even though we’re so different other than our faith in the gospel, the world sees God in us and they sit up and notice.
Pastor Wayne Cordeiro (picture), in Leading on Empty, writes of his daughter, adopted when only three days old. The apple of his eye, Abby, compromised her faith and morality, making choices that expelled her from college. For two years she was searching for her identity, struggling with why her birth mother didn’t want her. The Cordeiros, her adopted parents continued to pray, call, email and write but never received any responses from Abby. But they persisted, determined never to give up on her.
One day they received an email from Abby, who said she had returned to God. She wrote, “I know now that God may not have had me born of this family, but I am convinced that He has had me born into this family. I am coming home!”
My friend, do you get it? When you committed your life to Christ, you not only received salvation and a Savior. You got a whole new family. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We’re blood because of Jesus. That’s why we must “Be devoted to one another in love.”