Love Without a Mask

Word Unpacked: Devotionals in Romans

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Romans 12:9-13 (NIV)

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Turn on the radio, and love is everywhere. Half the songs written are about it. But one old song has a strange title: "a seed of tears." Why would love end in tears?

Because so much of what gets called love isn't real. Someone stays close only as long as we're useful. Someone is warm in public and cold at home. We've all been loved like that at some point, and felt the same quiet question afterward — was any of that real?

Paul opens his list of twelve marks of the Christian life, and the very first line sets the tone for everything that follows: love must be sincere. Behind that word sits an old word from the theater — the world of actors who performed behind masks, playing a part that wasn't really them. When the lights went down and the actor stepped off the stage, the mask came off, and a different face was underneath. Paul's word means the exact opposite of that.

And then he doesn't stop at the definition. He traces that same unmasked love through ten more things it does — warm affection, honoring one another, hard work, a real fire in the heart, joy, patience, prayer, generosity, hospitality. It's easy to read love as just the first item on a list of twelve. But it isn't item one of twelve. It's the root, and everything after it is a branch growing out of that same root. Which raises an uncomfortable question: how many of the twelve do we only wear when someone's watching?

That's the turn. But...