Romans 12:9 (NIV)
9"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good"
I love this verse because Paul is not only telling us how to love but also how to discriminate in our love. We need sincerity and goodness and we need to shun the evil.
I love studying word etymologies and this is one of those times when we can understand the text much better after we have looked at the words carefully. The word “sincere” comes from the Spanish words sin cera, which means “without wax”. The phrase comes from a practice where artisans would hide the cracks in cheap pottery with wax in order to pass the pottery off as being worth more than it actually was. Quality products were often stamped with the words sin cera to show it had not been doctored. It would be similar to those products today that are stamped, “all natural” or “100% pure”. Paul is telling us to love in a way that is pure and genuine.
The Greek word translated “sincere” in the NIV is the word Anupokritos. The last part of the word is our word hypocrite. The prefix “an” means “without”. So the Greek word actually means, “without hypocrisy”. In classical Greek the word “hypocrite” meant someone who wore a mask in a play. Once again we have the picture that Paul says the true believer should love without a mask. The love should be real and not pretend. It should be without a hidden agenda.
Why does Paul state it this way? It is because we are much better at claiming to love someone than we are at actually loving them. We all learned the fine art of pretending very early on.
- We tell someone we will pray for them, but don’t actually do so.
- We smile while someone is talking but we aren’t really listening.
- We tell someone that we forgot to do something they asked us to do, but in truth, we just didn’t want to do it.
- We tell someone to call “anytime” but when we see their number on our caller ID we won’t pick up the phone.
- We say positive things to a person in front of them but when we are away from them we speak critically.
- We say “we’ll keep in touch” even though we know we won’t.
Ouch! Sometimes, the truth hurts and it's doing a number on me right now. But I know God is calling me to be better at loving. Better at loving Him and better at loving my fellow man. Not just Christians, either. He has called me to love my brother (Christians) and to love those who are lost.
Help me to be a person that loves "without wax"!
