If it’s not about Jesus, it’s not about anything
(Motto of the
Fountain of Life)
Scripture: Romans 12:20: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire upon his head.
SPS: The
purpose of this message is to explore a deeper understanding of love and to seek
that same love in the burning coals of Romans
12:20.
Guiding Principle:
Our guiding principle is that “God is love” 1 John 4:8. We must use this as a guiding principle in whatever interpretation we give to any scripture. All interpretation must have as its foundation the fact that God is love. Let’s say this more plainly. We recognize that God’s grace and mercy are products of His love. We understand James 1:17 to mean that every good and perfect gift comes from God and, therefore; is a product of His love. That is easy enough to understand. But equally true is that God’s judgements, wrath and anger are also products of His love. This may be harder to understand, nevertheless it is the same love*. For emphasis let us restate that God’s judgement, wrath and anger are products of His perfect love for you, brethren, and for me.
[*Malachi 3:6, “I change not.” Hebrews 13:8, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.”]
A DIFFICULTY
In light of the fact that God is love, Romans 12:20 presents a difficulty for us. What does burning coals mean? The “Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary” gives this interesting comment. “Burning coals has never been fully explained.” Brethren, Romans 12:20 seems to be a simple cause and effect statement. First: Feed your hungry enemy. That is the cause. Second: You heap burning coals upon his head. That is the effect. Feeding your enemy is a classic example of love. Yet, here we see the effect of love as very unlovely. How do we resolve this with Jesus’ own words? In Matthew 5:43-44 He says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and shalt hate thy enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.” In light of Jesus’ own words, let us return to our guiding principle. How should we interpret burning coals in the light of God’s love”?
Feeding your enemy is a product of love just as surely as is forgiveness. Whatever value scripture assigns to forgiveness certainly applies to feeding your enemy. What does scripture have to say about forgiveness? Peter asked Jesus about forgiveness in Matthew 18:21: Peter was well aware that the Scribes and Pharisees taught that a good Jewish man would forgive; an excellent Jewish man would forgive up to three times. Peter asks how often to forgive? Peter, to his great credit, recognizes that Christ is good, in fact he recognizes that Christ is excellent. Therefore in his question of how often to forgive, he includes what he considered a very special figure. The special figure for forgiveness which Peter chooses is seven times. Consider what extra special value Peter placed upon forgiveness. He took the accepted tradition of excellence as three times, he doubles excellence and adds 1. Seven times forgiveness was surely far and above anything that the Jews saw as excellent and as righteous.
Now consider Christ answers of, “seven times seventy.” Christ, speaking in the idiom of the day, removes all limits of finite numbers from granting forgiveness; showing that the most excellent efforts of man are at best infinitely inferior to the way of God. Paul, in fact, pointed out in 1 Cor. 12:31 that the path of love is a much more excellent way. Brethren, is heaping burning coals upon our enemy’s head a more excellent way? Let’s explore Romans 12:20 in a roundabout way by returning to Paul at Corinth and look more closely at that city and at love.
CORINTH – SIN CITY
Corinth was an unconverted gentile city and it was the gentiles who received Paul. What were those Corinthians like? They were like any city of unconverted carnal humans. The Corinthians were the same as carnal Galatians. Galatians 5:19 – 21 shows the carnal works of the flesh as immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, witchcraft, enmities, contentious, jealousies, anger, quarrels, factions, parties, envies, murders, drunkenness, carousing, and suchlike. Of course, all carnal humans are motivated by self-preservation and self-love, but the point we make here is that as bad as the carnal Galatians were, the Corinthians were worse. In a carnal world of immorality and corruption Corinth managed to gain a reputation above the others for immorality and corruption.
Corinth was a reigning vice capital of her world. By the third century B.C. Corinth had modified an ancient Greek theater to host gladiatorial contests and mock naval battles. That fed their blood lust. A common way of telling someone to go to the devil was to say, “Go and corinthinize.” The term “Corinthian Girl” was slang for a woman of loose morals.
Those carnal gentiles are the people who became the Church at Corinth. It is to those people that Paul speaks. To those people he says serving is more excellent than ruling; giving is more excellent than getting. To those who were ruled by their senses Paul is training their senses to be ruled by Christ; training their senses to discern good and evil. To those who knew nothing about godly virtue Paul teaches the more excellent way of agape love. Agape is something they did not know; now, agape becomes something they and we, are taught to practice.
BIBLICAL WORDS FOR LOVE
Storge: Storge says that I love you because you belong to my family. This is natural love – family love. It is our aunts and uncles, brothers, sisters and cousins. We love them because they are family, even if we don’t like them. Storge is like a law of nature, it is just there, in us. We have all experienced it and we know that it is there. It causes a mother to naturally care for her babies. It causes a man to naturally devote his time and effort to provide for his family. It causes a big brother, who does not like his little brother, to naturally defend him from the playground bully. It is worthy of note that as society gets worse people would no longer have storge or natural affection.
Look to Timothy 3:1-5 for verification. “But know this that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money [but]…unloving or without natural affection, without storge… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” Look to your newspapers for verification. Children will be cruel to parents and abandon the elderly without care. Parents will abuse children, brothers and sisters will kill each other for insurance money. Lacking storge is bad. Having storge is good, but nonetheless without agape, a danger exists that it may corrupt itself into fueling a Hatfield McCoy generational feud based upon their natural love of and loyalty to their family.
Philia: Philadelphia is our city of brotherly love. Philia binds together people who love same things. It is mutual attraction, affection and liking. It is built on common interests and tastes. It says I am seeking people who love mom, apple pie and Chevrolet as much as I do. It has a drawback. It is not unconditional. Lovers may be replaced as quickly as rusted-out pick-up trucks because our needs and likes change. Some social commentators advise us to plan for three spouses during our lives. The first for childrearing needs, another to help with our social advancement needs, and one to fill our retirement needs. Another drawback of philia is its self-focus. It is my love which is all about me. It is about somebody meeting my needs and caring for me. Philia can be a virtue as long as our needs, likes and desires never change. Philia says, “I love you because you are like me and you meet my needs.” Philia is good, but without agape, a danger exists that it may corrupt a stadium of angry sports fans into a deadly riot, based upon their shared “love” for “their” team.
Eros: This is erotic, sensual, sexual love. Eros is not ignored by God. Read “The Song of Solomon” to verify this. Erotic love is real, it is physical and sensual. It is actually a gift of God in marriage for affection and pleasure when undergirded with agape, but the gentile world of Paul’s day did not know agape. They knew spiritually corrupt Eros and it was the most commonly used word for love. Unshackled, Free Eros* is what they craved.
Eros is not used once in the New Testament. What the world craves and lusts after is not glorified in the New Testament. The Greeks viewed it as intoxication in which the senses are in a frenzy. Selfish love produces this intoxicated feeling. Eros will discard your partner for a newer model, when your needs or desires change, or when your partner becomes boring. Eros is attractive; it seeks the current fashion; it is preoccupied with eternal beauty; Eros is vain. Eros knows nothing of emergency rooms, house payments, or stomach aches. It says I love you because you meet my needs, and make my heart throb. Eros is good, but without agape the danger exists that it will corrupt people into self-centered, possessive lusts based upon their love for sensual gratification which will use them, abandon them and never satisfy them. [* Free Love of the 1960s, if you will, as a comparison.]
Agape: It is the word translated as love in the gospels. It is used over 300 times. It is selfless committed love from the intellect and the will which places value on the beloved, unconditionally. Agape rarely, if ever, appears in literature outside the New Testament. It was considered to unemotional, not intellectual enough. Agape is saying “I love you even though you are not like me. I love you and am going to treat you as if you were a member of my family. I love you without condition and commit my heart to meeting your needs.” It is saying, “I love you not for what you do, I love you just because you’re you.” Agape is good! All the time.
NO LOVE HERE
Agape is divinely inspired love. It is not a part of us without a commitment to Christ. When Paul wrote to Corinth, they had fallen in “love” with the spectacular, the miraculous; the visible manifestations of the Holy Spirit. They were seduced into wanting spiritual gifts for the chance to be at “center stage”; they were clamoring for the public recognition of their sensational gifts. They were resurrecting their carnal old man and allowing him to have sway in the Church.
In 1 Corinthians Paul writes to stop this incorrect display and use of spiritual gifts. Paul is going to show them a better way. It is love, agape. Paul counsels them in 1 Cor. 13:1-3 that, “If I speak with the tongues of angels and speak without love, I am nothing. If I have prophecy without love, I am nothing.” He enumerates seven powerful gifts and says that without agape these most powerful displays of the power of the Holy Spirit are as clanging symbols; are nothing. Taken alone or taken together without agape they are nothing.
In 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, the examples do not describe what love is. They describe what love does. I deceive myself if I say to the hungry be warm and filled and go in peace, yet I do nothing to feed them. These examples in 1 Corinthians 13 are the result of a relationship of love through the Holy Spirit.
They are the results of surrender to God. We don’t read Paul and just work up this behavior. We surrender to the Spirit of God and these things seep into our character. With that backdrop of love as something we do let us reconsider Romans 12:20
Romans 12:20: If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire upon his head. Matthew Henry wrote this. He said that feeding you enemy is like smelting him as an ingot of metal so that he melts into conversion. That sounds very violent. Am I doing agape when I throw my enemy into a smelting fire? Perhaps! But frankly, I do not see the connection between feeding and smelting. An honest question is this. Would the first century world focus on metallurgy and its possible good effect upon your enemy? Or would it focus upon something else and upon a definite good effect on you? Rather than a cause and effect statement, is Romans 12:20 a comparison statement linking an unheard of act of kindness, feeding an enemy, to a well-known act of practical kindness, heaping burning coals upon a friend?
Perhaps Paul here is describing a deed from his culture to which they could easily relate and which we in the 21st Century could easily misunderstand. Their kitchens maintained a hearth which contained burning coals. They had no matches. When coals turn to dust; they have no fire. With no fire; they are desperate. I recall Jack London’s short story of the Alaskan wilderness, “To Build a Fire.” The lack of fire had tragic results. In the cold of Alaska or the warmth of Palestine, the lack of a fire had consequences upon every one, friend and foe alike. You must go to a neighbor with your basin/basket on your head. If a neighbor gives only a handful of embers and if you live at a distance, by the time you got home those embers would die; your journey wasted and your situation unchanged. But if your neighbor were kind to you, he would heap coals of fire in your basin, into your basket, on your head. He would load your basin so thoroughly that by the time you got home, you had so many hot coals your fire starts easily. Whereby you immediately cook and eat and warm your family. This is something good for a friend to do for a friend. But, what if your neighbor is your enemy and comes to you for the gift of fire? Here, heaping coals of fire on his head, feeding him is doing agape in an act of outrageous selfless consideration that everyone could understand as very special, as a more excellent way. It is the way of treating your enemy as your family.
Beloved, how do we demonstrate agape love toward someone one we don’t really like? Demonstrate kindness to them. My mom always said, “Kill them with kindness.” Paul says “feed them.”
Brethren, let us thank God our Father and His Son our Lord Jesus for their agape toward us, and pray that their agape would overflow from us outward into the world.
Rev. George Relic, Assistant Pastor
(724-583-9217)
Fountain of Life Church
2021 Old National Pike,
Washington, Pa 15301
A congregation of Grace Communion
International
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