Deeper Reflection
This week leading up to New Life Friends Day, we will reflect on the theme of “Acting in Love Together”.Verses 9 to 21 unfold from verses 1 and 2 where Paul instructs us to live in a manner that is “holy and acceptable to God” (v.1) and to “discern what is the will of God” (v.2). As such, verses 9 to 21 do not constitute a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated moral exhortations. Instead, genuine love is explicitly stated up front (v.9a) as the opening call and stands as the heading to, and central theme stringing together, the entire section.² In the original language, verses 9 to 13 constitute one long sentence with one overarching idea: love must be authentic (literally, “without hypocrisy”). Together with verses 14 to 21, they provide practical examples of what such love looks like in action,³ and are part of God’s “good and acceptable and perfect” will (v.2) for His people.Furthermore, an inclusio⁴ demarcates this passage. It opens (v.9b) and closes (v.21) with the same idea that genuine love involves shunning evil and clinging to good. Christians are to manifest good by loving God and people, and to avoid evil by renouncing selfishness and revenge.⁵In summary, Christians living out genuine love in daily life love God (vv.11-12), love fellow Christians (vv.10, 13, 15-16) and love unbelievers (vv.14, 17-21).⁶ In other words, the church acting in love together will (1) love God together, (2) love one another within the church and (3) love others outside the church together. Over the next few days, we will dive deeper into each of these sub-themes. 

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¹ Abridged and adapted from “Divine Support”, in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, ed. Arthur Bennett (Edinburg, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust), 115. ² Douglas J. Moo, “Romans,” in New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, ed. D. A. Carson et al., 4th ed. (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994), 1151. ³ Steven E. Runge, High Definition Commentary: Romans (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 219 ⁴This is a literary device that resembles a “hamburger structure”, where the idea at the beginning of the section is repeated. at the end, thus “sandwiching” or bracketing the intervening ideas ^{5/sup> C. Marvin Pate, Romans, ed. Mark L. Strauss and John H. Walton, Teach the Text Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 248 6his thematic division of the text follows Pate, 248.}