Love is a Bad Actor

"Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good." (Romans 12:9)

Recently in my personal devotions I have been reading through Romans 12. This morning, as I was focusing on verses 9-13, I decided to spend some time meditating on the phrase "Let love be without hypocrisy."

On the surface, this phrase readily made sense. I had always understood it (more or less) as "love is good; hypocrisy is bad. Don't put the two together." It seemed simple enough. However, as I meditated on the implications of this in my life and heart, I realized that maybe things weren't quite that simple. So, I did a little digging, and asked "what does this look like?"

For this question, it was helpful to gain an understanding of "hypocrisy" in this context. While I am no expert in Greek, I am able to look up certain words and their definitions and made use of my resources. In English, as far as I know, the word "hypocrisy" has always had a very negative connotation.

However, the Greek word that we translate "hypocrisy" was originally used in relation to acting, without such a connotation. And the word in this passage that we translate "without hypocrisy" was a word used to describe someone as being inexperienced in acting. So, to paraphrase, our love should be like the performance of an amateur actor.

What this means for us is that when we love one another as the body of Christ, there is no place for pretending. Our love should be genuine. In fact, it should be authentic to the point that if we were trying to fake it, we would come off as awkwardly inexperienced. Our love is not to be a mask with a smiling face we hold in front of people we dislike. It is a genuine appreciation for and dedicated commitment to the people whom Jesus has bought with His priceless blood. We all, in small, imperfect ways, reflect the love God has for us in how we love each other.

As 1 John 4:19 tells us, we love because He first loved us. The love we have for each other finds its origin in Him. Isn’t it amazing to know that the love that God the Father showed us in sending His Son wasn’t some big, elaborate charade? Jesus wasn’t secretly holding resentment for us as we disowned, forsook and hated Him. Instead, His love was beyond ours, more genuine and authentic than anything we have ever known.

Jesus was no actor on a stage. He was the one real person who could see through all our facades, antics and pretensions. And He loved us anyway…without hypocrisy.