9"Let love be genuine." The word behind "genuine" means unmasked, without the face an actor wears on stage. Every relationship runs the risk of love as performance, kindness offered for its looks. Paul rules that out in the first four words, before he says anything else about what love does.
What follows reads like a list caught mid-breath, short commands stacked one on another. 10"Love one another with brotherly affection." The Greek doubles two family words, the usual term for love between believers and one that pictures the tenderness a parent has for a child, as if ordinary affection between Christians were not warm enough alone and needed the language of family love laid over it. Paul adds that we should outdo one another in showing honor, turning competition inside out into a contest to notice someone else first.
Then the passage turns from life inside the church to life toward people who mean harm. 14"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them." Paul says "bless" twice in the same sentence, as though he expects the first mention alone will not be believed. 15"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Entering someone else's joy without envy and someone else's grief without impatience are both harder than they sound, and Paul asks for both in one breath.
Again and again a command is stated negatively and answered with something positive to do. 17"Repay no one evil for evil." 18"If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." Restraint alone leaves the enemy at the center of attention, and Paul asks for more: active honor, active peace, active feeding of a hungry enemy, mercy that displaces the appetite for revenge.
Paul says to leave vengeance to the wrath of God. He is saying who gets to answer. Evil deserves judgment, but it does not deserve judgment carried out by the person it wronged, because a wound argues its case less fairly than a just God will.
Then the strangest line in the passage. 20"if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Paul is quoting Proverbs 25:21-22, and readers have taken the burning coals in more than one way. The reading that fits the context best is a picture of the change that kindness can work in someone who expected retaliation, a shame that can turn into repentance. Whatever the coals mean, the command is plain. Feed the enemy.
The passage lands on its last verse. 21"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." To strike back, even to get even, is already a kind of defeat, because it means the enemy has pulled you down to the level where he started. Only good, actively given, wins. It is the same course Jesus kept at his own trial, when he was reviled and did not revile in return (1 Peter 2:23). Paul describes the shape of love in someone who has received the mercy this letter has been about, and has enough left over to give it away, even to an enemy.
Think of the one person you would rather not bless. Do one small, specific thing for them before the day is over.
Prayer
Father, our love falls short of genuine more often than we notice. Teach us to hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good, to bless and not curse, and to feed an enemy in place of our own sense of being wronged. Where we are tempted to take vengeance into our own hands, remind us it was never ours, and give us what it takes to overcome evil with good. In Jesus' name, amen.