NOTES for Rom 12:10

How strikingly the apostle Paul's words about people's relations with one another contrast with what we see around us. Disrespect for one another and the humiliation of human dignity are very characteristic features of our life. This has become such an ordinary thing that we have stopped noticing it.

Therefore the apostle's words are like a breath of fresh air. It is remarkable that these are very concrete, as people now say, words. The apostle explains in detail what it means: "In everything, as you want people to do to you, so do to them." The concreteness of these instructions gives us the possibility of realizing them in our life, in our attitude toward one another. It is important that precisely in this, and not in something else, it is given to us already in this life, in this world, to touch Heaven, the Kingdom of the age to come.

And one more thing: the words "be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord" are said in this text in logical connection with everything else. Be brotherly in love; serve the Lord. When Christians say that we are given to meet the risen Jesus, this is not an artistic metaphor at all, but pure truth. For this, one must only be brotherly in love toward one another with tenderness. And not toward close relatives and friends, but toward one another, toward all.