as to brotherly love, kindly affectioned towards one another as to honour, each taking the lead in paying it to the other
Paul has moved from teaching to daily life. He has just told believers that love must be genuine, and now he turns to the circle of God's own family. The verse asks two things that cut against our instincts. It asks for an affection built on relationship, not on how appealing someone is. And it asks us to compete at giving honour instead of receiving it.
The command does not stand alone. It follows a call to sincere love. One writer sees a narrowing here, with the standard set by the closest family ties:
The love spoken of in the previous verse is most likely love to all people. Here brotherly love is singled out. The teaching of the Spirit in this verse appears to be that Christians should have a love for each other, as brothers in Christ, that is as sincere and tender as if they were their closest relatives.
Commentators differ on what that earlier love means. William Kelly reads it as deeper than kindness between believers or kindness to everyone:
Love is the activity of the divine nature in goodness. So it cannot be separated from that nature when it is reproduced in the children of God.
If affection depended on how appealing a person is, it would collapse as soon as someone became difficult. The verse rests it on something else:
Our affection for one another should flow from our relationship as brothers, not from some quality in them that we find attractive or useful. Brotherly love makes us ready to let others have honour instead of grabbing it for ourselves.
That same ground holds even when a believer is weak:
We are not asked to love the sinful nature in our brothers. We are to love them because they are brothers, despite all their weaknesses.
One writer presses the point that honour here means going first:
The point here is not just to repay the courtesy of others. It is to take the lead in treating them with honour, and so by example to lead them into the same lovely ways.
The failure to move first is rarely dramatic. It hides behind ordinary awkwardness. Then it gets blamed on everyone else:
Some have a false modesty, and others a secret pride. Either one makes them slip out of a meeting fast, so that people who would gladly have spoken to them never get the chance. When this goes on for a while, people complain that the believers are cold and show no love to strangers. But who is at fault?
Paul did not leave the instruction as theory. Later in the same letter he greets two believers, Andronicus and Junias, and hands them the credit:
The claims of kindred are not forgotten; but the higher claim to remembrance, in the case of Andronicus and Junias, is that they had suffered with the Apostle as "fellow-prisoners". The Apostle carries out his own exhortation, "In honour preferring one another" (12:10), for he says they "are of note among the Apostles", and "were in Christ" before himself.
The everyday form is simple enough to start today:
Let us delight in paying honour to other believers. Draw attention to their good qualities and their work instead of our own.
Sometimes warm treatment cannot continue. One writer draws a line between the affection itself and how we show it:
Through the power of Satan, a brother may be living in a disorderly way, or he may fall into error, and so become a proper case for discipline. We must change how we treat him, though our love stays the same, or even grows stronger.
- Relationship first. Love your fellow believer because he is your brother. Not because he is attractive or useful to you.
- Family warmth. The affection asked for is as sincere and tender as what you would give your closest relatives. It grows out of shared birth into God's family.
- Take the lead. Honour here is not repaying a courtesy. It is going first, and setting an example that draws others after you.
- Give the credit away. Paul did it by saying that others were well known, and were in Christ before he was. You do it by pointing at someone else's work instead of your own.
- Love outlasts kindness. When a believer's life calls for discipline, the treatment changes. The love stays the same, or grows stronger.
as to diligent zealousness, not slothful; in spirit fervent; serving the Lord.
Older translations read "not slothful in business" here, where the ESV says "Do not be slothful in zeal" — and that one word has caused centuries of confusion. So two questions come first: does this command cover my daily job, and how does anyone stay fervent for a lifetime?
The word behind the older rendering means diligence — an attitude, not a set of tasks.
This next clause has been much abused, and the misunderstanding comes from the way words change their meaning over time. We naturally take "business" to refer to our daily jobs — these are, in fact, the things men are most "busy" with, and think they must be. But the word simply means "diligence": "In diligence not slothful." There is a way of being busy about things without any real diligence.
Notice also what Paul does not command. He sets a floor, not a ceiling, and he places the fire somewhere other than the workload.
It is often quoted as "diligent in business," which is not what is said, though man's selfishness likes to think so. The "business," I take it, means whatever might rightly claim a believer's attention — "whatever your hand finds to do." About such matters it is clearly wise to say simply "not slothful." On the other hand, the word is "fervent in spirit," not fervent in business. The one refers to the outward life, the other to the inner.
Commentators differ on how wide the first clause reaches. Kelly takes it broadly, as anything that has a claim on you. Andrew Miller limits the phrase to service for God, yet he still allows the Christian no laziness anywhere.
The exhortation refers to religious activity, not to the active work of our everyday jobs. Many have supposed it does, and the word "business" in our text suggests as much. At the same time, whatever the Christian does, in temporal or spiritual things, he should not be slothful or indulge in laziness. In every duty he should show a spirit of zeal and devotion. "In spirit fervent" is the Lord's word. Scripture says the same of Apollos, a teacher who was "fervent in spirit" and taught accurately about the Lord (Acts 18:25).
Diligence alone can harden into busyness with nothing behind it. The second clause exists to prevent that, and the third supplies the reason.
Three exhortations follow that more directly have the Lord in view. In our service to the Lord we are to be diligent, with a holy zeal that resists slothfulness. Zeal, however, can degenerate into mere outward activity, so the call is to a fervency of spirit that keeps the Lord before us as the motive of the service.
Fervency is not a mood we manufacture. Heat needs fuel, and we take it in private before we spend it in public.
Lukewarm Christians are the devil's delight and the Lord's grief. Fervency of spirit is what we should desire above all things. But if our hearts are to burn in this cold world, the oil of grace must flow into them; and for that we must cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart. Then His own supplies never run out. They come to us in secret, and they are more than enough to meet every public demand, despite the world, the flesh, and the devil.
A few old copies read "serving the season" instead of "serving the Lord." Kelly weighs the evidence and rejects that reading.
Then, instead of allowing slothfulness, the apostle insists on zealous diligence. In case this should be only outward work, he at once adds "in spirit fervent." Both then have a blessed motive: "serving the Lord." It is well known that Griesbach followed a few manuscripts, versions and early writers, and joined Erasmus in reading kairo ["season"] for Kurio ["Lord"]. He did so against the weight of the evidence and almost every other editor… Serving the time — the "season" or "opportunity" — seems at least a little unworthy, suits the context poorly, and is easily open to the worst abuse.
Nothing makes us go slack faster than watching others get the honour we wanted. That is why this fervency answers to a Master, not to an audience.
Nor should this lessen our own diligent zeal and leave us slothful — a common tendency when we see others honoured and not ourselves. Rather, let us keep a true inward fervency of spirit that guards us from every discouragement and makes us independent of the approval of men. Then "serving the Lord" will be a very real thing to us, and no mere formal phrase or idealistic sentiment.
- Diligence — the word older translations render "business" means diligence, not employment. You can be busy all day and still not be diligent.
- Outward — the command about work is modest: not slothful. A floor, not a demand for frantic activity.
- Inward — Paul puts the fire in the spirit, not in the workload, because zeal can shrink into empty activity.
- Upward — "serving the Lord" steadies both. The weight of manuscript evidence also supports this reading over "serving the season."
- Onward — fervency feeds in secret and answers to a Master, so it survives being overlooked.