"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good" (Romans 12:9)

You can fake a lot of things. A smile. A warm hello. The right words at the right moment. And most of the time, nobody's the wiser. But sincere love? That one can't be faked for long. It shows up in the unglamorous places—the phone call you didn't have to make, the grudge you chose to drop, the patience you had left over when you were already running on empty. Paul cuts straight to it with these words: love must be sincere. No mask. No performance. The real thing.

Here's what makes that hard—and also what makes it possible. On your own, sincere love runs out fast. People are difficult. Some of them don't deserve it, and honestly, neither do we. But this kind of love was never meant to be pulled up from inside you like water from a dry well. It comes from somewhere else entirely.

It comes from God. Because he loved us first. John puts it plainly: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7). Read that again. Love isn't just an emotion you work up on a good day. It's supernatural. It's evidence that God's own life is in you, that you've been born of him and he actually lives inside you (1 John 4:7-21). Your capacity to love the difficult person is proof of whose you are.

That's exactly why love tops the list when Paul names the fruit of the Spirit: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23). Notice it comes first. Love is the root the rest grow out of. This fruit isn't something you manufacture—it's God's own character planted in your reborn spirit the day you were saved. And when you let it work through you, it quietly tells the world who you belong to. God is love, and his love drives everything he does. Since he loved us, we get to turn around and let that same love flow through us to everyone around us (1 John 4:11).

But Paul doesn't stop at love. He adds a sharp second half most of us skip right over: hate what is evil, cling to what is good. That's not a contradiction to love—it's the other side of the same coin. Real love isn't soft on what destroys people. James calls it pure religion to keep yourself "unstained by the world" (James 1:27). And that makes sense, because God is good, and every good thing you've ever received traces back to him (James 1:17).

There's a reason this matters so much. John tells us Jesus came for one purpose: "to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8). He didn't just tolerate evil—he crushed it at the cross. So when Paul says hate what's evil and cling to what's good, he's not handing you a heavy new assignment. He's describing what already happens in a heart that's been made new. John says it this way: "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother" (1 John 3:10). Loving good and turning from evil isn't how you earn being God's child. It's how you recognize one.

And here's the part I really want you to catch, because it changes everything: living in love isn't something you grind out through sheer willpower. It's the natural byproduct of being born again and walking with the Spirit. Paul says in Romans 8 that "those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires" (Romans 8:5). Walk closely with God. Renew your mind to his Word. And watch these things start showing up in your life—supernaturally (Romans 12:2).

That's the beauty of it. The change comes almost effortlessly, because along the way God quietly aligns your heart with his. His character becomes your character. You find yourself loving people you used to avoid, gravitating toward what's good, pulling back from what's not—because his Spirit is leading you there. That's how God designed you to work. Not by striving and failing on repeat, but by his own life flowing through you.

What a gift—to love the way God loves us.

So here's my prayer for you, and I mean it personally: may you feel, deep down where the doubt lives, just how relentlessly God loves you. And may that love overflow the edges of your own heart and spill onto everyone around you—the easy people and the hard ones, the ones who deserve it and the ones who don't. May your love be so real, so unforced, so obviously his, that anyone watching knows without a word: this one belongs to God. Amen.

A Few Honest Questions:

1. Where is your love more performance than reality—warm words on the outside while something colder sits underneath?

2. Who are you trying to love in your own strength right now, and what would change if you let God's love flow through you instead?

3. What does "clinging to good" and "hating evil" actually look like for you this week—one real choice, not a vague intention?