Romans 12:15-16

“ Rejoice with them that do rejoice, weep with them that weep: aspiring after the same aim for one another; not minding high things, but associating with men of low estate. Be not wise in your own eyes. ”

The connection between Romans 12:14-15 is the idea of self-forgetfulness. As self-forgetting is needed to bless him who hates us, we must also be freed from self to identify ourselves with the joy of others when our heart is full of grief, and with his grief when we ourselves are filled with joy. In Greek the two verbs are in the infinitive. This form is rightly explained by understanding δεῖ, it is necessary. But here we may be permitted to mark a shade of distinction; the infinitive is the indication of an accidental fact: to act thus every time that the case presents itself. It is less pressing than the imperative; it is, as it were, a virtue of the time being.

The following precept is commonly applied to good feeling between the members of the church. But in that case there would require to be ἐν ἀλλήλοις, among you, and not εἰς ἀλλήλους, in relation to one another, and the following precept would have no natural connection with this. The only possible meaning is: “aiming at the same object for one another as for yourselves;” that is to say, having each the same solicitude for the temporal and spiritual well-being of his brethren as for his own: comp. Philippians 2:4. As this common disinterested aspiration naturally connects itself with sympathy, Romans 12:15, so it is easily associated with the feeling of equality recommended in the following verse. There frequently forms in the congregations of believers an aristocratic tendency, every one striving by means of the Christian brotherhood to associate with those who, by their gifts or fortune, occupy a higher position. Hence small coteries, animated by a proud spirit, and having for their result chilling exclusiveness. The apostle knows these littlenesses, and wishes to prevent them; he recommends the members of the church to attach themselves to all alike, and if they will yield to a preference, to show it rather for the humble. The term ὑψηλά therefore denotes distinctions, high relations, ecclesiastical honors. This neuter term does not at all oblige us, as Meyer thinks, to give a neuter sense to the word ταπεινοῖς in the following proposition: “humble things; ” the inferior functions in the church. The prep. with, in the verb συναπαγόμενοι, letting yourselves be drawn with, does not admit of this meaning. The reference is to the most indigent and ignorant, and least influential in the church. It is to them the believer ought to feel most drawn.

The antipathy felt by the apostle to every sort of spiritual aristocracy, to every caste distinction within the church, breaks out again in the last word. Whence come those little coteries, if it is not from the presumptuous feeling each one has of his own wisdom? It is this feeling which leads you to seek contact especially with those who flatter you, and whose familiar intercourse does you honor.

This precept is taken from Proverbs 3:7, but it evidently borrows a more special sense from the context.

Already, in Romans 12:14, the apostle had made, as it were, an incursion into the domain of relations to the hostile elements which the believer encounters around him. He returns to this subject to treat it more thoroughly; here is the culminating point in the manifestations of love. He has in view not merely the enmity of the unbelieving world. He knew only too well from experience, that within the church itself one may meet with ill-will, injustice, jealousy, hatred. In the following verses the apostle describes to us the victory of love over malevolent feelings and practices, from whatever quarter they come, Christians or non-Christians. And first, Romans 12:17-19, in the passive form of forbearance; then, Romans 12:20-21, in the active form of generous beneficence.