At the very beginning of Rom. 12:9, Paul supplies an overall description of what kind of love is acceptable to God—it’s a love that is genuine or unhypocritical. That raises the question: What kind of love would be disingenuous or hypocritical? There are many answers to that, but I’ve narrowed it down to a couple brief statements:
The first kind of hypocritical love is a love indifferent to the truth, namely with little to no regard to God’s standards of what is true and false or what is righteous and wicked.
Secondly, a hypocritical love is a love that is indifferent to others. We might be a little puzzled with this one: How is this even in the category of love? Well, there can be a lot of activity going on, but it may not be fueled by love. If biblical love can be defined as meeting a need of another at a cost to yourself in such a way that God gets the glory, then you can imagine all the ways that acts of service can deviate from biblical love. For God to classify something as love, it must be pure as well as practical. Ultimately, genuine love must be void of self-exaltation, which is manifested by the desire for recognition and/or reciprocity.