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Romans 12:9-10 vs. “Genuine (Romans 12:9-10)”

Seeds Family Worship (now Seeds Kids Worship) · checked 2026-08-21

▸ Official upload. It met the standard, so play it.

What we checked

PassageRomans 12:9-10 chapter ↗ 1 more proof on Romans 12 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asquotation
Categoryword-for-word ✓
AlbumThe Word of God (Vol. 8) · 2014
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experiencescripture set to music

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful
✓Translation named
✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • Both verses whole and in order, with the verse, chorus, bridge and tag built only out of the passage's own clauses
  • The named version matches the words sung: the album page and the publisher's FAQ both name the ESV, and the wording is the ESV's where three other English Bibles differ
  • Nothing about God is added to a passage that never mentions Him, so the commands are left as commands rather than dressed up as praise
  • Seeds publishes a free chord chart carrying the printed lyric, so the words can be read and checked without buying anything

⚠ Cautions

None. This is the standard, met.

Verse Proof

Romans 12:9-10

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Love must be sincere. Detest what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Outdo yourselves in honoring one another.”

Paul, writing to the church at Rome, at the point where the letter turns from argument to practice. Chapter 12 opens with an appeal made “on account of God's mercy” to offer their bodies as living sacrifices (12:1), asks for a mind renewed rather than a life conformed (12:2), then puts sober self-assessment and the distributed gifts of one body in front of them (12:3-8). Verse 9 begins a run of short commands that continues without a break to the end of the chapter, and the chapter's last verse closes the run by returning to the same two words verse 9 started with: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (12:21). So these two verses are the opening links of a chain, addressed to a congregation, and the “one another” of verse 10 is a room full of people rather than a private resolve.

WHAT THE SONG SINGS — Romans 12:9-10, complete, ESV, version named on the album page and the publisher's FAQ

The two verses, sung whole and in order for children, in the ESV's wording. The song opens on an instrumental figure. The verse section takes verse 9 clause by clause in the order the verse gives them, sincerity of love, then the pair about evil and good, and ends by singing the good clause a second time. An instrumental passage follows. The chorus is verse 10, both of its clauses in order, closed by a two-word tag lifted out of the honoring clause. After an instrumental turnaround the verse, chorus and turnaround all come around again. A bridge then cycles verse 9's three clauses in pairs, twice through, before a last chorus and an instrumental outro.

Nothing is sung that the two verses did not supply. There is no added line, no explanatory phrase, and no wordless vamp syllable. Unlike Seeds' settings of Joshua 1:9 and Philippians 4:8, both already on this site, the reference is never sung: the address lives on the label only.

Nothing shifted inside the sung words. Both verses are complete, in the order the passage gives, and every repetition is a phrase the passage already supplied. The doubled good clause, the tag on the chorus and the whole bridge are made of words verse 9 and verse 10 had already produced. What is unusual is where the label lives. Seeds' own FAQ says the majority of its songs are based on the ESV, and that its first five albums used an earlier NIV. The album page for *The Word of God (Vol. 8)* prints “Age Range: 3-12 years old | Scripture Version: ESV.” But neither of the song's two product pages names a version, and the chord chart's copyright line credits Philip Morlan, Greg Fadness and Jason Houser, and Seeds Family Worship Music (ASCAP) for 2014, with no Bible named at all. That is a change from the 2018 chart for “Be Strong and Courageous,” already on this site, whose copyright line credits the ESV by name and text edition. So the check runs in the reverse of the usual direction. Here the wording confirms the label rather than the label vouching for the wording, and it can, because these two verses are rendered differently across English Bibles. The KJV has honour preferred one to another and love without dissimulation; the WEB has honor preferring one another and love without hypocrisy; the BSB above has the singer outdo themselves in honoring. The song's verbs match none of those three, and match the ESV throughout.

✓ Word-for-Word Verified: Both verses are sung complete and in order in the ESV's wording. Every repeated line is drawn from the passage itself. The version the publisher names on the album page and in its FAQ is the version being sung.
Two verses of commands, sung until a child owns them, will meet that child in a real room.

Why it matters

Word-for-word children's music lives or dies on whether a parent can check it, and here the only place Seeds names a version for this song is one level up, on the album page. The chord chart, which is where Seeds usually puts the credit, names three writers and a publisher and no Bible.

The check still succeeds, because English Bibles do not agree about these two verses. Where the KJV says cleave and the WEB and BSB say cling, the song's verb for that clause is the ESV's and none of the other three. That kind of divergence is a gift to anyone verifying a claim: it means the words carry their own evidence of which Bible they came from.

The second thing at stake is what the span is. Verses 9 and 10 open a chain of commands that does not stop until verse 21, and they sit downstream of the appeal in 12:1 that makes the whole life an offering on account of mercy already given. The song sings the first two links accurately. The reason they hold, and the place they end, are both in the same chapter.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repetition plants here is a short list of duties owed to other people. There is no divine subject anywhere in these two verses. God is not named, nothing is said about Him, and the song does not slip Him in to make a children's track feel like worship. So after two hundred passes a child is not carrying a comfort about who God is. They are carrying a description of how love behaves: sincere, hostile to what is evil, holding on to what is good, warm toward the brothers, quick to give honour away.

That is a different kind of cargo from a promise, and worth naming as such, because it will be collected at a different moment. The chorus is the honouring clause, so the most repeated line in the song is the one about putting another person first. The centre of attention reads as mixed by honest count: the singer is the actor in every clause, and other people are the object in most of them.

The reason all of it holds is upstream in the same chapter, and it is worth supplying once. Romans 12:1 makes the whole life an offering on account of mercy already given, and 12:2 asks for a renewed mind. Sing verses 9 and 10 for the standard. Read verses 1 and 2 for why it is owed, and verse 21 for where the chain lands. Colossians 3:16 asks that the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we sing, and a duty dwelling richly is still the word dwelling.

Helpful comparison

This is the fifth Seeds proof on this site, and together they suggest that “is Seeds reliable?” is the wrong question to carry around. The method has never varied in thirteen years: pick a span, sing the span, add nothing. What varies is where the version gets written down, and it varies by release rather than by artist. The 2008 album page names the ESV while that album's charts credit the NIV, and Seeds' FAQ now says plainly that the first five albums used an earlier NIV. The 2018 chart credits the ESV by text edition. The 2021 track puts ESV inside the song title, where checking costs nothing. This 2014 track names it once, on the album page, and its chart names no Bible at all. Four labelling habits, one publisher.

The practical consequence is that a reader cannot carry a verdict about Seeds from one song to the next. They can carry a method. “Genuine” also appears on the 2015 compilation *The Journey*, which is where most streaming services file it, and that page names no version either.

Sources

Corrections

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⚠ The reference is never sung, only printed in three places. A child can learn the words here and still not learn where they live. Say the address out loud.

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