Love Well: Living as Christ by Loving Others
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Paul has been speaking plainly about the work of Love in the life of the Church. He's spoken about how love should affect our interpersonal relationships in the body. He encouraged us in how love should affect our lives in persecution. He instructed us on how love should inform us as it relates to the governing authorities, who themselves are often the source of persecution.
Now Paul sums up the work of love.
What We Owe -
Love
What We Owe -
Love
The first thing we see is what we owe. This is a strange way to speak of love. We see love often as an emotional response. It’s a chemical reaction caused by the dumping of oxytocin into your brain creating a pleasurable feeling. But we all know that love is something more. Love is more than just the dumping of chemicals in our brains.
Scripture doesn’t speak of love like this, and in reality, we instinctively know that love is more than that. In fact, it’s our culture’s insistence that love is merely biological that has contributed to the disastrous state of relationships and the general unhappiness that our world is feeling today. Love in scripture is a decision that one makes.
In our text, the writer notes that we are to “owe no one anything except to love each other.” The phrase is in the indicative tense and is thus a command. Paul is commanding to the Romans to first owe no one anything. This is flowing for the previous verse.
Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
Notice, Paul’s command is that we “pay to all what is owed them.” We are called to give our taxes, pay those creditors we owe. Respect those leaders over us. Honor those who deserve honor. We are to do all this so that we do not owe anyone. We aren’t to create a deficit in which we owe, but instead we are to “pay up” those things.
Second the command is not only negative “don’t do this” but it’s positive: We are commanded to love.
In essence Paul is saying “You owe love to others.”
This is a radical departure from a world that tells us that we owe nothing to anyone. How is it that we owe anyone love?
The reason is we are in a deficit as Christians in that we have received love from God. Because of the cross. Because we are as Romans 6:17-18 notes “slaves of righteousness.”
When Christ died on the cross we became members of His kingdom and are commanded to obey his commandments, and Paul makes clear that loving one another “fulfilled the law.”
What Law?
The Law, or the Torah, is God's old Testament law. Paul's consistent teaching is that Christ fulfilled the ceremonial requirements of the Law on the cross and that now we are called to live out the moral requirements, not as a law of works (i.e. do this and ye shall live), but God gives you and I His law as a rule of life in our sanctification (Rom 8:4, 7).
God’s moral law, summarized in the 10 commandments (Rom 2:14-24; 13:8-10; Jas 2:8-11) is an instrument of sanctification in the life of the believer. It's the way God works out our salvation.
It is that meaning of the Law that Paul is thinking of here. Paul is noting that Love fills up the Law. But How?
Well, let's look at the 10 commandments.
Exodus 20 gives us the 10 Commandments.
The 10 commandments is divided into two parts.
The first 4 commandments reflect our relationship with God the Father.
The next 6 deal with our relationship with other believers.
We see this relationship between the two parts of the Torah in The Great Commandment
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
This is the great and first commandment.
And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
Both parts are necessary: Loving God and Loving People and when we do this, when we love God and love people we fill up, or keep the Law.
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
This is the fulfillment of the Law - that we love God and Love people.
We Love God
We Love God
So how do we love God? Well Jesus tells us in the Gospels:
We love God by obeying his commandments?
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.
Notice the clear teaching of Christ: If you love me you will do what I command. Paul notes this when he say:
For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We do not worship false gods
We do not make false idols
We do not We do not take the Lord's name in vain.
We keep the Sabbath as holy, set apart for God.
But this is not the only way we love God and keep the commandments!
We also love others the way God loved us.
Notice what the passage says, "We OWE love to others."
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
We OWE Love to Others
We OWE Love to Others
What if I’m not a loving person?
What if I have a bitter heart or am untrusting?
Well scripture clearly teaches that we are called to love:
By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
We love because he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Notice the overwhelming teaching of scripture! It is impossible to fulfill the law and not to love people.
You hear many say they love God but not the church.
This is ANATHEMA to scripture. Scripture clearly teaches you cannot love God, you cannot fulfill the law. You cannot be a Christian if you do not love his people.
The Love spoken of here is agape love. Agape love is key because in 1 John 4:8 we find these words:
"God is love."
"ho theos agape estin"
Notice what God is, he is agape love.
Agape is different than other types of love. Agape love is a reflection of God's character. It's a picture of God's nature. So just like God, agape love seeks the best for someone else. This love is not based on emotions, but an act of the will. It is self-sacrificing, deliberate, active love.
To love someone with God’s love is desire what's in that person’s best interests—seeking to do good to that person.
"Regardless of our emotional response to another person, agape love will act for his or her good, regardless of the cost. That is the kind of love Scripture speaks of when it says to love your neighbor as yourself. That kind of love is the fulfillment of the law."
So What Do I Do if I Don’t Love?
So What Do I Do if I Don’t Love?
1) Decide to Love.
I can’t tell you how many times I talk to people who say, “I’ve been hurt in the past so I cannot love the church.”
Let it not be so! Yes, the we must love!
As the Great Anglican Pastor John Stott once said
“It is sometimes claimed that the command to love our neighbors as ourselves is a requirement to love ourselves as well as our neighbors. But we can say with assurance that this is not so. Jesus spoke of the first and second commandment without mentioning a third; agape is selfless love that cannot be turned in on the self, and according to Scripture, self-love is the essence of sin. Instead, we are to affirm all of ourselves that stems from the creation, while denying all of ourselves that stems from the fall.
What the second commandment requires is that we love our neighbors as much as we do in fact (sinners as we are) love ourselves. If we truly love our neighbors, we will seek their good, not their harm, and we will thereby fulfill the law, even though we will never completely discharge our debt.”
2) Pray for Love
Love is an unpaid debt, a debt we owe Christ and we must ask Christ to give us his spirit so that we can love. Love is a gift of God.
It’s amazing how we can keep ourselves from God’s blessings by simply not doing what he commands.
I’ve known people who say things like, “I’ll love them if they love me.”
We don’t get to choose who we love, we are called to love as Christ loved. That means we love those as unworthy of our live as we are of Christ’s
3) Practice Love
Love is a muscle that must be exercised. The more we love, the more we have capacity to love in the future. It’s the truth of love. Love begets more love.