Carefully Practice the Life of Christ In You

Our Conduct as Christians Matters

A Debt of Love

We usually don’t think of love as something that is owed to others. We think about it as something we give voluntarily because we love. Paul is reminding us, not so gently, that love is a requirement of Christian living. Love is a requirement for a disciple of Christ, certainly, and for anyone who truly knows the meanings of the commands to love that Jesus shares with us, based on the commands of the Mosaic law.

I’m sure Paul did not come to this casually, or automatically. Paul discovered this, not when he planned to arrest the Christians in Damascus as a young Jewish leader and protector of the faith. This is something that God had to develop in him through the hard part of his life that began on the road to Damascus when Jesus intervened with a new calling and purpose for a rising Jewish leader that God was turning into the first Theologist of Jesus Christ: it is Paul that develops, in the book to the Romans as well as his other writings in the New Testament, a Christology based on his personal encounters with the Risen Christ and the spiritual training and empowerment of the Holy Spirit which opened his heart to understand the true meaning and purpose of the whole Jewish canon of scripture.

So Paul no longer brings a summons to appear or an arrest warrant, but he brings in his writings the clarity of the primary way that a Christian is to relate to others.

And what he says is that we owe them love. It is a duty and responsibility, not a warm fuzzy feeling.

So important is this that Paul tells us it is . . .

The Only Thing Worth Owing

Paul just finished a few verses on our other obligations to people:

To Be a Good Citizen

To Carefully Sort the Good from the Wrong

To Pay your civil Taxes

To Pay others what is due: whether taxes, or revenue, or respect or honor.

I wrote that part of the sermon, but was led to set it aside for another date. Maybe you’ll get that one before the first Tuesday of November.

But for today’s focus, we begin with Romans 13:8 so we know what the only thing worth owing is:

Romans 13:8 ESV

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Love each other for their good, without expectation of return. Love one other because others are God’s gift to you.

That’s because. . .

Love is the Real Law

which is what Jesus taught us. We read it in Matthew this way:

Matthew 22:36–40 ESV

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 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. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Paul wasn’t hanging out with Jesus when he said this, but Paul was taught by Jesus in his own seminary-level tutoring, spending 3 years with the Hebrew scriptures and the Holy Spirit and the very presence of Jesus Christ as he was being prepared to be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

It’s no surprise that this sounds just like what Jesus told his disciples before the resurrection:

Romans 13:9–10 ESV

9 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.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

If knowing how to conduct your life in a way that reflects your relationship with Jesus Christ is important to you, begin where it all began: with love that cares more for the good of others than the promotion of yourself.

Paul lists specifically 4 commandments that are all about whether we are acting selfishly or not:

You shall not commit adultery. That sin is the lie of the devil that tells us that we are supposed to follow up on whatever our hormones are telling us about being satisfied. It’s a lie because it is not about love, adultery is about lust. It is not about the good of the one that is loved, not about the good of the family, your own or the object of your infatuation, it is not about the good of the other spouses involved. Adultery is an exceedingly selfish sin that puts sexual satisfaction above care for anyone else. And the lie comes because our hormones are mindless and thoughtless, urgent and uncaring.

You shall not murder. That one is clear to us from built-in moral standards that God designed into our very souls. But we set aside what is right in order to selfishly get someone out of our way, to eliminate competition, to pay back a grudge, or to nurse a bias against someone. When we hate another person, Jesus said, we are on the path to considering them a candidate for murder. Murder dishonors the other person, dishonors the gift of life that only God can give, and causes us to take what we can never repay. Because we rationalize our motives, our wants, our sense of justice, and on and on. Murder is not a matter of winning a war; it is a matter of selfish goals. It is destructive and self-serving.

You shall not steal. Selfishness that wants what isn’t yours. Selfishness that allows you to think that you have a right to what God didn’t give you. Stealing does not enrich you; it is a way to allow your moral compass to be turned inward to self-satisfaction, as you gain something that you have to secretly have instead of proudly display. Those are not God’s gifts to you: they are God’s gifts to others that you have taken for yourself.

And do not Covet. Coveting is the precursor to theft, to murder, to adultery. It is the seed of dissatisfaction that leads to selfish actions, that takes instead of give.

Love gives. Selfishness takes.

So Paul reminds us, as Jesus does, to Love your Neighbor as yourself.

That is the real intent of the law. The law of love which would rather give than punish. The law of love that wants what is best for others. the law of love that does no harm.

Paul tells us, as does Jesus, that love fulfills the law. You don’t need to be a legal scholar to love. And if you love, for the good of others, you will be in the center of law.

Since we are brought into the family of God by salvation, since we are sealed with our hope by the Holy Spirit, since we have all we need to live for God because of what God has given us, well, ...

The Time is Now

To Carefully Practice the Life of Christ in You.

Time to Wake Up

Romans 13:11 ESV

11 Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

Time to Live in Light

Romans 13:12 ESV

12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Time to Live with Care

Romans 13:13 ESV

13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

Get Wrapped Up in Jesus

No, really, that’s clue: Get yourself so into Jesus it’s like wearing him like a cloak!:

Romans 13:14 ESV

14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.