Live Like Love is What You Owe
Notes
Transcript
Live Like Love is What You Owe
Live Like Love is What You Owe
The core of the Gospel we celebrate and live because of is love.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
It’s because love is the very makeup of our Creator God, and the standard we must adopt for ourselves.
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Paul is not trying to recall or quote John in these next verses, for Paul’s letter was written to the Romans 30 or 40 years before the Apostle John ever put his pen to parchment to write his Gospel, or his Letters, or the Revelation.
Paul doesn’t need to know John’s heart; he needs to know God’s heart through his own encounters with the Living Lord Jesus Christ.
And because he does know God’s heart at this point in his life, not just his law, he can tell of what we need to know about loving in this section of Romans. Paul began his career as a Jewish scholar and Pharisee, zealous to conserve the place of the Jews in the Roman state. But his encounter with God turned him into a scholar of God’s love at work for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ.
Love is Your Due
Love is Your Due
After telling us to pay our bills, mostly to the government, Paul now addresses debt.
8 Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Many have taken the phrase “do not owe” in a purely financial sense. Don’t be beholden to anyone. Don’t borrow money. Don’t purchase what you can’t pay for. Don’t buy anything on time. Don’t let financial debt enslave you. Believe me, I know what it is like to be in such a position. It is certainly not what God has intended for our lives.
Just saying “don’t owe anyone anything” is simple and clear, but incomplete because the issue is really something different than finances.
Incomplete because it does not address why you got into this situation in the first place. Why did you think that you needed more than you have? Why was it OK to break the laws of usury in reverse, by voluntarily placing oneself in a situation where one must to pay back more than was borrowed? Why did you not trust God for what you needed today, instead of presuming on tomorrows that aren’t promised? Voluntary financial debt has a faith-problem at its core.
But although paying our debts to governments was the antecedent to “do not owe”, and paying back debt is an obligation before God, this is really more of a transition Paul uses to move toward more of our Christian obligations to those around us.
Owe nothing but loving one another. When we love, there is a debt of love placed on us. Love is never cheap. It is the only debt we can never pay in full, for love’s demands never end. To love others is to forever carry a debt to love without being finished. Love one another is a theme of the Gospel of John, notably in chapter 13. and it shows up all over the New Testament.
Love means care and sacrifice for the good of those we love. Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another:
34 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.
Not a suggestion, but a command, that as disciples of the Son of God, we love each other as strongly and as sacrificially as did Jesus.
We like to think that maybe we get off the hook by only loving those who are like us, as the apostles were like one another. Not so. Jesus said,
44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
So that means that the command of love goes farther than those we like. It extends to all.
Now back to Paul’s lesson to us in Romans 13. Paul is about to compare love to obeying the law. And when we read Romans 13:9, it is appropriate to ask,
How Much Does Loving Count?
How Much Does Loving Count?
9 The commandments, Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not covet; and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.
Paul goes through a short list of the part of the ten commandments that have to do with relationship between people to give examples of how love counts for obedience.
Do not commit adultery. Why? Because adultery is an assault on the spouse. It does violence to a relationship that is under the law of God. It puts the one engaged in adultery in danger of retaliation, disaffection, dismissal, divorce, and even death. Do not commit adultery, because in that relationship, love is not in action. Not the love that God wants us to show. Adultery’s love is erotic, which means selfish and lustful. Outside of marriage it only means trouble.
Do not murder. Can anyone really argue that murder is an act of love? Murder is a very selfish act. It takes the sacred life of another person to get them out of the way. It is certainly not love to the one murdered. It is not love to the families involved. It is not love for oneself, for it puts you in line for incarceration and death. There is no loving in murder.
Do not steal, for that selfish act deprives another of something they need or use to remember another. Theft, like all sin, doesn’t love another but ignores the one we transgress because of the desire to fulfil an ingrown desire. Remember, love and selfishness do not exist in the same action. We are either selfish or we are loving, but to selfishly love does no good for the one we are supposed to be loving.
Do not covet, which is a law that God added to protect our hearts from wanting what isn’t ours to have. To covet is also a lack of loving. Coveting is plotting to have what isn’t yours; it is the precursor to theft, to murder, and to adultery. It is more poisonous than we imagine, for it sets our hearts on possession of what isn’t ours instead of upon the God who gives us all things.
Paul throws in the fruitbasket of “any other commandment,” for, he says, every commandment of our loving God is an invitation for us to be loving: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Loving counts because loving is the purpose of God’s laws. Many of the commands of God are read in the negative “Thou shalt not” because we don’t remember well enough to do what we should.
Paul quotes from Leviticus 19:18 as did Jesus addressing the most important commands in....
29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
To love your neighbor, as Jesus commands, is not just about loving those who are the same, for loving your neighbor is about loving others with unexpected grace. Just as was the case in Jesus’ story we call the Good Samaritan, which followed this command in Luke 12:29-37, the one who went above and beyond for the good of the other showed the love of neighbor the scripture demands…and the Jew and the Samaritan in the story were as “other” as possible, considering their neighboring communities.
Love your neighbor as yourself is a reminder to think of their needs and how to bless them. it is a reflection of the love of God. Not only are the commands summed up in “love your neighbor,” Paul has discovered over his years of serving Jesus that just...
Four Letters Cover the Law
Four Letters Cover the Law
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.
In Romans 12, Paul argued that love does good to and for others. Here he states it negatively to finish the couplet: Love does not wrong to a neighbor.
Love sums up the purposes of God toward those we share this world with. In giving the law, God’s own relationship with humanity is the model for our relationship with one another. To describe love is to describe God; to love is to do as God does.
Love fulfills the law. God wants us to experience the good he has for us and the good we have the honor of doing for others. In our loving, the law is covered. We don’t have to have a great memory about the laws because we have a great God who shows us that love is at the core.
So the commands are covered by love. Now Paul says its ....
Time to Wake Up
Time to Wake Up
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.
Those on the fire lines or looking at the destruction of lands and property have described the scenes as “apocalyptic,” calling out the end of time.
Without doubt, every generation has had times when they feel the end of time is upon them. Paul was sure, as were the other Christians of his day, that Jesus would come before they saw death. Even though that wasn’t true for them, it could become true for us. Every day we are closer and closer to the end of time.
So don’t fall asleep at the switch. Every breath we take brings us closer to our own end; And it brings us closer to God’s end of time.
Wake up, because we only have a limited time. Don’t sleep it away. There are souls to be saved and a final salvation from the struggles of earth that Paul is looking forward to as we should be. We were sinners, and are now saved if we are in Christ Jesus. We are saved in Christ Jesus but need to be saved from ourselves every day so we have the Holy Spirit to guide us; but there will be a day that sin and struggle are no more, and that final salvation into glory is on Paul’s mind here.
So Paul says,
Get Suited Up
Get Suited Up
The darkness when we sleep is ending, so wake up and get ready for the day at hand. Paul says it like this:
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.
Cast off—remove, take off, undress. Don’t let the deeds of darkness anywhere near you. That is what was BC: Before Christ. Lets live in our very own AD. Put on the armor of light.
John describes why this is needed in
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. 6 If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. 7 If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
The only way to leave the darkness is to be where the light is. Then in that light, we discover a true fellowship with God, a pure fellowship with one another, and the amazing grace of the continually cleansing power of the blood of Jesus the Son so we can be ever and always free from sin—if we keep listening and stay in the light.
Paul tells us more about the armor in
13 For this reason take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand. 14 Stand, therefore, with truth like a belt around your waist, righteousness like armor on your chest, 15 and your feet sandaled with readiness for the gospel of peace. 16 In every situation take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit—which is the word of God. 18 Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request, and stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints.
Paul describes the armor as defensive in Ephesians 6, for we have a real and true enemy in the spiritual realm. At least, all is defensive except the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. That’s the weapon we wage war with; the other parts of the armor are for our protection.
We could describe this armor in Ephesians 7 as being on the side of light, but these pieces are not actually light. We will get to that in a minute.
For now, know that the light reveals. When we want to find something, we usually bring light with us. A flashlight for under the furniture. A lantern for the outdoors. A light switched on for the rooms in our house. Light reveals.
And so, in the light, we better be about...
Shame-less Not Shameless Behavior
Shame-less Not Shameless Behavior
13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy.
Behaving shamelessly is a phrase we use to describe those who no longer feel any shame for their acts of violence or lust. They shamelessly attack the innocent, prey on the youngster, oppress the senior, and deny the laws of God. There is no love in shameless behavior, for conscience has given up and fled the scene. But when the super-bright spotlight of God’s holiness shines down, there is no hiding from the shame any more.
So Paul tells us to walk without shame: Shame-less because there is no reason for shame. Be a decent human being. Act as if nothing you do can ever be hidden.
Avoid “carousing” which is akin to searching out the next parting all the time, and drunkenness. Being filled with spirits to the point of dulling your brain is the opposite of being filled with the Holy Spirit so you can be always in on what is good and what is not.
Don’t think that grace is permission for bad behavior. Sexual impurity, and the acts of that, are never erased in your body. Promiscuity makes it even worse, as many don’t even remember how many partners they have had.
One of the questions I had in preparation for surgery was if I had ever been tested for a sexually transmitted disease. I was proud to be able to say, there was never any need. I have had one woman and one woman only in all my life, more than 49 years already.
Promiscuity was never attractive, as I have always been fulfilled in the woman God has given me. That comes on purpose, not by happenstance. If I did not choose faithfulness, I would have had many opportunities. If I did not turn away from tempting circumstance, I would have broken my vow to my wife, which was made before God, and for which we have fought to protect all our married life.
And our life is not marked with much quarreling. Another area we have worked at, as we have tried continually to understand the other, out of our love commitment to one another. Since we have practiced a practical distance from quarreling, it has not been a part of our public life either.
And jealousy. That is an issue of not being fulfilled in God. Instead, like coveting, it is anger over not having what another has. Jealousy leads to fights, slander, underhanded dealings and even theft or destruction. Not the way Christ intends us to live.
So finally Paul tells us here that the need is to …
Wrap Yourself in Christ
Wrap Yourself in Christ
14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Cast off the old garments of sin, and put on the righteousness of Christ. As in baptism, be dead to sin and alive in Christ. Paul is making an appeal to holiness. For Paul, the good Jewish Pharisee, holiness is always about behavior. How do we get to the point where behavior honors God? It usually isn’t from our efforts. It’s from Christ our Righteousness as he pours in His Holy Spirit. It is that Spirit that fends off the attacks of temptation. That Spirit that leads us toward ministry to others. That Spirit that quenches our unhealthy desires so we can fulfill God’s purposes in our lives.
The advantage of living in Christ is that we get to wear His righteousness, not the guilt of our sin. With Jesus wrapped around us, all God sees is His Son, not our sin. And since being wrapped up in Christ means we live IN Christ, we can almost not help but fulfill the Grace of God offered to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So finally, we are brought back to the core of the Gospel message because of the love of God. John’s summary is similar to what Paul shared in Chapter 12. 1 John 4 9-11 brings us …
Back to the Core of the Gospel
Back to the Core of the Gospel
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.
Love come from God, and love is our salvation. Our life is lived in His love. Because we cannot love God well on our own until we know God loves us so much that there is no sacrifice too great to have us for his own. Even at the cost of his Son, Jesus the Christ, who has become our sacrifce, whose blood has become our atonement, the covering for our sins.
If God can love us sinners like that, then, the scripture says, we can manage to love one another. Isn’t God good?