Romans 13:8-16

The Law of Love

Introduction:

Greeting… Primary Passage

Romans 13

The past several weeks, we have looked at Paul's epistle to the Church in Rome, and I believe that together we have come to realize why many scholars and theologians call it one of the most important letters to have ever been written.

Understanding this epistle makes it much easier to understand the other epistles of the New Testament concerning one another, and just as important is that it helps prevent us from making those errors with interpretation and discernment of Scripture.

Today, as we close out this series, I want to acknowledge that we could spend just as many weeks more and still not reach the depths of this epistle. In part, because it is the inspired word of God, and sometimes when we think we have digested its exegesis, we turn around only to realize later that God has more to say to us in the same passage.

Most of us here have probably experienced that phenomenon in Scripture, and some of you may be still wondering why this is. The answer is simple; the Bible is the "living" Word of God.

Now for those that may be confused about this, please don't be. I am not saying that the same passage has multiply meanings; I am saying that it has layers like an onion, and in each layer, the same message is applied in various ways, far more intimate to where you are in your walk as a child of God at the time.

So, we have taken this letter in chunks, not verse by verse, but I hope and have prayed that you all have taken time to dig deeper and digest more of God's Word as a whole, but especially here in Romans. At the same time, we have learned about the doctrines of grace, faith, the righteousness of God, His justification, and that it is through these avenues that we are saved by grace through faith alone.

As important as these points of doctrine are, I do not want us to close out this series and leave here today with the mindset that this is merely an intellectual pursuit. Instead, I want us to recognize that what Paul's letter shows us is a glimpse of God's nature and that as a response to His grace towards us, we desire to comply with his will faithfully—spending our lives applying the truths found here to our lives, and throughout our lives.

Charles Spurgeon once said;

"Repentance grows as faith grows. Do not make any mistake about it; repentance is not a thing of days and weeks, a temporary penance to be got over as fast as possible! No; it is the grace of a lifetime, like faith itself. God's little children repent, and so do the young men and the fathers. Repentance is the inseparable companion of faith."

So, in short, I pray that we all leave with the understanding that God's grace is ongoing work within every believer. Realizing this makes us not only full of penance but full of freedom and grace in Christ Jesus. Ultimately leaving us with an understanding of God's nature displayed not in the Law rules all action, but that the Law of Love naturally fulfills the entirety of the Law.

So if you would, please stand for the reading of God's Word. Starting in

Romans 13:8

Romans 13:8–14 ESV

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the Law. 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. 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. 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. 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. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Let us pray… (PAUSE After prayer for a moment)

I will speak in general terms for a moment, and I think many of you can relate. The Church I grew up in was full of Love, full of compassion, and zeal for God. Or, so most of us thought. My Church was full of familiar and comfortable faces. We loved each other, but I often remember watching the Church family bicker and fight.

These arguments and disputes were seldom over the doctrine of any kind, let alone over the essentials of our faith. Instead, it was almost exclusively over silly little things that, while innocent in themselves, become sacred cows, idols that divided one member from another. So, my memories tend to be mixed concerning Church, and had it not been for the grace of God, I would have never found my way back into the Church.

While I believed in God and knew I was saved, I experienced the indwelling conviction and Love of the Holy Spirit, and still, I was confused about my place in the Kingdom. The absence of the Law of Love on all of our hearts failed to produce loving disciples that worked in God's Kingdom, for God's glory, loving one another as His children. While Scripture gave us a clear example of the Law of Love, we were like lost sheep without a shepherd.

In short, I learned all about Church. I mastered the lingo, learned the scene, knew what to wear, and man was I confident, but I missed the point. The Church was not an organization that had religious functions that comfort me with no authority. The Church was the Body of Christ, and I did not see that in function. I was disenfranchised from the Church as time went on as I realized that Jesus and the apostles taught a gospel of peace and freedom, not fear and discontentment. They taught and displayed a church on the move, not a church standing still with its head in the dirt, ignoring the lost, desperate, and hurting people in the world around them.

As I entered into ministry, I realized that even the office of elders had been brought into a series of nonessential arguments. I am not saying they were not important; I am saying they were not essential to salvation or the Great Commission. While people focused on these nonessential distractions, the Devil snuck in and blinded us to our faith's essentials for entire generations at a time.

Today, we will see where Paul, in the closing few chapters of Romans, explains what it is like to live as God's loving children under the Law of Love.

What are these nonessentials I keep talking about? Paul gives us a clear example of this, starting in chapter 14.

Romans 14:1–12 ESV

1 As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. 2 One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. 3 Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. 4 Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5 One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7 For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. 8 For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. 10 Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God; 11 for it is written, "As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." 12 So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.

Paul reminds the believers in Rome that they will have to give an account before God and that this life and even our bodies do not belong to us but to God. The disputes over what they should or shouldn't eat, while important to them personally, bore no bearing on the overall Church and her calling in the world.

Now Paul was not insulting vegetarians by using the word weak. He was speaking figuratively, and some scholars in history said it had a triple meaning because it speaks to a weakness of freedom that they would be submissive to Jewish tradition and that these vegetarians were the minority in the Church body as a whole.

With that said, please notice that Paul wrote they had a weakness in faith, NOT truth!

The Truth is that Jesus is the way the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him!

The lie is that what you eat or drink should be regulated by tradition and the majority in the Church Body. This sentiment can be applied to the majority of the issues that the Church faces today. Where people are bickering and fighting for no good reason.

There is a third layer to this term, weak. A layer that says they were most likely newer to the Christian faith and coming from a Jewish background, therefore holding on to many of their traditions. They were Weak, infant-like in faith, but not in truth.

This is important to note because no one is saved absent of the Gospel Truth. While at the same time, there are nonessentials that we cannot allow to disrupt our unity.

In other words, don't major for the minors!

The fundamental reality that Paul is getting at is first a matter of heart and last a matter of result. The incorrect approach made from an incorrect heart results in the opposite of the gospel message itself.

The gospel is freedom, and confining people to religious nonessentials is damaging to their faith and a lie attached to the name of God, which is the definition of blasphemy.

If you get caught up in clothesline preaching, and this message makes you a bit uncomfortable, that's okay because you are joining the company of some of Paul's addresses. Particularly in verse 6;

Romans 14:6 ESV

6 The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Paul, as a Jew, could not have made such a statement if he was still held under the Law. The Christian walking fulfills the Law of Love in the spirit, and those who are fulfilling the Law of Love are naturally fulfilling the Law. Not out of religious obligation, but out of Love!

This is not some sort of kinder, gentler weak sauce gospel. This is a firm gospel built upon unwavering truth, and in that, there is patience and understanding for those that do not share the same views as you on extraneous matters. Avoiding wasting your time by thinking you have the right to judge and condemn a brother or sister based upon your own beliefs and traditions instead of the word of God.

Romans 14:13

says;

Romans 14:13–23 ESV

13 Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. 14 I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. 15 For if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in Love. By what you eat, do not destroy the one for whom Christ died. 16 So do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil. 17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 Whoever thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. 19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. 20 Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. 21 It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. 22 The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. 23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

Paul is closing out his letter to Rome, and in these final chapters, he displays a sort of center of gravity on his letter. The issue of unity was not a simple thing to be a part of in the early Church. Whereas us Baptists have been known to take musical instruments, including organs, and throw them in rivers out of preference boldly proclaiming their evil ways, the issue of vegetarianism, observing certain days, and drinking special wine were all spelled out in the Law and had scriptural references to support their view.

Now consider this with me, please. If Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, is telling Jews and gentiles that the Law has been fulfilled, but he understands if the Jew still wants or needs to observe those portions of the Jewish faith, and that no one should condemn them for those beliefs, and that they cannot condemn those that do not keep those traditions; How do you think God looks at us when we are all spun up by nonessentials, and traditions not covered by Scripture at all?

Listen to me here as I summarize the close of Romans that ultimately point back to orthodoxy and by default to the gospel.

Once we know that a believer is living in truth, we need not judge them over unnecessary things. Besides, who are we to judge based on our ideals of perfection?

Instead, accept and love those that observe or believe unnecessary disputable things. Such as infant baptism or how often we should do communion. This is why the Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Armenian, are all considered orthodoxy. They all have points that can and are disputed. None of those points interfere with the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor do they usurp the power and importance of Christ and His sacrifice on the cross. Jesus was and is fully God and was full man, with no exceptions. Jesus has eternally existed, and we see him clearly in the first few verses of Genesis, especially in the ancient Hebrew of which it was written. Between the apostles' creed and doxology, we have prime examples of truth and orthodoxy.

Fulfilling the Law of Love demands the acceptance of every believer to embrace, engage, and Love one another.

The Law Paul is talking about in these verses is the Law of Moses, which God gave to Israel (Exodus 20—40; Leviticus 1–7; 23).

The Law included the Ten Commandments and all the moral, ceremonial, and civil regulations that governed the life of the people of Israel in their covenant relationship with God. Paul indicates that the entire Law can be summed up in one operative word—Love. Believers can fulfill every demand of the Mosaic Law by loving others. The only legitimate debt and the one debt Christians can never fully repay is the ongoing obligation to love one another: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

Let us pray!!