A DEBT OF LOVE
Romans 13:8-14
Debt. It is a word that usually brings with it
certain accompanying negative connotations.
The American dream is to reach the point where you are debt-free. And yet, there are some debts from which you
can never be free. Someone who gave you
help when you most needed it. Someone who sacrificed of themselves on your behalf. Someone who put themselves
in the place of danger and hurt so that you might be spared. Debts like that can never be repaid.
We
have that kind of debt. It is a debt
that cost God the life of His only begotten Son. It is a debt of love. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Love is as hard as nails.
Love is nails... driven through hands and feet.”
The
ideas of debt and obligation come together in this chapter. Verses 1-7 described the civil obligations
the Christian is to meet toward the governing authorities. Paul proceeds now to speak of another
obligation. This is an obligation to
love one another.
|
Romans 13:1-7 |
Romans 13:8-10 |
Romans 13:11-14 |
|
Fulfill your
obligations... |
||
|
To governing
authorities |
To love one
another |
To live as
Jesus |
|
Law |
Love |
Lord |
We
have already seen in verses 1-7 the obligation that we have toward those who
are in authority over us. It is an
obligation of submission because submitting to governing authorities is a part
of our submission to the Lord. Now we
are brought to see what is at the center of that obligation. It is an obligation to love as we have been
loved.
LOVE
IS A LEGAL FULFILLMENT
8 Owe
nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has
fulfilled the law. 9 For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not
covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this
saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love
does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
(Romans 13:8-10).
1. The Debt of Love: Owe nothing to anyone except to love one
another (13:8).
We are not to be debtors. Paul says that we are to owe nothing to
anyone. We are to pay our
debts. Some have taken this to mean that
a Christian should not take a mortgage or a car loan, but that is reading too
much into the text. To the contrary, the
verb is given in the Greek present tense, indicating that this state of
indebtedness is not to be a regular or ongoing lifestyle. On the other hand, the Proverbs warn against
a common problem in indebtedness:
The rich rules over the poor,
And the borrower becomes the lender's slave. (Proverbs
22:7).
As Christians, we are not to be constantly in debt,
but instead we are to repay the debts we owe.
As we saw in the previous verses that we are to repay our obligations to
authority, so also we are to repay all other debts.
There is one exception to this rule. We will never be able to complete our
obligation to love one another. We will
always be debtors with regard to our love.
Why is this? It is because we have
been loved with an infinite love and we will never be able to repay that kind
of love.
2. Love and the Law: For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled
the law (13:8).
The law is about love.
It could be summed up with the commands to love the Lord your God with all your mind and all your soul and all your strength, and
to love your neighbor as yourself.
35 And one
of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, 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 foremost commandment. 39 The
second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments depend
the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:35‑40).
Jesus answered this question by quoting two Old
Testament passages. The first of these
is Deuteronomy 6:5. It was customary to
have this verse written on a phylactery and bound to the wrist or to the
forehead. This lawyer merely pulls up
his shirt sleeve and reads the answer.
• Love
God: Hear, O
“Love the Lord your God.” He is not just any God. He is the Lord. He is Yahweh.
Notice the extent of this love.
It is all-consuming. It is a
fanatical love.
• Love
Man: You shall not take vengeance,
nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:18).
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is a quote from Leviticus 19:18. It is found in a passage that forbids
oppressing the poor. It commands, not
only the loving of the Jew, but the loving of the stranger and the foreigner as
well (Leviticus 19:34). The Jews in the
days of Jesus had perverted this passage to say, “You shall love your neighbors
and hate your enemies” (Matthew 5:43).
But the Scriptures did not contain these words. God’s commandment has always been one of
love.
The fact that Jesus pointed us to the Law tells us
something about Christianity. It is not
something new or recent. It is something
that is very old and which is rooted in the Old Testament. As Christians living in this age, we do not
ignore the Old Testament or relegate it to some past and unrelated
dispensation. God is the same in every
age and salvation is also the same in every age.
Jesus called this the greatest command. It summarized all the other commands of the
law. It is striking that your greatest
calling is to be relational. You will
never be judged for how many programs you planned or how many sermons you
preached or how many fliers you printed up.
You will be judged for how much you loved.
If there is no greater commandment than this, then it
is also true that there is no greater sin than to fail to do this. We are called to love and a failure to love
is a failure to keep God’s law.
3. Love and Law’s Negation:
For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You
shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet" (13:9).
Notice that this description of love is stated
primarily in the negative. There are a
lot of positive things you could say about love. Just read through 1 Corinthians 13 and you
will see an entire list of positive things said about love. But this is a list of things that love does
not do.
Why is this list so negative? It is because the law was primarily stated in
the negative. It told you what not to
do. That is the very nature of law. Its primary focus is upon prohibitions.
Love acts a certain way. We have already seen a number of positive
reflections of love in Romans 12. But it
is also true that love refrains from acting in a certain way. There are certain actions that love avoids.
• Love
does not commit adultery.
• Love
does not murder.
• Love
does not steal.
• Love
does not covet.
Thus, there is a positive aspect to each of these laws
because they can all be summarized in the simple statement to love your
neighbor as yourself. At the same time,
we should not avoid giving voice to the negative. We live in a society and a culture that
doesn’t care to talk about negatives.
But the Bible does and perhaps there are times when we should, too. If we are showing real love, then there are
certain things we should not be doing.
4. Love and the Summation of the Law: And
if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself.” (13:9).
This is not an exclusively New Testament
teaching. Before Jesus ever said these
words, they were given in the Old Testament.
Leviticus 19:18 gives the command from God that you are to “love your
neighbor as yourself.”
How do you do it?
How do you love the person for whom you really don’t care? I want to suggest that you start by seeing
how much you have been loved. Then you
ask yourself, “If I really loved that person, what would I do?” And then you go and do that thing.
LOVE
HAS A PRESENT PRIORITY
And
this do, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from
sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. (Romans 13:11).
When
Paul starts off in this verse by saying, “And this do,”
he is referring back to the command from the previous verse to “love your
neighbor as yourself.” This means he has
not changed his topic. He is still
speaking of the importance of love. He
is pointing out that love has a present priority.
1. The Priority of Wakefulness:
And this do, knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to
awaken from sleep (13:11).
Paul says that we know the time. To what time does this refer? It means that we understand that we are in the
last days. We understand that we have
entered into that period of which the Old Testament prophets spoke. We have entered the time when the Spirit of
God has been poured out on all flesh.
Since I have been retired from my 29-year career with
the fire department, I no longer have to get up with the alarm clock to go into
work. But Paula does. And the way we approach alarm clocks is
fundamentally different.
I am one of those people who hear the alarm clock and
within two seconds my feet are on the ground and I am moving. It comes from years of hearing an alarm in
the fire station and going into immediate action. It is a conditioned response that I would
find difficult to change.
Paula’s response is notably different. For her, the alarm clock is a device to tell
her that getting up is somewhere in her not-so-immediate future. She has developed some considerable expertise
on the use of the snooze button. It is
the button you can push that temporarily cuts off the alarm, but only to reset
it and have it ring again several minutes later.
There comes a time when I come over and tell her,
“Honey, it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep.” Paul isn’t speaking of physical sleep. He is speaking of spiritual sleep. He indicates that our problem is that we have
a spiritual snooze button and we’ve gotten into the habit of using it.
What are the characteristics of such spiritual
sleep? How can we know if we ourselves
are in the midst of such a slumber? I
will suggest several qualities:
• “Going
with the Flow” versus purposeful living.
Remember the parable of the master who gave talents to his
servants? The one who was rebuked was
the one who took the talent and did nothing with it. He refused to see that he had been given that
talent for a purpose and that he was meant to do something with it.
• An
awareness of the spiritual dynamics taking place behind the scenes of normal,
everyday living. The spiritual life is
not something that only takes place on Sunday morning or when you come to
church. It is also involved when you go
to work and when you take out the garbage.
It is involved in all of life.
• An
understanding of the reality spiritual warfare and the regular utilization of
deliberate tactics as a part of this conflict.
Paul is going to speak in verse 12 of how we are to put on the armor of
light. When you put on armor, it is not
a fashion statement. Rather, you put on
armor because you are going into battle.
There is a spiritual conflict taking place and you are a participant.
2. The Priority of Proximity:
For now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed (13:11).
Every day brings us one day closer to eternity. It could be that Christ is going to come in
our lifetimes. Or it could be that we
will see the day of our death. But in
either case, we are one day closer to what Paul calls, “Salvation.”
This reference to salvation is significant, given what
Paul has had to say about this subject in the book of Romans. Throughout most of the epistle, Paul has
described salvation in terms of what Christ has already accomplished upon the
cross.
• The
gospel is the power of God to salvation (Romans 1:16).
• When
a person believes the gospel and confesses it with his mouth, the result is
salvation (Romans 10:10).
But now we see that there is a future tense to our
salvation. It is true that we have been
saved through faith and that we are being sanctified through that continuing
faith, but the final aspect of our salvation is something that is still
future. It is future, but it is closer
than it used to be. We are one year
closer. One week closer. One day closer.
There is a certain wakefulness that we ought to have
in light of that truth. Of what does
that wakefulness comprise? Paul explains
in the next two verses.
LOVE
HAS A WAITING EXPECTATION
12 The
night is almost gone, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the
deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us
behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual
promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. (Romans 13:12-13).
Our
time on earth is limited. It is going to
end one of these days. Either you will
die or else Christ will return. In the
meantime, you are called to be awake.
This is a reference to spiritual wakefulness. Are you sleepy or awake? A sleepy attitude ignores that which is
taking place. A wakeful attitude is
aware of all the spiritual realities around you.
|
Night |
Day |
|
Spiritually
asleep. |
Spiritually
awake. |
|
A picture of
those without Christ. |
A
picture of those with Christ. |
|
Where we used
to live. |
That
for which we are called to live. |
|
Lay aside the
deeds of the dark. |
Put
on the armor of light. |
|
Sexual
promiscuity, sensuality, strife, and jealousy |
Let
us behave properly. |
|
The flesh and
its lusts. |
Put
on the Lord Jesus Christ. |
|
A hoplite was an armored soldier, a heavy
infantryman. |
C.
S. Lewis used to describe life in our everyday realm as living in the “shadow
lands.” We see things dimly, but there
is coming a day when the lights will be turned on fully. We are called to live in the light of that
fuller revelation and we are called to live that way today. Such a life involves putting on what Paul
calls the armor of light. That
makes it sound as though Paul is only speaking of that which you wear for
defense. I suppose the reason the
translators rendered this word as “armor” is because it is that which you “put
on.” But the word itself — hoplon — is more
general. It refers to any sort of
weapon. It is frequently used in the
Septuagint to describe a shield. It was
used by Paul in Romans 6:13 when he warned his readers not to go on
presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of
unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. In Ephesians 6:11 Paul speaks of putting on
the full armor of God. While in that
passage the elements of equipment are described in detail, here it is only
mentioned in passing. It is armor /
equipment of light.
Paula
and I visited
Reflecting
on this creative wonder, several things came to mind. First of all, I am told that these tiny
organisms derive their light from the sun.
They collect the light during the day and then give it off during the
night. If the previous several days have
been cloudy, then they will have little or no light to give off. We are much the same way. We derive our light from the Son and from
being in His presence. He is the source
of our equipment of light. Shut us off
from His presence, and soon we will have little or no light to share with
others.
Another
thought that comes to mind is that it is often in our adversity that we shine
the brightest. Allow us to remain
undisturbed and our light begins to fade, but churn us up and we shine
brightly. May the Lord continue to churn
your spirit to shine for Him.
LOVE
HAS AN ADORNING ACCOMPANIMENT
But
put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to
its lusts. (Romans 13:14).
We
are instructed to “put on Jesus.” What
does that mean? It means we are to come
and look at the cross and believe its message and to appropriate it through
faith and to so hold to that faith that it becomes to us like a set of
clothing. Paul speaks on several
occasions of “putting on Christ.”
22
...that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old
self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, 23 and that you be renewed in
the spirit of your mind, 24 and put
on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness
and holiness of the truth. (Ephesians 4:22‑24).
Notice
that the “new self” has a new likeness.
It is the likeness of God.
Mankind was created after the image and likeness of God. Then the fall took place and that image was
corrupted. Salvation involves a redemption of that image and likeness. It involves restoring people to the proper
image — the very image for which they were originally created.
9 Do not
lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil
practices, 10 and
have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to
the image of the One who created him (Colossians 3:9‑10).
Notice
the difference between the two passages in Ephesians versus Colossians. Both are written by the same author, but in
Ephesians, Paul commands the new self to be “put on” while in Colossians he
says that believers have already put on the new self. Both are true.
We
are to put on the very thing that we have already put on. We are to believe the very gospel we have
already believed. We are to renew our
minds as a living sacrifice in the same way that we underwent such renewal to
come to Christ in the first place.
This
is a wonderful lesson about the gospel.
It is the lesson that you never outgrow the gospel. You never leave the gospel to go on to
“deeper things.” The gospel IS the
deeper thing.
What
does it mean to “put on Christ”? It
means to believe the gospel and to enter into all He has prepared for you. Then it means, by faith, to let your position
in Christ filter down to your daily experiences.
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