A Debt of Love - Romans 13:8-14 (Sermon)
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Good morning! It is great to see you! Thanks for being here. We live in a world of debt. Saying that, have you seen this website?
In the upper left corner you see that the United States has 39 Trillion Dollars in debt and counting.
That is 113k per citizen and 357k per household. Consumer debt has hit an all time record high of 18.8 Trillion Dollars.
Much of that debt is mortgage-related. And there is a place for debt. Credit can be good. Businesses, hospitals, schools, churches, and homes can use debt to plan and save in the long term. But not all debt is healthy. I have counseled many families who have been drowning in debt. It can negatively impact marriage, generosity, and mental and spiritual health. I think that is why Proverbs teaches: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender” (Proverbs 22:7, ESV). In America, we are addicted to spending. We enjoy other people’s money. It is simpler to kick the can down the road than to be disciplined, plan, and save. Spending feels good. It is easy to click buy now, add to cart, and open a package like Christmas in April.
The Bible is clear: we need to be careful with our debts. Maybe you don’t have this kind of debt problem. But according to the Bible, we all have other debts, even financial expert Dave Ramsey. Like what?
TAXES
Well, what day is today? [Sunday the 12th] What day is Wednesday? [April 15, or as some know it as Tax Day]. In the previous weeks, as we worked through the book of Romans, we got to a point where it discussed our debt to the government. God gives us the government for our benefit. They may not always do an outstanding job, but they are better than anarchy. And we all owe the government taxes, whether it is sales tax, property tax, or income tax. Our tax dollars help the poor, fund law enforcement, maintain our roads, protect our parks, and provide schooling for all children, regardless of income. And that is not the only debt we owe. This morning, we will see one more in Romans, Chapter 13.
TEXT
If you have a Bible, open up to Romans, Chapter 13. Starting at verse 8. I am going to have L.C. read for us. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word?
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 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.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
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. 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. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:8–14, ESV)
PRAYER
Thank you. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word. Help us to honor it. Help us to love our neighbors. Teach us what that looks like. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen. You may be seated.
CONTEXT
The apostle Paul was writing to the church in Rome. It was made up of Jewish and non-Jewish believers. He wrote about the gospel for both groups from Chapters 1 to 11. The gospel is the good news that our Creator solved our problem of sin by sending his one and only Son, Jesus, to die in our place and rise victoriously, which we celebrated last week with Easter. In Chapter 12, Paul applied this good news to life. He began with a call to worship and then moved to a call to care for people. He talked about the importance of not taking revenge and loving our enemies. He told us that it is the government’s job to take vengeance and administer justice. And in our passage, we see that our job is to be law followers, God’s Law followers.
POINT / STRUCTURE
God’s Law mandates love. That is the other debt we owe. Our passage breaks down into two parts:
13:8–10 LOVING EACH OTHER FULFILLS GOD’S LAW
13:11–14 TIME IS SHORT
The main idea of these seven verses was that with the little time left, let us love each other, not a life of lawlessness. To make this summary simpler, here is a shorter version: Time is short. Love people, not sin. Let me show you how I came up with that.
LOVING EACH OTHER FULFILLS THE LAW OF GOD 13:8-10
13:8–10 LOVING EACH OTHER FULFILLS GOD’S LAW
13:11–14 TIME IS SHORT
Turn in your Bibles to Romans 13, Verse 8. What does it say?
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8, ESV).
“Owe no one anything” is not a statement against all debt. As we already mentioned, Paul wrote before this that we are to pay what we owe the government. This statement is more about meeting our outstanding obligations. What obligations does this passage say we have to other people? Love. God wants us to love one another. In doing so, we fulfill God’s Law. What did Paul mean by that?
LAW
In the Old Testament, there are several laws, about 613? Have you read Leviticus? There are a lot of commandments in that book. Some are moral, others are civil, and still others are. For example, one non-moral law is:
“You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed” (Leviticus 19:19b, ESV).
How do these 613 laws relate to today? Someone gave me this 600 page book that applies these rules to modern times, as in 1927 when the book was published. One example of Sabbath law is: “Some authorities permit to wear gloves on the Sabbath, while other forbid it. A muff, however, is preferable to gloves.”
Here is a picture of a man wearing gloves and a woman with a muff (in case you were unaware of what a muff is). You might wonder why they are wearing them in the house. Well, AI made the picture for me. And it is not as far-fetched as you think to wear such clothing in your house. Come to my place in January. Another application of the Sabbath law is, “Baldheaded persons who put on their heads a toupee of combed flax or wool, to look like hair, may walk out with it on the Sabbath in a public premise, because it is considered as an ornament (providing it has been prepared before the Sabbath).” (From 1927, Chapter 84, 15 and 18.) Wow!
SIMPLIFY
How are we to keep all these commands? One day, Jesus was asked to simplify God’s Law. He said you could boil it down to one or two if you like. The greatest commandment sums them all up. And you may remember what that is: love God. Do you recall who the runner-up was? Paul says it. Love your neighbor, a restatement of Leviticus 19:18. Romans 13, Verse 9,
“For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ [those are moral laws] and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Romans 13:9, ESV).
To be Captain Obvious,
Cheating on your spouse is not loving.
Murdering your next-door neighbor is not loving.
Stealing from your customer is not loving.
If you love those around you, you won’t be breaking God’s commands. Paul repeated this point in verse 10:
“Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10, ESV).
Paul wrote to the church in Galatia:
“The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14, ESV).
DEFINING LOVE
What does it look like to love your neighbor? Before Jesus went to the cross, he told his followers that he was going to give them a new commandment: to love one another (John 13:34). He asked them to love. Hold on. How? What does love look like? Jesus said to his friends,
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12, ESV).
God teaches us to love by loving us first. Paul wrote: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, ESV). Paul expanded on this concept in his letter to the church in Corinth, Greece. Let’s read this, allowed, together.
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:4–6, ESV).
So, does this call to love refer to the church, the family, or our neighbors? Yes. Paul and Jesus went so far as to say we owe love to all, even our enemies! Love is counter-cultural and not the same as trusting, liking, or accepting. Let me repeat that. Love is counter-cultural and not the same as trusting, liking, or accepting. May Converge Community Church be a church that loves each other, that loves our neighbors, and our enemies for God’s glory and fame.
WHY?
Why? Why should we love? God loved us first. God tells us to? And why? Paul gives us one more reason in Verse 11:
13:8–10 LOVING EACH OTHER FULFILLS GOD’S LAW
13:11–14 TIME IS SHORT
Go to Chapter 13, Verse 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” (Romans 13:11, ESV).
REST
There is a way that we should not rest. In what way? We don’t want to rest in our obedience to God. We don’t want to coast or be lax in our spirituality. Time is running out.
THIEF IN THE NIGHT
This reminds me of a parable Jesus taught:
Stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. (Matthew 24:42–47, ESV)
Jesus died, rose, ascended into heaven, and is coming back. Are you ready? It could be this hour, the end of the day, the week, the year, or hundreds of years from now. We don’t know when he will return, or when he will call us home. But he will. Let us be ready. Let’s be alert, let’s be awake. This salvation is not that we are forgiven our sins. That is already true. But there is a way that we will be with God, free from sin, resurrected with new bodies free from sickness, sadness, and pain that we won’t possess until a future day that is fast approaching.
1 THESSALONIANS
Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica this:
Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:1–11, ESV)
VERSE 12
How can we be ready for this day? Keep reading Romans 13:
“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” (Romans 13:12, ESV).
Friends, throw off the dark deeds and put on the armor of light. What is the armor of light we need to put on?
ARMOR
Paul talked about armor in Ephesians:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. (Ephesians 6:10–18, ESV)
Will you put on God’s armor? Church, let’s GO!
FOR CLARITY
Paul contrasted putting on this armor with casting off the deeds of darkness. What are those deeds? Turn to Verse 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. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Romans 13:13–14, ESV).
We are not to give in to our base urges like a wild spring breaker binge. There is a way that we can embrace Jesus and turn away from our crazy thoughts and impulses. We can say no to making a provision for those whims. We don’t need to “accidentally” but not “accidentally” bump into sin? Let’s not dabble in darkness and see how close we can get to the line. God knows what is best. Let us not make provision for sin.
JOHN
Saint John wrote,
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5–7, ESV)
Let us walk in the light. God will forgive us when we stumble. But let’s not two-time him. Because of that, Saint Peter wrote,
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them. (2 Peter 3:9–16a, ESV)
APPLICATION
As I conclude, here are some things to consider:
How can you love people?
How ready are you for the end?
In what ways do you make provision for sin?
What would it look like to cast off the works of darkness?
What would walking in the light and putting on God’s armor look like for you this week?
PRAYER
Let’s pray. “You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” (2 Peter 3:17–18, ESV)
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