Sunday, January 22rd, 2012
Rom 13:8-10; Mt 22:34-40; Gal 3:13-14; 5:22-23; Jms 2:8
“The Power of Love”
Bible Memory Verse for the Week: Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. — Romans 13:8
Background Information:
- Romans 13:8 begins a new section of Paul’s letter in which Paul turns from the way believers are to relate to the governing authorities to how they are to treat other people in general. (James Montgomery Boice, Romans, Vol. 4, The New Humanity, 1681)
- The Greek word for “rule” is simply logos, “word.” (Clinton E. Arnold, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Vol. 3, 80)
The question to be answered is . . . What does Paul mean when he says “Love is the fulfillment of the Law”?
Answer: Laws are supposed to be made to try and protect people because in our fallen nature we are not always aware of how we might injure others. So, ideally, every law that is made is made to give love to those under the law. Unfortunately, we tend to find ways to “get around” the letter of the law which does violence to the Spirit of the law or the Law of love. What Paul is calling for is that each one of us might live under the Spirit of the Law of love. We can never fully pay the debt of love we owe.
The Word for the Day is . . . Love
What does Paul teach us here about the law, love and living?
I. We are to pay all our debts. But we can never pay the debt of love that we owe to our family and neighbors. (Rom 13:8; Dt 28:44)
In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus commands the love which cannot be commanded. — Tim Keller
Until you see you can’t really love, you can’t really love. You can only really love when you come to realize you can’t really love. — Tim Keller
If you tell the modern man or woman, “You must love your neighbor as yourself,” you are telling them to do something that they cannot do. Their selfishness makes them incapable of it. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 183)
Leo Tolstoy, who battled legalism all his life, understood the weaknesses of a religion based on externals. The title of one of his books says it well: The Kingdom of God Is Within You. According to Tolstoy, all religious systems tend to promote external rules, or moralism. In contrast, Jesus refused to define a set of rules that his followers could then fulfill with a sense of satisfaction. One can never “arrive” in light of such sweeping commands as “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Philip Yancey, What’s so Amazing About Grace?, 197)
We must owe everyone more than we can hope to pay. (Abingdon Press, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 606)
Verse 8 tells us that we are to pay more than what is due. The essence of love is that it gives where nothing is due. (Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Discipline, 125)
The debt of charity is permanent, and we are never quit of it; for we must pay it daily and yet always owe it. -Origen (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 253)
When a payment is due on a bill, we are told to pay it. If we fail to meet our financial obligations, then we violate this biblical injunction. Please notice that a proper use of credit is not prohibited here. Rather, we are exhorted to consistently and appropriately meet our economic debts. When we do, the name of Christ will be honored instead of defamed. (Charles R. Swindoll, Relating to Others in Love: Romans 12-16, 25)
Jesus purposely left our ability to know for certain when we had perfectly fulfilled the Law vague; first because there is no checklist of complete fulfillment just as there is no checklist of when you have fully loved someone. Also, so that we would continually be seeking His Word for clarity, his Spirit for guidance and his Son for grace.
Christian as to civil righteousness: “Owe no one anything.” The Christian must not, on the ground of any superior spirituality, excuse himself from any justified human demand; that is Paul’s basic rule as to the Christian’s civic relationships. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 432)
One can satisfy earthly, civil claims; but love’s claims are never fulfilled. Taxes and revenues can be paid, so that they are no longer owed. One can show respect and honor to those to whom they are due, so that one no longer owes anything further in these matters. But as to love to his neighbor the Christian is always under obligation, however far he may have gone. Love can never be “fulfilled,” but it is itself “the fulfillment of the law.” (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 432)
Blue talked to a banking friend about the way banks view people who pay credit card bills on time, thus avoiding the high interest. The banker told him that in the banking industry a person who pays his bills right away is known as a “deadbeat,” because the company is unable to make much money from him. A decade or so ago a deadbeat was someone who failed to pay his bills. Now he is someone who pays his bills promptly. (Ron Blue, Master Your Money, 119-20)
The expression, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” merits a word of explanation. What Paul–and before him Jesus–actually means must at least include this thought: it is a certain thing that a person will love himself, and it is also certain that he will do so in spite of the fact that the self he loves has many faults. So, then, also he should most certainly love his neighbor. He may not like him, but he should love him, and should do so regardless of that neighbor’s faults. (William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Romans, 440)
II. According to God through the Apostle Paul: You are not really in compliance with the Law unless your obedience to the Law is motivated by love. (Rom 13:9-10; Mt 7:12; 22:34-40; 2 Cor 3:6; Gal 5:13-14; 5:22-23; Jas 2:8)
Love God and do what you want. — Augustine
Keeping the law is not a prerequisite to saving faith, but saving faith is a prerequisite to keeping the law (3:31). Love is the visible side of faith in relation and responsibility to others. The law is fulfilled and summed up in love, for love penetrates to the intent of the law and thereby exceeds the outward minimum prescribed by the commandments. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 312)
Pitfalls of the Moral-Struggle Doctrine: But for all that, experience shows that pitfalls surround those who make moral struggle central in their thinking about the Holy Spirit. Their tendency is to grow legalistic, making tight rules for themselves and others about abstaining from things indifferent, imposing rigid and restrictive behavior patterns as bulwarks against worldliness and attaching great importance to observing these man-made taboos. They become Pharisaic, more concerned to avoid what defiles and adheres to principle without compromise than to practice the love of Christ. They become scrupulous, unreasonably fearful of pollution where none threatens and obstinately unwilling to be reassured. They become joyless, being so preoccupied with thoughts of how grim and unrelenting the battle is. They become morbid, always introspective and dwelling on the rottenness of their hearts in a way that breeds only gloom and apathy. They become pessimistic about the possibility of moral progress, both for themselves and for others; they settle for low expectations of deliverance from sin, as if the best they can hope for is to be kept from getting worse. Such attitudes are, however, spiritual neuroses, distorting, disfiguring, diminishing and so in reality dishonoring the sanctifying work of God’s Spirit in our lives. (J. I. Packer; Keep In Step With the Spirit, 37-38)
If you have to ask who your neighbor is it shows your heart. A person who is motivated by love is looking for anything he can do to help his neighbor to satisfy his needs because love is his MO. The lawyer wants to know the minimum standard of what it means to be neighborly in order to satisfy righteousness. But to even ask such a question reveals that you do not love at all but that you are only wanting to do what is necessary to get God off your case. — Pastor Keith
To live “in Christ,” to walk “in love,” is something entirely different from living under the law and striving to fulfill all its requirements; and yet the law is fulfilled in it. Therefore it can be said at the same time that the Christian is “free from the law” and that in him the law is fulfilled. Not by fulfillment of law is the law fulfilled, but by life “in Christ” and “in love.” It is in this sense, and only in this sense, that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 435)
God save us also from self-righteous judgmentalism…There is a universe of difference between the motivations behind legalism and discipline. Legalism says, “I will do this thing to gain merit with God,” while discipline says, “I will do this because I love God and want to please him.” Legalism is man-centered; discipline is God-centered. (J. I. Packer; Rediscovering Holiness, 114)
The believer, whom grace teaches to deny all ungodliness, he fights against sin because it dishonors God, opposes Christ, grieves the Spirit, and separates between his Lord and him; but the legalist fights against sin, because it breaks his peace, and troubles his conscience, and hurts him, by bringing wrath and judgment on him. As children will not play in the dust, not because it sullies their clothes, but flies into their eyes, and hurt them, so the legalists will not meddle with sin, not because it sullies the perfections of God, and defiles their souls, but only because it hurts them. I deny not, but there is too much of this legal temper even amongst the godly.” (Ralph Erskine, The Difference Between Legal and Gospel Mortification)
The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five pounds. I drop hints about the absolute priority of mediation and contemplation to create the impression that I am a man of prayer. At some unremembered moment I have lost the connection between internal purity of heart and external works of piety. In the most humiliating sense of the word, I have become a legalist. I have fallen victim to what T. S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason. (Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel, 131)
WARNING TO THOSE CONSIDERING FULL-TIME CHRISTIAN MINISTRY: When you make your religion your occupation you generally lose one or the other.
When we love others as God loves them, we are fulfilling the very essence of the Lord’s commands to us. (Charles R. Swindoll, Relating to Others in Love: Romans 12-16, 27)
Am I to decide what to do in a given situation by looking for a commandment to guide me? Or should I do what seems to be the loving thing? The interpretation of this text given above may suggest that we subscribe to this last viewpoint. For we have suggested that Paul teaches that obeying the love command is itself the fulfillment of all the other commandments of the law. (Douglas J. Moo, The NIV Application Commentary: Romans, 436-37)
Mere outward conformity to commandments is not what God wants. He wants “sincere love”: an honest, consistent concern for other people that spills over into actions of all kinds. When we love rightly, with the love that the Spirit inspires in us, we cannot help but obey whatever commandments God has given us. For he does not speak with two voices. What he requires is what his Spirit inspires. But because our minds are not perfectly renewed and because we can misunderstand what love requires, we still need commandments to remind us of the absolute demands of God and to keep us on “the straight and narrow.” (Douglas J. Moo, The NIV Application Commentary: Romans, 437)
Love needs law for its direction, while law needs love for its inspiration. (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 350)
Law by itself cannot provide an adequate foundation for the good life. What faith does for theology, love does for ethics. It provides a practical alternative to the self-defeating claims of legalism.
The weakness of the law is that it multiplies requirements without providing a sufficient motive to enable us to satisfy them. For innumerable demands with no adequate enabling power, Paul substitutes one inclusive motive. Love gathers up all the diverse requirements of the good life and fuses them into the perfect unity of one comprehensive claim. While supplying the simplicity which shows us our duty and helps us to understand it, love also provides the power without which we cannot do the things we should. (Abingdon Press, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 607)
Every man must decide for himself according to his own estimate of conditions and consequences; and no one can decide for him or impugn the decision to which he comes. Perhaps this is the end of the matter after all. This is precisely what this book is intended to show. (Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 37)
The very first question in all ethics is, What do I want? Only after this is settled (pleasure in hedonism, adjustment in naturalism, self-realization in eudemonism, etc.) can we ask about the why and the how and the who and the when and the where and the which! The primary issue is the “value” problem, our choice of our summum bonum. (Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 42-43)
Only one “general” proposition is prescribed, namely, the commandment to love God through the neighbor. “God does not will to draw any love exclusively to Himself; He wills that we should love Him “in our neighbor.” And this commandment is, be it noted, a normative ideal; it is not an operational directive. All else, all other generalities (e.g., “One should tell the truth” and “One should respect life”) are at most only maxims, never rules. For the situationist there are no rules–none at all. (Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 55)
The love commandment (the Shema of Dt 6:4-5 combined with Lv 19:18, in Mk 12:29-32, etc.) is, so runs the argument, Jesus’ summary of the law!
But here lies the issue. Is the Summary to be taken as a compendium or as a distillation? Legalists take it as a compendium, as a collection and conflation of many laws, obedience to all of them being implicit in their coming together as a summary. Situationists, however, take it to mean a distillation, i.e., that the essential spirit and ethos of many laws has been distilled or liberated, extracted, filtered out, with the legal husks, or rubbish, thrown away as dross. (Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 70-71)
It is one of the great troubles of life today that people do not like law and contrast it with love, and by love they mean lawlessness, license, lust; that is the whole confusion in modern thinking. But here the Apostle shows us the intimate relationship between the two, and if people have not grasped this, they have completely misunderstood the whole nature and purpose of the law. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 172)
We must always remember that the law is not meant to be mechanical, but to be living. That is another most important distinction. We are not meant to keep the law mechanically–one, two, three, tick them off. That is to miss the whole point. It is a living matter, a life matter, not a matter of mere rules and regulations. We are meant to keep the law intelligently. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 172-73)
As faith without works is dead, so love that does not manifest itself in a detailed observation and carrying out of the law is nothing but sheer sentimentality and ceases to be true love. Love is orderly, love is lawful, love is the fulfilling of the law. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 174)
How often did our Lord have to tell them this. He said, “Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” [Mt 23:23]. Their whole tragedy was that they had legalisms. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 175)
Now we have finished with the law in the matter of uselessly trying to justify ourselves by it. We have also finished with the condemnation that the law pronounces upon us. But we can still be addressed and appealed to in terms of the law because it is still the perfect expression of the way in which God would have us live. It still applies to us in that way. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 201)
We do not observe the commandments in order to make ourselves Christians, but we observe them, the details of the law, because we are Christians. You see the difference? The trouble with the Pharisee, with the moralist, with people who deny the gospel, is that they are trying to make themselves Christians by attempting to keep the commandments. It cannot be done. It was a yoke, says Peter, that we could not bear [Acts 15:10]. It was grievous. Nobody could do it. No, it is the other way round. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 201)
You must not talk only about the spirit, the letter is also vital. But you must not only talk about the letter, “For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” [2 Cor 3:6]. No, we need the letter and the spirit, and that is what the Apostle is teaching here. Letter and spirit; law and love; “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” As Paul puts it in 1 Cor 13:1, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity”–love–“I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” You have gifts, yes, but if they are not accompanied by love if they are not manifestations of love, they are no use. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 204)
A musician may play the piano absolutely correctly, without a single wrong note, yet be entirely devoid of any true art. The playing of the notes is not enough; the piece of music has a soul and the artist is the one who, while technically correct, brings out the soul of the music. The great artist, or course, must not make mistakes. The pianist must not say, “Ah well, I’ve got the touch. I’m an artist. I don’t bother about my exercises. I don’t mind if I make a mistake here or there.” Every great musician pays absolute attention to details, to every single note; yes, but not only to that because he knows that without the soul, the music is lifeless and fairly useless. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 204)
III. We are to fulfill the Law by loving: The Christian Hippocratic oath. (Rom 13:10)
When the Bible says I am to love my neighbor, it means I am to be considerate to my neighbor. It has to do with action: what I say, what I do with my money, what I do with my body, what I do that may bring harm and injury to another person. I am to care about other people. Christians should be the most caring, considerate and neighborly people in the world. To be a lover of God requires that we show that love through being kind and considerate to people. (RC Sproul, The Gospel of God: Romans, 226)
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. — Plato
When we practice love, there is no need for any other laws, because love covers it all! If we love others, we will not sin against them. This explained why the Ten Commandments were not referred to often in the NT. In fact, the Sabbath commandment is not quoted at all in any of the epistles. As believers, we do not live under the Law; we live under grace. Our motive for obeying God and helping others is the love of Christ in our hearts. (Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Right, 146-47)
If we love our neighbor, we do not steal from him or slander him, nor do we allow ourselves to be jealous or envious or to bear false witness against him. If we love somebody, we do not want to harm him. That is the way we are to live as Christians; we are to be known by the love that we have for one another. (RC Sproul, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary: Romans, 468)
In the words, “Love does no harm to the neighbor,” we have an example of a figure of speech called litotes. This means that a negative expression of this type implies a strong affirmative. So, “He’s no fool” may mean, “He is very shrewd.” And similarly “Love does no harm to the neighbor” means “Love greatly benefits the neighbor” “…does no harm” is an understatement for “greatly benefits.” The reason that this truth is here expressed negatively may well have been to make it coincide with the law’s prohibitions. (William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Romans, 440)
CONCLUSION/APPLICATION: How do we begin to come into compliance with God’s seemingly impossible demands to love our neighbor as ourselves, our enemies and to submit ourselves to fallen, godless authorities?
A- Look to Jesus (Jn 13:34-35; 15:1-5; Eph 3:17-19; 4:15, 32; 5:1-2; Phil 2:1-11; 4:13; Heb 12:1-2; 1 Jn 3:11-24; 4:7-21)
He who through faith is righteous walks “in Christ” and “in love.” Such a life he has to carry on in the midst of the old aeon and its orders. It is impossible for the Christian to be indifferent to these orders. To be sure, the earthly and civil righteousness must not be confused with the righteousness of the new aeon, the righteousness of God. But it would be bad if the Christian, who shares in the righteousness of God, were not even to measure up to the demand which human righteousness lays upon him. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 431-32)
Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before,
Since we have seen His beauty, are joined to part no more
To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, and hear His pardon voice,
Transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. — John Newton
The greatest test of godly love is its willingness to sacrifice its own needs and welfare for the needs and welfare of others, even to the point of forfeiting life if necessary. “Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, “that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). The supreme example of such love was the Lord Jesus Himself, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). We are to be “imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved [us], and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Eph 5:1-2). As John reminds us, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 Jn 3:16). (John MacArthur, The MacArthur NT Commentary: Romans 9-16, 249)
Love of this order is not our achievement but our response. It does not express human goodness but reflects divine mercy. We would never love one another in this way if we had been left to our own devices. The idea of love is always closely related to its inspiration, Jesus Christ. Paul is never weary of appealing to Christ’s love for us as the incentive for our love of others. But in Christ’s giving of himself for us the NT recognizes the very love of God. “God so loved the world that he gave…” (Jn 3:16), and when, according to our measure, we show a comparable spirit, it is because “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost” (5:5). (Abingdon Press, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 608)
The only way we can love our neighbor as ourselves is with a new heart (Jer 31:31-34) by becoming a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) by being born again (John 3 & Peter).
If God did not love His enemies, there would never have been any Christians. God loved us when we were enemies. “If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” [1 Jn 4:11], and with the mind of Christ in us we are able to love, because, as we have seen, we do not see the man, but the victim of the devil and of hell. We love our enemies and do good to them that hate us. If we do not, then we are probably nothing but sentimental religious people. Here is the test–“love your enemies”! (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 198)
B- Love: Pay what you owe (Lv 19:18; Mt 5:42; 7:12; 22:34-40; 25:35-40; Lk 6:35; 10:25-37; Jn 13:34-35; 1 Cor 13; Gal 5:13-14; Eph 3:17-19; 4:15, 32; Col 3:12-14; 1 Thes 3:12; Jms 2:8; 1 Jn 3:11-24; 4:7-21)
Love asks: How much can I give? Legalism asks: How little can I give?
His melancholy reflections that night led to an odd discussion of immortality. In answering the question of whether he will ever see his wife again, Dosteovsky ignores traditional arguments – from the resurrection of Jesus, say, or need to balance the scales of justice – and turns the document into a kind of personal confession. No one lives up to the ideal, he admits. No one can perfectly love his neighbor as himself. No one can fulfill the law of Christ. God cannot ask so much and be satisfied with so little. We are made for that which is too big for us. It is for this reason, he concludes, that he mast believe in an afterlife. Without such belief, our futile struggle to fulfill the law of Christ would have no point. It is our very longing, our failure, our sense of incompleteness that forces us to throw ourselves on God’s mercy. Our imperfection in this life calls for another, more complete realization of that ideal. (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor, 144)
Legalists point to the law to show what they CAN do. Christians who are saved by grace point to the Law to show what they cannot do and what drives them to Christ.
He says, “Owe no man anything.” It seems a thing almost unnecessary to say; but there were some who even twisted the petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” into a reason for claiming absolution from all money obligations. Paul had to remind his people that Christianity is not an excuse for refusing our obligations to our fellow men; it is a reason for fulfilling them to the utmost. (William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: Romans, 175-76)
The debt of love is categorical and admits of no exceptions. In Buddhism love is a rather dispassionate feeling of benevolence toward humanity in general, though much less is said of its expression toward particular individuals. Not so in Christianity. Agape is not an abstract concept; it is a will in search of an object. Four times Paul identifies that object as one another (v. 8), fellowman (v. 8), and neighbor (twice in vv. 9-10). The other person represents God’s claim on our love. We normally think of our neighbor as a person who is like us, but in the parables of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37) and Final Judgment (Mt 25:31-46) the neighbor is very much unlike us. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 311)
“The rule for all of us is perfectly simple, Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 116)
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. (C.S Lewis, The Four Loves, 169)
We are divinely enabled to pay our great debt of love “because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom 5:5). God’s own love is the inexhaustible well from which, as it were, we can draw the supernatural love He commands us to live by. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that, “being rooted and grounded in love, [you] may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:17-19). (John MacArthur, The MacArthur NT Commentary: Romans 9-16, 249)
In order to love as God commands, Christians must submit to the Holy Spirit. In doing so, we must surrender all hatred, animosity, bitterness, revenge, or pride that stands between us and those we are called to love. “Now as to the love of the brethren,” Paul says, “you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another” (1 Thes 4:9). Through His own Holy Spirit, God Himself teaches us to love! And because God Himself is love (1 Jn 4:16), it is hardly surprising that the first “fruit of the Spirit is love” (Gal 5:22). (John MacArthur, The MacArthur NT Commentary: Romans 9-16, p. 249)
If you have ever had a personal debt, be it ever so small, you know that the first thing that enters your mind when you see that person is that you “owe” them. We need to truly see ourselves as spiritual debtors. When we go to church, town, work, shopping, school–wherever we go, whoever we meet, we owe love. (John MacArthur, The MacArthur NT Commentary: Romans 9-16, p. 250-51)
Earlier in his letter Paul has already referred several times to the importance of paying our debts. We are in debt to the unbelieving world to share the gospel with it (1:14); we are in debt to the Holy Spirit to live a holy life (8:12f.); and we are in debt to the state to pay our taxes (13:6f.). (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 348)
Since I have become a Christian, I feel I have something which other people need; and I think this so strongly that I feel as if I am in debt to them. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 168)
The final failure of moralists is that they are always negative; they are never positive; they do not do certain things. They may live good lives, they may be paragons of all the virtues, but they are hard, cold and intellectual, not the sort of people you go to if you are in trouble. Moralists are self-contained; they cannot help anybody else; they are a mere collection of vetoes and restraints and prohibitions. The poor sinner never goes near them. The sinners never “drew nigh unto” the Pharisees and scribes, but we read about our blessed Lord, “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him” [Lk 15:1]. The people who had fallen and failed in life, they felt drawn to Him. They felt He had something to give, that He, in this sense, was a “debtor” to them. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 176)
You owe it to your wife to love her.
You owe it to your husband to honor him.
You owe it to your children to care for, instruct, nurture and support them.
You owe it to your parents to honor them.
You owe it to your employer to give him a minute’s work for a minute’s pay.
You owe it to your employee to pay a fair and honest wage.
You owe it to your government officials to pay them respect and honor.
You owe it to your lenders to pay your debts on time.
You owe it to your fellow audience members not to be a distraction.
You owe it to others to tell the truth.
You owe it to others to help them maintain their property.
You owe it to others to know they are created in the image of God.
You owe it to God to worship, serve and obey Him.
You owe it to your fellow citizen not to pollute the air, ground, or waters.
You owe at least 15% to a good waiter or waitress.
You owe at minimum a “Thank-you” to anyone who helps you.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to be on time.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to keep your word.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to really listen to them as they speak to you.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to forgive.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to serve them.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to share with them — especially if you possess something that can significantly help them have a better life.
You owe it to people as those created in God’s image to honor them or to take them seriously.
You owe it to your teacher to pay attention and have a hunger and desire to learn.
Worship point: Just try to love like Jesus loved. Just try to pay all you owe! Love those who want to hurt you. Truly love those who are arrogant, prideful, demeaning and rude. You will soon discover how far short you have fallen from God’s glory. Because each one of us is made in the image of God and were created and designed to love as Jesus loves. When you see yourself as the fallen sinner you are, and you recognize that God still loves you in spite of your fallenness, worship should come quite naturally.
Spiritual Challenge: Love!
The law had been given, but nobody could keep it; teachers have taught, and so have philosophers and others, but they have not helped at all. It is just as if they had never lived. Why? Because man is completely helpless.
So it comes to this: the gospel of Jesus Christ not only establishes my guilt, but establishes that I am so rotten by nature that I must be born again. It tells me that I cannot possibly love my neighbor because my nature is wrong. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 188)
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. (Family Circle 12/23/03 p. 23)
Quotes to Note:
You will never have a true understanding of yourself until you see yourself under God and in the light of God. There, and there alone, you get to know the truth about yourself. . . . So the only way whereby you can ever love your neighbor is to know the truth about yourself. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 186)
It is a total misunderstanding of the law, a misunderstanding of which not only the Pharisees but their modern representatives are guilty, to think that all that is needed is to tell men and women, “Love your neighbor,” and then all will be well. That is the one thing that they cannot do, and the law, which is quoted as if in support, is the very thing that was given to show its impossibility, to shut them in, in complete failure, to aggravate their situation, as the Apostle put it earlier in Romans: “The law entered, that the offence might abound” [Rom 5:20]. It never had a saving purpose. It was meant to pinpoint the offence, to bring it out. We find all that in Romans 7, as well as in chapter 5. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 13, 187)
It is necessary to insist that situation ethics is willing to make full and respectful use of principles, to be treated as maxims but not as laws or precepts. We might call it “principled relativism.” To repeat the term used above, principles or maxims or general rules are illuminators. But they are not directors. The classic rule of moral theology has been to follow laws but do it as much as possible according to love and according to reason (secundum caritatem et secundum rationem). Situation ethics, on the other hand, calls upon us to keep law in subservient place, so that only love and reason really count when the chips are down! (Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics, 31)
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