All right, Romans chapter 13, I will dispense with the review from last week since last time I started a review, we ended up taking the whole time with questions. So, but I trust. that we got most of our questions out from Romans 13, one through seven. If not, I invite you to use the question form on the back of one of your bulletin inserts and leave a question in the box and I will attempt to address it as time allows. But let me just read the passage and then we'll dig right in. It's Romans 13, starting in verse eight. 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. Now just, this will be the last time I mention Romans 13, one through seven, because at the end of that section in verse seven, Paul says, pay to all what is owed. taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, and honor to whom honor is owed. And that concept of an owe to owe somebody something or a debt carries now into this passage that we are looking at in verse eight, where he begins with, owe no one anything. So Paul is going to argue here that the only debt that remains outstanding. The only debt we should have remaining outstanding is the debt to love one another. So really, we're going to look at this in three parts. In verse 8, there's no debt but love. Verse 9, the law is summed up in love. And then verse 10, love fulfills the law. So again, after commanding the Roman church to pay all what is owed to them, Paul switches gears now to talk about love, and he's kind of circling back to something he said in chapter 12 in verse nine, where he says, let love be genuine. To let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. And here, Paul now says that love is the debt that can never fully be paid. Owe no one anything except to love each other. There's never going to come a time in your life where you can look at somebody and say, all right, I've loved you enough. I've loved you long enough. I don't need to love you anymore. My debt of love to you has been fulfilled. See you later. We're not going to be able to say that. The word there, owe, Othello, speaks of owing a debt or some other obligation or to be bound to perform some duty. Now, when you look at the way verse 8 begins, where he says, owe no one anything, you might conclude that we should not have debts of any kind. Don't owe anybody anything. And that's what some have interpreted this verse to teach. But what do we say are the three rules of biblical interpretation? What are the top three rules of biblical interpretation? Context, context, context, right? So the three rules for real estate, location, location, location, biblical interpretation, context, context, context. When Paul says, owe no one anything, he's not saying you can't have a mortgage or a car loan because these things would have been foreign to him anyway. But what's the context? Well, again, we looked at that in verse eight and verse seven. Make sure you pay your debts to the state. Now, of course, in saying that, there is great wisdom in avoiding debt. And the Bible makes it quite clear, Proverbs 22, verse seven, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender. And in our day and age, what's the worst kind of debt you can have in our day and age? Well, okay. What type of debt is bad? Credit card debt, right. Because you carry that balance over and they charge you these exorbitant interest rates. And if all you do is pay the monthly payment, you'll be paying that thing for the rest of your life. And then your children will be paying that thing for the rest of their lives. Credit card debt is easily the worst kind of debt to carry. And indebtedness here is a form of slavery. That's what the proverb is saying. It's like if you owe somebody something, you have, you know, they have an obligation, you have an obligation to them and they have something to hold over you. But the kind of obligation spoken of in here, in Romans 13.8, is more like what we see in Proverbs 3.27, where we see, do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. So here the governing authorities, by virtue of their position and their appointment by God, are worthy of respect, worthy of honor, and yes, even worthy of having taxes paid to them. And now Paul takes that and turns it around to talk about our obligation now to all people, not just the governing authorities, to all people. And that debt is to love each other. The obligation of love is a permanent debt. As I said earlier, we will never be in a position where we can just stop loving one another because we've loved them enough. The love meter is full and you can say, okay, I can turn off loving you and I'll go on and I'll pay my debt to someone else. That's not how it works. It's the debt one keeps owing. Note further that the obligation here is to love each other. It's a very key word you see in the New Testament, alelone. It's one of those one another passages. So you see these all over the New Testament. Love one another, do this to one another, and so on. The one another passages in the New Testament. So in other words, this love isn't just restricted to those in the church. It's not just restricted to those in your family. It is toward all people. Love each other. Love one another. We'll explore this a little more as we get to verse 10. Now, Paul here gives the grounds for this never ending debt of love later on in verse eight, where he says, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. And we'll explore this a little more as we go along as well, but take a moment to consider that statement. The one who loves another has fulfilled the law, past tense. kind of reminds me of the time in the gospels when the religious leaders come up to Jesus and they are seeking to justify themselves and seeking to try to kind of trap him with their knowledge and try to get him to say something that they can then use to hold over him and arrest him. They come up and they ask him, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And then Jesus responds with that great verse taken out of the Old Testament in that section in Deuteronomy 6 called the Shema, where God tells the people, hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and with all your strength. And then he goes on to say, that is the great and first commandment. Then he goes on to add some more. He says, now there's a second one that's just like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. And that word depend literally means to hang. You can hang all the law and the prophets on those two commandments. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. All of the law, all the prophets are supported by these two commandments. In other words, the entire Old Testament. That's what law and prophets is. It's just a way of saying the entire Old Testament. The entire Old Testament is based on the command to love God, and it's based on the command to love your neighbor as yourself. And Paul will later echo this sentiment in his letter to the Colossians, in Colossians chapter three, verse 14, where he says, and above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Perfect Harm reminds me of the Coke commercial, right? Love puts everything together in perfect harmony. And then when Jesus is instructing his disciples in the upper room, he gives them a new commandment, John 13, 34, which Lord willing, we'll see in weeks and months to come. A new commandment, I give to you that you love one another, just as I loved you, you also are to love one another. So that is the basis for this command, the fact that it is part of the commandments. The law is summed up that way. The law is summed up as a law of love. Therefore, that is why we owe this obligation to love one another, because that is what the law is summed up to say. Now, how does love fulfill the law? We'll look again now at verse nine. 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." It is a little interesting tidbit. In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments are literally, if you were to translate the Hebrews as the Ten Words. These are words that God is speaking, but that's what Paul is saying when he says, are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now, Paul here in verse nine, he's listing four of the Ten Commandments. He's listing the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the tenth. You're like, well, what about the ninth? Well, all these are taken, or I'll get to that in a moment, but all these are taken from what is commonly called the second table of the law. Have you guys heard that? The first table of the law, second table of the law? Okay. Second table of the law basically is our duty to man. The law is broken down into two tables, our duties toward God and our duties toward others. Now, as to why the Ninth Commandment is skipped, I wouldn't make any big deal on it. It's not like Paul is going soft on bearing false witness. In fact, there's even in some New Testament manuscripts, there's a textual variant in which some of them actually do have the 9th commandment added in there. Maybe some scribe said, hey, he listed 6, 7, 8, and 10. Let's throw 9 in there as well, just to make it complete. Sometimes you see those variants are, you know, scribes correcting what they think is an omission, so they'll add something in there. But the point basically that Paul wants to make is this, is that the second table of the law, commands five through 10, can be summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, you may have heard me or someone else say that law can be summed up as the law of love. The law of God is the law of love. Now maybe it could be hard to see the law of God as a law of love because you've got all these thou shalt not, don't do this, don't do that, that doesn't sound loving to us sometimes. But no one would doubt that you as a parent love your children, right? You love your children, we all love our children. Now how much of your energy and time are used up in early child rearing saying the word no to your children? I mean, I think that's probably one of the first words you say to them most often. No, don't do that. No, don't put your finger in the socket. No, don't put your hand into the fire. Don't do these things. When you say no, are you being unloving to your children? No, absolutely not. You do this because you love them. You discipline your children because you love them. You tell them don't do this because if they do that, they're gonna hurt themselves or they're gonna regret it later. Loving someone actually means having the courage to say no once in a while. It's easy to say yes. It's easy to say yes. You want someone to like you, you just say, okay, yeah, go ahead and do that. You hear all this, I don't know when this phase started, but you get this, I'm gonna be the cool parent. I'm gonna be my children's best friend. It's like, no, your child doesn't need a best friend from you. They're gonna have plenty of best friends. What they need is a parent. They need someone who's gonna set boundaries. They need someone who's gonna tell them no. They need someone who's gonna watch out for them because a child does not have the mental acuity and the mental faculties to make all of the necessary decisions that are proper in life. They need that instruction. There is a mindset that thinks that if you really love me, you'll let me live my life and do what I want. That's the mindset of an immature child. Just let me do what I want. No, God loves us and he wants the best for us and his commands are not meant to be burdensome. Rather, they're the path to true joy. And again, if you think of the law of love as sort of like the owner's manual, the commandments, the owner's manual for living, or the owner's manual for creation, it's like God is the creator. He's given us the owner's manual. This is the way to live the good life. The Proverbs say that the beginning of wisdom is to fear the Lord, listen to the Lord. All the Proverbs, you look at those chapters, those early chapters of Proverbs, you hear the voice of a father writing to his son, my son, hear my commands, follow my ways. Why? Because this is the path of wisdom. This is the path that will lead you to a good life. Now, these commands only seem burdensome because of the fall and remaining sin in the believer. And we want to rebel against God's good commandments. Now, take note that the command there, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, that Paul cites in verse nine is taken from Leviticus 19, verse eight. It's not a separate command added to the 10 to make 11 or 12 commandments. That command there is the summation of these commands. And that word there, summed up, I'm not going to try to pronounce the Greek word, it just means to unite, to bring together under one heading. All of these can be brought up under one heading, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, I know Fred asked this question, I think it was last week. Lest we think neighbor means only those close to us, or our friends consider the following. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had to correct the false teaching of the Pharisees who taught hatred of enemies. Matthew 5, verses 43 through 45, Jesus says to the people listening, you have heard that it was said. In other words, this is the teaching you have had. Love your neighbor, hate your enemy. Love your neighbor, hate your enemy. In other words, it's okay to hate people that aren't your neighbor. Then Jesus says, no, I'm gonna correct that. I say to you, no, he doesn't say the scribes say, or you've heard it said, he says, I say to you, indicating that he has the authority to override this. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he makes his son to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the just and on the unjust. So just a few agricultural metaphors in that verse, right? Farmers, you may hate your neighbor, but the same sun that shines on your farm is shining on your neighbor's farm too. The same rain that falls and plenishes the ground that you own, plenishes your neighbor's ground that you may not like. God is kind to his enemies. He shows kindness and mercy. He loves them, not in a saving way necessarily, but in a general common grace kind of way. And I like that in verse 44 of Matthew 5, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. How hard is it to hate somebody if you're praying for them? Right? I mean, that's pretty hard to do. I mean, unless you're praying like the imprecatory Psalms, you know, Lord smashed their teeth out and dashed them on the rocks. But I mean, typically if you're praying for somebody, it's hard to hate them. It's hard to be enemies with somebody that you pray for. And I think that's good advice here is if you fear yourself maybe hating someone or bearing animosity towards someone, start praying for them. Pray that the Lord will soften their hearts. Pray that the Lord will soften your heart. so that you can see them as God sees them. Now note that neighbor here, according to Jesus, includes enemies. Love your neighbors yourself. Love your enemies. Okay? I mean, I took math in school, right? If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C, right? Transitive property. So if you love your neighbors, and Jesus says love your enemies, then your neighbors and your enemies are kind of grouped up together in the same group of people that you are called to love. And if we do so, we reflect the love of God that is shown to us, right? God loved us when? When did God start loving us? After we had cleaned up our act, after we repented of our sin and came to him in our nice righteousness, now he loves us? No, he loves us when we were enemies, right? Romans 5, we looked at that a few chapters ago. Interestingly enough, Jesus also at one time in Luke 10 was asked by a teacher of the law, when he was talking about loving your neighbor, he said, well, who's my neighbor? I need to know who my neighbor is. If I'm to love my neighbor, I need to know who my neighbor is. He was looking for a loophole to confirm his own beliefs. And then Jesus proceeds to tell him the parable of the good Samaritan. Your neighbor is anyone who crosses your path with a need, right? And he uses in that, it's interesting in that story, he uses as the hero of the story, the Samaritan. Right? The Jews hated the Samaritans. They were the half-breeds. They were the people who didn't get it right. They were the people who were not pure. So the Samaritan is the good guy in the parable. Who are the bad guys? The scribes, the Pharisees, and the Levites, the religious leaders, are the bad guys, because you've got this poor Jew who has been waylaid on the road, and then the religious leaders come by, and he's like, well, I can't touch him, because if I do so, I'm gonna become ceremonially unclean, and I can't go to worship. So worshiping God is more important than helping this poor schmuck on the road here, so I'm gonna go worship. And then the Samaritan comes by, a guy who would have no reason to like this guy laying on the ground, and says, here, let me help you. He takes him to an inn, pays the innkeeper to care for him. He says, if it's not enough, I'll come back the next day and I'll bring you some more money. Your neighbor is anyone who crosses your path. And the word there translated for neighbor is plesion. It can mean near. It's used as a preposition to refer to near, but it also just means a fellow human being. Anybody, in the context of the summation here, love your neighbor as yourself comes in Leviticus 19 verses 9 through 18. So keep your finger in Romans and turn to Leviticus chapter 19. Anyway, starting with verse nine of Leviticus 19, reading through verse 18. So God, through Moses, is telling the people, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest, and you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the falling grapes of your vineyard, you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God. You shall not steal. You shall not deal falsely. You shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind. But you shall fear your God. I am the Lord. You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." Now, just note some of the things here God commands the Jewish people to do. Verse 11, don't steal, don't deal falsely, don't lie. I mean, those are commandments, right? Don't harvest your field right up to the edge. Leave some for the poor. Don't oppress your neighbor. And if you owe wages to a hired hand, make sure you pay them. Don't make them wait. These are day laborers. Day laborers came in, they did a day's labor, and then they were expected to be paid at the end of the day. Don't hold your money until the next day that person is depending on it. Don't put a stumbling block before the blind. Don't put something in front of the blind person so that he falls down. In other words, love your neighbor as yourself. Don't slander. Don't be impartial. All of these things are summed up in you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then notice every time God gives a command here, he says, do all these things. I am the Lord. He says that he repeats that at least four or five times. I am the Lord. I am your God. I'm the one who's commanding you to do these things. All of this, this context of the summation is all summed up in this, love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, don't do anything that would harm your neighbor. Don't impress them, don't lie to them, don't keep wages from them, don't cheat them, don't steal from them, all these things. Let me turn back to Romans 13. So now Paul will conclude this passage in verse 10, where he says, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Now, as we just read in Leviticus 19, if you love your neighbor, you will do no wrong to them. Other translations like the NIV says you will not harm them. Now this may seem like a, you know, duh, right? If you love your neighbor, you're not gonna do them wrong. Okay, yeah, I get that. Tell me something I don't know. But consider just how truly difficult this can be. Now I'm confident here that no one would do wrong to anyone else in this building. And I'm fairly confident that you would not go and do wrong to your neighbor or friend who doesn't go to this church. But what about someone who's wronged us? It's a little more difficult, right? If you feel someone has wronged you, it's a little harder now to not want to exact that pound of flesh from them. And we just saw here that neighbor has a broader application than the Jews even thought. Again, using the words of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same. And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same. It's easy to love people who love you. It's easy to love people who are nice to you. It's easy to greet the person who greets you. The hard part is loving the person who doesn't love you. Loving the person who doesn't greet you. Notice what Jesus says, if you do these things, what reward do you have? You're doing what tax collectors do. Speaking only for myself, when I read that passage there, if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? That always hits me right between the eyes. That always gets me. Because there's always someone I feel that I've been less than charitable toward, there's always someone that I haven't shown the type of love Jesus commands for me, and of that I need to repent. I need to repent when I feel those feelings that I can't love someone because they haven't been kind to me. It's hard to do. Now, to show how love sums up and fulfills the law, let's go back to verse nine. If you love your neighbor as yourself, will you murder or be angry with them? These aren't trick questions, right? Will you murder someone if you love them? Will you be angry with them if you love them? Will you commit adultery or lust after them? Will you steal from them? Will you covet their things? Will you bear false witness against them and tarnish their reputation? Biblical answer to that is no, of course you wouldn't. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Now, I'm willing to shine the mirror of the law into my own heart first. No one is immune from this, not even pastors. Not even your elders or your deacons. We are all susceptible to this. We need the law to shine in our own hearts as well. Because it all boils down to this. Love is the fulfilling of the law. If you could show the proper love toward God or your neighbor, then you don't have to worry about keeping 10 or hundreds of commandments. You're keeping them all. If you could show love toward your neighbor, if you could show love toward God, you are fulfilling the law. That's what Paul is saying here. Do you think if we could all show the proper love toward God and neighbor, would we need the law? Would we need civil government? Romans 13, one through seven would not apply if we could just love one another as God has commanded us to. The reason we have governing authorities established by God for our good is because we don't love our neighbors. That word fulfilling is a familiar word in verse 10, pleroma, that means fullness or completeness. When you love your neighbor the way God commands us to love, There is nothing lacking in your keeping of the law. You are keeping it completely if you love your neighbor as yourself. Perhaps another way to look at this is to consider Jesus' words in Matthew 7, 12. Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. It's another way to look at it, right? All right, how do I love my neighbor? Well, how would you like them to treat you? Let's start with that, right? You love yourself, right? We've all shown a capacity to love ourselves, right? I don't have any problem putting myself before others, okay? The struggle is putting others before myself, all right? So what would I like others to do to me? Okay, well then Jesus says, do that to others. That's the point of Matthew 7, 12. And again, let's not divorce this from the context that this whole practical section is coming in, which is in Romans 12, one and two. Do you want to live a life as a living sacrifice to God? Do you want to live a life of non-conformity to the world? Do you want to live a life that is pleasing to God? Then love your neighbor as yourself. Because you are never more like God when you love as he loves. Now, how do I do this? That's the hard part, right? Okay, you told me what I need to do, how do I do this? Well, it's all part of working out what the Holy Spirit is working in you, right? That's what Paul says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it's the Lord who is working in you for his good pleasure. It's all part of not letting the world shape you into its mold, right? If we love those who love us, right? Jesus says you love like tax collectors and Gentiles. In other words, you're loving like the world. If you hate your enemies, love those who are kind to you, you are loving like the world. That is the world shaping you into its mold. Right? You look on social media, you listen to the news. It's all about, okay, you did me wrong. I'm going to do you wrong 10 times over. I'm going to be snarky to you on social media. I'm going to say all these mean and nasty things to you because you did something I didn't like. That's how the world operates. We are not to let the world shape us into its mold. Do not be conformed to this age. Be transformed. Have your mind renewed by the Spirit and the Word. Continue to read the Word. Continue to let the Word shape your life, to shape your thinking. Jesus says in Matthew 19, with man this is impossible, with God all things are possible. In other words, this is not something you can do and you can't white-knuckle your way through loving your neighbor. You know what I mean by white-knuckling? Right, you're gripping the steering wheel so that your knuckles turn white. It's like, I'm gonna get through this. No, you can't do this on your own strength. You gotta trust in the Word, you gotta let the Word shape you, you gotta let the Word conform you and renew your mind, you gotta let the Spirit work in you and change you, because God can do these things. With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Or as Paul will say in Philippians 4, I can do all things, including loving my neighbor, including loving my enemy, through Christ who strengthens me, right? Well, that's all I have for this passage. But next time we will look, we'll finish Romans 13, looking at verses 11 through 14.