Well, at this time, would you take out your Bibles and turn with me to Romans chapter 13, Romans 13. If you're using the Bible in the chair, you'll find Romans 13. On page 1127. Well, why don't we pray together, and then I'll make a few opening comments, and then we'll get to the reading of our text. So let's bow for a word of prayer. Our gracious and heavenly Father, we bow before you this morning knowing that you are the giver of every good gift, and Jesus Christ is chief among your gifts. In fact, union with Him allows every other gift to flow forth to us. And so we are so thankful for salvation in Him. We're also thankful for the Holy Spirit, who opened our eyes, who brought your call, Father, to bear upon our lives in such a way that we were roused shaken from the dead that we might have eyes to see. Father, as we bow before you this morning, we're mindful of all of these things. And it's to your Word that we turn, knowing that it is your Word, and that here in this Word you speak to us forcefully, authoritatively, lovingly, kindly, And so we pray that you would give us hearts, attentive hearts, ears to hear, eyes to see. And Father, it's our desire that you would, if we stand in you already, cause us to be strengthened in our stand, increase our faith, help us. And Father, if there are those who are here this morning who are not in you, We pray that You would draw them into that saving relationship which is such a joy. Father, this is Your Word. Commit it to our hearts, our minds. Commit it to our lives. Help us to hear it and do things in us upon the hearing of it that will last for all eternity. to your glory and praise, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Today we're going to look at Romans 13 verses 8 through 14. And when you look at this particular text, one of the things that you immediately notice is that it has some carryover to the text we looked at the last time we were together. It has some fallback in it to verse 7 of chapter 13. There we read about taxes and how Paul said, pay your taxes. And then he went on in verse 7 to say, it's not just taxes that you're to pay, but you're supposed to pay revenue. And you're supposed to give honor to those to whom honor is due, and respect to those to whom respect is due. And so he went through the list of about four things, telling us that we owe. We owe. Our text is like that. It picks up on the notion of debt, the idea that we owe. And in this particular text, he says that we owe a debt of love. and he says that it is a perpetual debt. Now, the thing that I want you to pick up on for right now is this. He says, oh, no one anything except love each other. Now, some people might pick that up and say something like this. Oh, oh, oh, oh, here we have a text that says we're never to be in debt. were never to owe anything to anyone except love and that includes financial debt, financial owing. And I want to caution you at the outset in terms of that sort of thinking because that's not the direction this text is going. And it's not the direction that this text is going because if it were, the text would actually say too much. Do you know what I mean by that? He says in verse eight, owe no one anything. But he just said in verse seven, we owe honor to those whom honor is due. We owe respect to those whom respect is due. And by the way, you owe taxes to those whom taxes are due. So we do owe. So what he's saying is this. There's a premium on the debt of love. You owe that. It's a perpetual debt that you cannot get out from under, nor should you want to, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ. Now, if that's the case, and I think it is, if what he's saying is that there's a premium on love that's owed to one another, then every person in this room ought to be tuned in for what's next. because it's spoken right to us. So with that in mind, let me turn to Romans chapter 13. And I'm going to read verse eight through the end of the chapter. And I want you to know that this is an absolute joy for me to read this text to you. If my only job to you, was to get up in front of you on Sunday morning, open up God's word and read it to you, close it and then sit down. I would be a happy man. I can't tell you how joyful I am every morning I get to read the text of God's word. And I wish I could communicate to you some way, somehow, that that's a genuine joy that I have. I love it. I think it's a privilege for me to get to do that. And I don't think that you ought to believe it because I'm happy about it. I think that you ought to believe that this is the Word of God and you ought to be joyful to hear it for the same reason I'm joyful to read it. Because it is God's Word. And in a world of words that are so unsafe and so many, this is a safe word. It's a word for our comfort and it's a word that excites our joy. Listen to it. Romans chapter 13, verse 8. 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. But the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is near 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. Several years ago, when I was a pastor in a small country church, I worked part-time for a funeral director. And you can't count this one because I've already mentioned this before. They keep track of my jobs that I had before I was a pastor. I had to accompany this man to pick up a body. It was the first time that I ever had to do this particular job. And so on the way, it was a several hour trip, and on the way this man prepared me for what I would see. Or at least he thought he was preparing me. At least that's what he said as I stood there in the morgue that day. He said, I thought I prepared you. And I said, I looked at him with all seriousness in my eyes and I said, you did not prepare me. I don't think anyone could. You know, there are those experiences in life that you just, I don't know how you prepare for them. I walked into that morgue that day and everyone was eating because it was lunchtime. And when they saw us walk in the door, they said, oh, you know, you're here to pick up so-and-so. Yes, we are. And they walked and they opened the door and they pulled out a metal gurney. And there was an unclothed body on it. And it had not been taken to the funeral director because the funeral director was there to pick it up. And I saw death in a way that I had never saw death before. And I just stood there dumb. Why? You know, I was in seminary at the time, and I had read Thomas Boston's memoirs just before this, providentially. And he was on his way, as a child, through the cemetery. And he said he stumbled upon a grave that had not yet been covered, and he looked down in it, and there was a body. And he said it shook him to his very core. And that came rushing back to me as I stood there that day in that morgue. And I thought to myself afterwards, why, why was this such a shocking moment in my life? And the only answer that I could give was this, because it was such an unnatural experience. I mean, think of it. When we walked down the street, when you walked into church today and a body walked by you, you didn't say, a body just walked by me. Because it's the most natural thing in the world for a person to live and a body to walk by you. There's nothing shocking about it. It's the natural thing to happen. It's what you would expect to occur. You know, the only time that you are shocked is when somebody, maybe they have huge muscles on top of muscles, or maybe they're beautiful beyond compare, or maybe they're odd. And then you say, all right. But when you see a dead body, that's unnatural. and it shocks you. Now, we looked at Romans chapter 12, verses nine through 21, and that was a living body. That was a living church. And I don't know about you, but when I went through that passage with you, when I studied that passage, I thought to myself, wow, this is unnatural. This is shocking. And when you think about it, it's shocking because this is an exceptional body. This is an exceptional living, lively body. I mean, it's healthy. 9 through 21 describes a healthy church, a beautiful church. And in that sense, a church that's odd in many ways. Today, I want to return to that. Today I want us to think again about this body that we studied in 9 through 21 of chapter 12. In other words, I don't want to return to those verses, but I want to return to that body because the same ideas that we studied in that particular text, Paul has picked up and reintroduced here. But here he's saying this, and it's different. He's saying, I know I described the body in 921, but now what I want to do is I want to sit you down at my table and what I want you to do is, I want you to do more than admire it. I want you to do more than understand it. What I want you to do now is I want you to get healthy. You know, it's like going into the gym and you're overweight and you're out of shape to what degree, who knows, but you walk in there and you sit down with the trainer and he says, now let's get you healthy. Well, that's what Paul's doing. He's saying, let's get you healthy. And one of the things that I want you to notice right up front is this. At its core, the thing that takes us back to 921 of chapter 12 is love. Love appears here in the same prominent way that it did in those verses. And so I want us to walk through how to get healthy as a body, as a church, thinking about the passage through the lens of love, because that's obviously what Paul wants us to do. So I want us to think about three things. First of all, about the obligation of love, the situation that demands love, and the implementation of love. So let's first of all think about the obligation to love. Now, I've already mentioned that this is a priority of indebtedness that we're supposed to think about here. I mean, it's much in the same way that we, the elders of grace, speak to you every time we have a business meeting. You've heard this before. We have priorities in terms of our indebtedness. And I'm thankful for this. The elders say, we pay our bills and we pay our pastor. I love that. Those priorities are good priorities. Now, that's what he's talking about when he says you owe honor and you owe respect and you owe taxes and you owe revenue and you owe all of these things. There's a priority of indebtedness that is love to one another. And so that's the obligation, that's the priority. Now I want us to think under this particular point about what it is that we owe, why we owe it, and how we can pay it. So let's first of all, under this obligation of love, look at those three points. And the first is this, what we owe. Now you already know what we owe, I've told you, it's love. But I want you to think back to chapter 12 and nine through 21. That was the word That was the place where we found the word agape. And if you'll remember back to the time that I went through that text, I said to you that in Paul's day, in the first century, there were two words that were primarily used for love. There was phileo, which was a brotherly sort of love, and there was eros, which was that love that was supposed to describe a relationship, a marriage relationship. But agape was not used. It wasn't even used much at all outside of biblical literature. It was a word that Paul grabbed and made use of. And it was a rare word in terms of its use, but it is also a rare word in terms of its meaning. And we can see why it is, when we think of its meaning, that it was so rarely used. I want you to think about it. It was the kind of word that said love originates in here rather than love originating outside of me. What do I mean by that? Well, when I talked to you about that several weeks ago, I mentioned how a man might look across the crowded room at a woman and see her beauty and fall in love with her. But I mentioned at the time that that cannot be the way it is with Christians. Because when God looks across the crowded room at humanity, He's going to see sin. Nothing in us is going to excite His love. And so his love comes from within and is set upon people who are undeserving of that love. Now, when you think of agape in that sort of way, in that sort of way where God decides to love what is unlovable, you can understand why it's so rarely used or so it was rarely used. And he says, this is the kind of love that you owe to others. Now, when you think about that sort of love, one of the things that immediately jumps to mind is something that I've said to you for years, and it's this. When you love with that sort of love, you cannot look at others and see their faults and failures first. When you look at a person who is in Christ, the first thing that you must see is Christ in them. And only in that way will you have an agape love toward them. A love that is so Christ-centered that says, I don't care about their faults and failures. I am going to see them the way in which Christ sees me. I'm going to love them. despite the fact that they're unlovable and that they're difficult and so on. Now, that's the love that we owe. But here's the point that I want you to see as we move from the description in 9 through 21 of chapter 12 to this particular text. In 9 through 21, we were told that our love must be genuine. It was described for us. But here in this text, notice what he says. He says, this is the love you owe. So we've moved from description to prescription. We've moved from description to obligation. It's not just that this is the kind of love that you ought to show. It ought to be genuine if you can. What he's saying is, this is what you owe to people. Now the question is, are you able to hear this sort of demand? And of course that's a difficult question and I don't expect you to answer it, at least in terms of the way you feel about it. But what you ought to say to yourself is, Lord, I don't feel this way, help me that I might feel this way, that I might understand that I owe this sort of love to others. Now that's first. There's a second thing that we need to understand under the obligation of love and it's why. Why we owe this sort of love and the answer is that it fulfills the law. Now I know what you're going to say. You're going to say, wait a minute. Pastor, this is crazy. I thought you spent all of this time unfolding the teaching of the first several chapters repeatedly so in order to tell us that we could never keep or fulfill the law in and of ourselves. And that's why Christ had to come. Christ had to come because He is the one who fulfilled and kept the law on our behalf. He was our substitute. He offered perfect, upright obedience, and He was punished for our disobedience. I thought you'd been telling us. Now you're telling us. We've got to fulfill the law in order to satisfy this obligation of love. What are you saying to us? And I say to you, now calm down. Let me explain. There are two words in this text for fulfill. Both of them are translated that way, but there are two different words. And the first one is in verse eight, and it means to fill up a container. The second one is in verse 10, and it means to sum up. to pull the threads together. Now what's he saying? Well, you know what it means to fill up a container. To draw the threads of an argument together, you understand that as well. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. You draw the threads together in the conclusion Socrates is a mortal man. So how are you to draw the threads together and fill up the cup? Well, let me put it like this. Several years ago, I was watching a program wherein someone had been saved. I don't even remember the details of the accident now, but I believe that the roads were icy and someone stopped in order to help. And in the process of helping, the person who stopped to help lost their life. And so this person was talking about that incident and they were visibly moved by a young person. And the family of the man who lost his life was there and this person who needed the help was saying to this family, I want you to know that the life of your husband or father is going to count because I am going to live my life in such a way that it's going to honor him. I'm not going to waste my life. And I thought to myself, that is a person who senses an obligation. But I also thought to myself over the years, I've thought to myself, you know, that person has no power to fulfill that obligation. I mean, it would be just as easy for them to throw their life away because of a bad decision as it would be for them to make a great decision. They have no power in and of themselves to uphold that promise. But it's different with Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ, we are drawn by the Spirit into that relationship where He forges faith in us and all of the benefits of salvation pour forth because we've been united to Him. And He says to us, I died that you might be forgiven of your sins and that you might be righteous in the sight of God. But then He says this, and I rose again for you. And what we understand then is this, we understand that it is because of the death and the life of Jesus Christ that the power to follow Him arises. And so we say, Lord Jesus, because of what you've done for me, I will live according to your precepts and your law. I'll fill them up in my own life. I'll draw those threads together so that people can see their conclusion in what I do. But the point is that we have the power to do that because we have been united to Jesus Christ. We have His Spirit that enables us to do that sort of thing. And so, this idea of fulfilling the law comes after Christ having fulfilled the law on our behalf. That's the idea. Now, that raises the third thing. How do we fulfill what we owe? And at this point, he just recites the law, doesn't he? Verse 9, don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet. Love your neighbor as yourself, because love does no wrong. And in that way, you draw the threads together in your own life. In that way, you fulfill the law. And in Christ, there is forgiveness when you fail. Well, that's first. The second is the situation that demands our love. And there are two aspects here that I want us to notice. First, in order to understand what is being said here, there are two words that we need to understand, two words for time. The first is chronos, and that is the word from which we get our word chronometer. It is a watch. It is a timekeeper. It keeps track of the seconds and the hours and so on. But there's another word for time, and it's kairos. And that word describes a particular event, a memorable event. Maybe for you it was a vacation. That was a kairos moment. I'll never forget that vacation. But you know what a Kairos moment is. A Kairos moment is not just a vacation. A Kairos moment is an event that pulls everyone in, and for them, time stops. Now, it used to be that you could ask the question, where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? And then everybody would be able to go around the room and say, oh, I remember doing this, or I remember being here or there. But that's not the way it is today. There's a new Kairos moment that is true for many of us, and I've found that to be 9-11. 9-11 is that moment where time stopped. You can describe what you were doing, you can describe who you talked to, I can tell you about the couch that I sat on, and I can tell you what was on it the day I watched TV that day. Time simply stopped. Now, what is being described in the text is a Kairos moment. The situation that demands our love is a Kairos moment. Listen to how the text describes it. The hour has come for you to wake from your sleep. The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Why, he says, salvation is nearer than when you first believed. What's the Kairos moment that he's referring to? Well, it's the resurrection. But it's not just the resurrection. The resurrection initiated the moment. The Kairos moment. But that moment, that Kairos moment will go from the resurrection all the way to the second coming. In other words, we are living in the Kairos moment. because of what Christ did on the cross. Now, what he's saying is not just, I'm trying to identify the Kairos moment. That's not what he's saying. He's saying something much more than that. What he is saying is that the Kairos moment has a way of burdening us. Let me go back to 9-11 for a minute. I'll never forget. I had to go into town that day and the streets were almost dead. And I remember driving down the street and there was a truck driving through town that day, just driving through all of the streets. And it had an enormous American flag on it. And I thought to myself, That man was compelled, burdened by the Kairos moment to remind people of the American flag and what it stood for, what it stands for. And I've got to tell you, I still get a catch in my throat every time I think of that moment. You see, that's the idea. A Kairos moment burdens us. And that's what he's saying about the resurrection, the time in which we are living. What he's asking is this, aren't you burdened by the resurrection of Jesus Christ? And the Kairos moment happens in time. In other words, time didn't really stop at 9-11. Time kept going. And the same is true with this Kairos moment. We are in a Kairos moment. Time has stopped in one sense, and yet time continues to tick. And what he's saying is, aren't you burdened by what Christ has done in every second of every day of every month of every year of your life? And if you are, Well, then that situation demands agape love. You don't just owe it, but you should be inwardly compelled to offer it. Well, that's second. And the third is this. There's the implementation of this love. I always love it when Paul provides for us, and sometimes he does it a little easier than others. But I always love it when you're in the text and he says, let me tell you how to do this. That way I don't have to feel that unction to run to the Christian bookstore and buy a Christian book to tell me how to do it. Because, you know, that's what we all think, isn't it? We all read the Bible and say, I don't know how to apply it. We've got to run to the Christian bookstore and figure it out. When really, all we really need to do is stay with the text, and oftentimes the text with a little meditation, thought, and study will unfold what it is that we need to do. I'm not disparaging Christian books, by the way. I love books. But what I am saying is I love it when Paul easily unfolds it for us, and he does so here. There's something of a structure in 12b through 14, and it goes like this. You cast off, you put on, you walk, not in, or that is you cast off again, and you put on again, and by the way, you cast off again. So he doesn't just tell us once, he tells us multiple times what it is that we are to do. Now what he's telling us is the simple method of sanctification that we ought to know because we've read about it in different parts in scripture. And that simple method is this, you put on and you put off. Now it's easier to put off and then put on, but I want you to know something, you can't do one without doing the other. You know, for instance, if you, If you go to a patch of ground and you say, I'm going to plant a garden and it's filled with weeds, and what you do is you start planting all of your vegetables in that garden without first pulling up the weeds, you're going to have a mess. Or if you get up in the morning and you don't take your jammies off, but you put your suit right on to go to church, you're going to be awfully stiff. You need to put off your jammies and then put on your suit. You need to pull out the weeds and then put in the veggies. And it's just a simple principle, isn't it? Something very easy. You can wrap your mind around it. There are things in your life that you need to put off. And there are things in your life that you need to put on. Simple principle. But the interesting thing is what he says about what we are to put off and what we are to put on. I want you to notice a couple of things. He says this. He says that we are to put off, first of all, works of darkness. The Kairos moment demands this. Put them off. And those are described for us. They're described in v. 13, and they're described in v. 14. He says, things sexual in nature, drunkenness, quarrels, jealousy, provision for the flesh, that which will gratify evil desires, v. 14. Why? Because they will wreck the body. they will cause harm and not produce love. Look, I want to tell you something. When you read the things that Paul says, you shall not commit adultery. Well, look, sexual immorality will ruin marriages and bodies, churches. Murder, theft, coveting, those things will ruin people's lives, and they'll ruin churches. The ironic thing is that when he speaks of putting on, he says something a little different. You notice what he says. He actually identifies things that you need to put off, and he does that elsewhere in Scripture, but when he says you need to put on something, he doesn't actually give you a list of things that you need to put on. He calls us to put on the armor of light And then a little later he calls us to put on Christ. Now the armor of light is easy. You can think back to Ephesians chapter 6 and you can remember how it is that we are to put on the armor of God. But I want you to understand something about what he's saying. Oftentimes we have the misconception that When the Bible says that we are to put on the armor of light or put on the armor of God, that means that we need to get up in the morning and we need to pray it on us. And that's not what he's saying. Oftentimes, especially the text from where this comes, which is Isaiah, what he's saying is that the armor is a metaphor for standing in the God who is clothed in armor. In other words, I am clothed in the armor of light when I stand in the God of light, in the person of Jesus Christ. And so the clarifying point comes when he actually says, put on Christ. In other words, let me put it like this. I am to be what I already am. If I am saved, I am in Christ. I wear the armor of God. And so I need to be what I already am. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking to yourself, I don't always feel like that. So sometimes I have to give myself that pep talk in the morning where I say, Lord, I'm putting on the helmet of salvation. I'm donning now the breastplate of righteousness. And I want you to know something. It is OK to preach the gospel to yourself. But if that is the source of your strength, you're preaching the gospel to yourself and not the gospel that you preach, then you're in big trouble. You say, then why do I feel differently? And I say this to you, you feel differently at different times about your salvation, because you're either strong or weak in your faith at any given moment. You say, what do I do about that? I say, you go to the one who gives faith, and you say, like the disciples said, Lord, increase my faith, because in the increase of your faith, you'll have a greater sense of wearing the armor of God and standing in Jesus Christ. And when you do that, you'll be able to fulfill this obligation to love. Because I'll tell you what, when you know that you stand in God, clothed with His armor, well now it's like standing beside your father who is six foot five and full of muscles. And you believe you can take anyone, no matter how small you are as a little kid, because you stand with your Father. And when you stand with your Heavenly Father, you can love anyone. You can fulfill the obligation. Brothers and sisters, the day is at hand. Put on the armor of light. Put on Jesus Christ, or let me say it a different way. Be what you confess to be in Jesus Christ. Father in heaven, thank you for the day, the time you've given, for your word, for the Lord Jesus Christ, and for the enabling spirit Thank you triune God for the immeasurable love that you poured forth in your son that we too might love. So father bless us in that in Jesus name.