Our Debt To God

Text: Romans 13:8-14

Focus: Love and holiness

Function: to help people see how love is the fulfillment of holiness

⁸Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹The 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.” ¹⁰Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; ¹²the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; ¹³let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. ¹⁴Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

I talked two weeks ago about the difference between religion and faith. Or, the emphasis was on the idea that religious practices, like going to church, praying, tithing, and etc. are merely the practices of those who trust in Jesus to restore them, but not the things that save them.

I know that is confusing. But the idea comes from Jesus’ words to Nicodemus when Jesus told him that in order to join the kingdom of God, he needed to be born from above. In other words, in my opinion and doctrine, he needed to be filled with the Spirit of Christ and transformed into a person whose nature is no longer one of selfishness, but one of care and love for others.

We don’t want to “count on” our religious performances to save us, we want to be saved by loving others the way Jesus loved them through the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us.

So, in order to understand today’s text a little bit better, I am going to talk about religion.

James 1:27 talks then, about what he calls pure religion. In other words, acts of faith, instead of acts of piety to save us.

The verse says that pure religion, undefiled before God is to take care of widows and orphans in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

It correlates to this morning’s text. Paul wrote Romans and most of the letters that we read in the New Testament. James is credited with this one. Paul and James disagreed sharply about religious practices. James wanted Gentile Christians to adhere to Jewish law and be circumcised and Paul absolutely refused to allow a religions practice to substitute for sincere actions of faith and love for others.

Although they disagreed about the weight of the OT law, they did agree on these two defining characteristics of what Christian living looks like. And that is to care for the least of these, as Jesus said it, and to keep oneself pure. The purity aspect does not really come from the teachings of Jesus, but seem to me to be in relationship to the culture and its values.

So, although they agree on the essentials, they have a difference of opinion about the weight of acts of piety compared to acts of a transformed heart.

Paul opens up by saying that in essence “don’t complicate your lives by living under all the rules, instead just remember to love one another (as Jesus commanded) and it can be demonstrated by the way that our actions toward others do no harm to them.

Don’t hurt others is his way of saying that we are called to take care of the least of these.

The salient statement is that the entire law is summed up in the concept to love others as much as we love ourselves.

Loving others fulfills our religions duties. 1 John 4:16 we read that those who abide in love are abiding in God.

“Abiding in God” is a synonym for holiness. When we abide in love toward others, we are indeed being holy.

When we abide in bitterness, resentment, jealousy, spite, hatred and quarreling, we are not abiding in love.

I have days when I don’t feel like I am abiding in love. Sometimes it is medical and sometimes it is psychological. And in those days, I do not feel the sense of peace and joy that one might expect would come from living a life connected to God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I am not trying to sell Christianity as some sort of feel good experience as if it is a commodity. But the scriptures do promise through the Holy Spirit to give us peace and joy.

I believe it comes through living by faith and resting in the hopes that we have in Christ. It isn’t a perfect life, but the promise is that God who created us will be with us to strengthen, encourage, enable, heal and transform us.

That doesn’t mean we have to abstain from acts of piety. No. A holy faith that follows Jesus by loving others, rejoices in the practices that confirm our faith.

For example, I can think of the importance and meaning of the bread and cup communion. It is an act of piety, a religious act, but it is symbolic and it leads us to remember not only the actions of faith that we represent in our own love for others, but it symbolizes the love of Jesus expressed toward us.

Jesus implored us to do this act of devotion in remembrance of him.

Communion reminds me to live sacrificially as Jesus did for me in order that I might obtain a greater heavenly reward. It happens when we abide in love.

Here is an odd thing. Religious people are considered to be people of a purity culture. They are not necessarily related to people of a giving culture. Except maybe the Salvation Army.

James and Paul answer the question for us: What is holiness?

The word “Holy” sounds ominous, but it actually means, separate, or different.

Holy people are different than the world around them.

Again, that is why the plain sects wear plain dress, they want to come out from among worldly values to be separated from those values toward the values that Christ taught us.

Jesus didn’t really talk much about the purity that Paul mentions in the second part of our text and James mentions in the last of verse 1:27.

Although Jesus doesn’t talk about it, both Paul and James feel it is important.

There is another incident of moral purity addressed in the NT when Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5 addresses a situation where a man is sleeping with either his mother or his step mother and the church doesn’t see a problem with it.

The church didn’t see a problem with it.

I don’t think it was because they were blinded by their own immorality, but because it really wasn’t an issue that Jesus ever discussed.

Paul is concerned with the way it looks to the world around them. He says, the pagans don’t allow that kind of relationship and it makes us look bad.

It is funny because Jesus wasn’t concerned by the way his associations made him look, In fact, it was a major criticism as they called him a drunkard and a glutton because he had a good time at times with people and because he was a friend of the people that the religions community distanced themselves from.

Paul was concerned with the way it made them look but Jesus wasn’t. No contradiction here, I believe. Jesus was opposing those who merely practiced piety and did not care for the least of these.

So, to close, let us use the introduction to the passage: Owe nothing but love.