Romans 13:8-14 Love and Urgency

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in.

New Year’s Resolutions, Growth, and the Church’s Core Values

Well, good morning and welcome to everybody. Welcome to Recast Church. As Dave said, I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here. And welcome everybody to 2020. We're here. This is kind of a proverbial year.

Like decades ago, they would have looked to 2020 and expected us to have flying cars and all of that kind of stuff. We don't have those yet. But we do all have a computer and the access to the whole world in our pocket.

That's pretty impressive, right? Or watches that we can talk into and stuff like that. So pretty cool thing. I just want to point out that the passage of time and the way that we mark time is kind of a funny thing.

We keep track of, we're kind of designed that way, right? We keep track of days. We keep track of weeks, months, years, all of that. And we set some resolutions to change at the marking of certain times.

And so at the start of a decade or start of a new year, often we make resolutions. How many of you are into New Year's resolutions? How many of you made a resolution? Really, go ahead and raise your hand if you made a resolution this year.

Okay, some of us. A lot of us are not resolution makers, apparently. Some of you, if you're anything like me, I kind of like the idea of if you have something that you need to change, change it. Like don't wait for a special day for that, right?

But how many of you want 2020 to be better than 2019? So there might be some things that you want to change in that, right? Like, I mean, there's something that's good about saying, okay, how is this?

I mean, we get these pauses and these moments to reflect and go 2019 on the way out, reflect on what went well and what didn't go well in the last year, and then how are we gonna get better next year?

How are things gonna improve in my life next year? And all of these New Year's resolutions or the idea of changing and the idea of improving, whether that's at the start of a year or at the start of a month or at the start of a week, all of that's good as long as it's genuinely tied somehow into us growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

And that's what we kind of stand for here as a church. The S in RECAST, RECAST being an acronym for our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And the S stands for simplicity.

And that means that really at the end of the day, we're all trying to focus our attention. And as a church, we're trying to focus our attention on these three things, growing in faith, that is our relationship with God would be stronger in this next year, growing in community, that is that we would love one another better in this next year, and growing in service, that is that the skills and abilities that God has given us to bless this community and the community at large would be stronger in this next year than they are right now.

And so that's kind of what we're driving for here, that is, not kind of, that is what we're driving for in this next year, and I hope that you're seeing that that growth is happening in you. And when we say that we wanna be growing in those things, that is a time stamp kind of thing, isn't it?

When we talk about growth, then we need to have that stick on the pantry wall or something that, where we mark our growth this year, and then we kind of see that we've grown next year, and that's what growth means, is that there's some kind of a marker that identifies, and sometimes year ends and year starts are a good time for that.

But it certainly means that sometime in the future, we're hoping that we're gonna be better than we are today. And I think all of us know that that isn't gonna happen on accident, right? We're not gonna just accidentally, accidentally grow in our faith next year, accidentally grow closer in love to one another, accidentally be stronger in our ability to serve one another next year.

And so our text this morning in the Book of Romans, picking back up on that series that we left off at the start of December, we're gonna be going back in and finishing Romans here at the start of this year.

But going back into there, this text is gonna do a good job bringing into focus two areas of growth for us in this next year. Two really motivations for us to walk into this next year, loving each other better, serving one another better, and serving ultimately our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this next year.

But it's important to make sure that we put the cart before the horse when we jump into the Book of Romans, especially here at the end of this book. Because Paul has already spent 11 chapters, out of 16 chapters, the book is 16 chapters, 11 of them he spends explaining the gospel that saves us by grace alone and not by rule keeping.

Not by keeping commands, not by improving ourselves, it's not the growth that saves us. It's not the ability to take on 2020 with an ability to please others, an ability to please God that saves us. It's very fundamental that we understand that there have been 11 chapters that have come before this.

If you missed the flow of this and you're just coming in now or maybe Recast is new to you and you're kind of trying to figure out if this is your home church, I just wanna make sure that you know that the past sermons are available on our website, they're also podcasts, so if you use the podcast app or whatever, you can subscribe and then you can get those updated for you, but listening to and understanding or even just going back and reading chapters one through 11 would be helpful as we dive in and really through 12.

As we dive into 13 and finish this series up, but I would even suggest to you beyond that, that chapters 12 through 16, it's not that you're just gonna misunderstand them, they could be dangerous without understanding the gospel, without understanding all that's come before it.

Taken without the previous chapters, our passage this morning could lead us, really mislead us into thinking that we need to get busy loving others in our own strength or that we need to put on Christ and put down our own raging passions and desires in our own strength.

And I don't know about you, but every experience that I've ever had in trying to put down sin and put it out of my life looks like a game of whack-a-mole. How many of you have ever played whack-a-mole at Chuck E. Cheese or know at least what I'm talking about?

You have this big bonker thing and the mole comes up and you hit it and then another one comes up and you hit that and do you know what I'm talking about? Is that what it's like in your life when you're fighting sin?

God is gracious in my life to bring up areas where I'm unfaithful, where things are not going well, where I'm sinful and I've got sinful tendencies and so he shows me that and I'm like, okay God, let's together in your strength knock this one down and then he's like, okay, just when you kind of get to that, okay, I feel like things are in order, pop, something else is there and you're like, oh yeah, this, okay, yeah, I've gotta deal with that.

Do you know what I'm talking about? And so life is this ongoing constant battle with sin and we see that and that's a part of what it means to trust in God and to rest in him and acknowledge that our salvation because if that was it, it's an unending battle and you're never sure if you're okay with God, right?

I mean, if it's up to you to knock all of those moles down at the same time, you're in trouble but instead it's the fact that Christ has forgiven our sins and has washed them clean that gives us the basis upon which we can go out and launch into a life in 2020 of love and urgency, serving one another, loving one another and growing closer to God in our faith.

And so this morning is a call for those who have been embraced by the good news of salvation through the cross of Christ, that's fundamentally who this message is talking to and it's a call for us to walk in love with one another and to live a life with Christ in urgency, love and urgency, love and urgency is the flow of this text.

So if you're not already there in your Bibles, turn in your device or in your Bible over to Romans chapter 13, verses eight through 14, Romans 13, eight through 14, we're gonna read this together before the band comes to lead us in worship.

Romans chapter 13, verses eight through 14, recast, this is God's precious and holy word, it is him communicating with us in the written text what he desires to reveal to us this morning. Oh 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 commandments are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

The night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then let us cast aside 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.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together in your name. It is such a glorious thing that here we are in 2020 and your word continues to move forward and your people continue to march on and you continue to grow us in faith, you continue to grow us in community, you continue to grow us in service toward one another.

And Father, I pray that this text would be a part of us, that it would be assimilated into us in a way that is powerful through the power of your spirit that has the ability to take your word and draw it into our souls and to remind us of it throughout this week, a sense of love motivating the things that we do, a love that we can't muster, a love that we can't manufacture or make, but by your spirit is brought to your children.

Father, I do ask that you would bring us more love, each person to an individual here, more love for you, more love for each other, more love for our community, more love for our families, more love for our spouses.

Father, that you would allow love to rule and reign that power by which we do what is right and in the best interest of others. And Father, that you would bring to us a sense of urgency. We have such a limited amount of time and as we mark the passage of time, we mark the passing of another decade.

Father, we all know where this is going in terms of our mortality, but Father, I pray that you would allow it to then inform and fuel the passion with which we live our lives in the here and now, a passion for you, a passion for serving others, a passion for love, all driven by an urgency that says our Lord is coming for us in Jesus' name.

All right, yeah, you can go to be seated. I encourage you as every week to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open in Romans chapter 13 verses eight through 14. Again, Romans 13 verses eight through 14.

If you lost your place, you can navigate back over in there because that's what we're gonna drive through for the time that we have and the remainder of our time together. There are two things that I wanna be careful to communicate in the coming weeks at the start of every message as we wrap up the book of Romans.

They are both very vital, they are both very important, and they are worth repetition, they are worth us thinking through. The first is the most important, and that is that salvation comes to us by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone.

Those are the five solas of the Reformation, those are the five things that define the Protestant Reformation and the faith in which we rest is that it is in Christ, it is by grace, through faith, in Christ alone, by which we are saved.

We are not saved by any effort on our part. No effort on our part could save us or rescue us from the sin that sticks to us, that clings to us, that is on the outside and on the inside, on our behavior and the way that it manifests itself.

You live with somebody for a month, you will know they are a sinner from the outside, you will see it. But those of you who have lived with yourself for a few years know that it's on the inside as well, don't you?

You know that it doesn't even take a manifestation outside of you to know that it is a saturation with sin problem that we have that needed a remedy beyond behavior modification, beyond the ability to love better or to be more urgent with our lives or more urgent with the way that we live and although this is going to be a call in this text to both a call to love more and to be more urgent, do not conflate that with your salvation.

Do not mix the call and the command and the understanding that now that we are saved, we are supposed to now come into a life that honors him. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because it's very easy for us to think that these commands in the latter half, we don't understand the beginning and understand that salvation comes alone by faith in Jesus, then we can begin to think that it's our works, it's our behavior, that oh, we've got to cross all our T's and dot all our I's to be okay with God.

So that's the first thing that I want to keep emphasizing to us is that salvation is a work of God and our part is to trust in his son Jesus to rescue us from our sin. But the second part follows closely in logic to the understanding of the way that salvation comes to us.

That is that since we have been saved by such an amazing act of love, that Jesus Christ would come here and live among us as we celebrated over Christmas, but then to go to Easter and understand that he would sacrifice himself, that he would die on our behalf and make himself the sacrifice for our sins and take the penalty on himself that we deserve because of that act of love, our hearts now desire to honor the one who has saved us.

So his commands are not a burden for the follower of Jesus Christ. They are now altered into a way to honor the one who has saved us and gave himself up for us. And so that's why we can gospel, gospel, gospel for 11 chapters in the book of Romans and then 12 through 16 read like a list of commands.

Well, but it's because, because this is now true of you, church, now go and live this way in an honoring way to the one who loves you so much and has infused you with love. We are altered and the law is altered into a way to honor the one who saved us.

So verse eight begins right away with a command and it begins with a command that could be easily misunderstood because of the nuance of the way that we think of in absolute. So when we look at this law right away, it's in English standard version, it's translated directly and literally, but not in the whole scope of scripture.

So it says, owe no one to anything. Well, go ahead and raise your hand just, if you have a mortgage, does anybody in here have a mortgage? I'm not gonna ask you to go through all these. So a lot of us have debt here.

We owe somebody something. The church is paying on the building that we're in right now. Some of us have auto loans, some of you have home equity loans, some of you have student loans. We have all different kinds, some of you have a credit card in your wallet right now with a balance on it, after the holidays, right?

So we know that there's debt here in this room and so the question is, are we all disobeying the Lord and Savior in these things? It says, owe no one anything, but we have to look at the context. Is he talking about finances?

Is this a passage about finances? Not at all. See, Dave Ramsey has rightly popularized caution about borrowing. I think that's right for him to do so in a very high-debt culture and a high-debt society, but this is not the passage to bring Dave Ramsey in to talk to us about debt and finances because that is not at all what the text is about.

It's not a passage about borrowing. One verse earlier, Paul told Christians to pay what you owe to all. He implies that you do owe people something and the gist of this phrase in Greek is to make sure that you pay all outstanding debts.

That's what he's going for. You have a debt, you need to pay it and you need to agree to the contract and you need to follow the contract. Even the Old Testament law permitted borrowing, but it was always explicit about meeting the conditions of all of your contracts.

And so be careful about the way that you think about that. And if you differ from the way that I'm reading this and I'm seeing this and you're like, this is the passage that has made me never borrow any money, then I'd love to sit down and talk with you about that and kind of work through our understanding of that.

But this talk about borrowing really steps aside quickly in the text because the core issue that Paul is driving at is to get us to an understanding that our truest debt is a debt of love, a debt of love that we owe to each other.

The Debt of Love and the Shape of Biblical Love

Now, the outline for this text is very simple. It's a two-point outline. It's the motivation of love that we're gonna see in verses eight through 10, motivation of love, and the second is the motivation of urgency in verses 11 through 14.

And again, I think these are motivations that God would seek through this text to bring into your life at the start of this next year, a sense of a calling to love one another and a sense towards living life with a sense of urgency in light of the days that we are given.

So let's talk about this first motivation of love. As Paul addresses it, he starts out explaining that there is one debt that you will never, and that's why he's talking, he's kind of playing off of the end of the last text where he said, you owe, you know, pay taxes to whom you owe taxes and all of that.

And then he goes, but one debt you're never gonna finish, one debt you're never gonna fully be able to repay is the debt of love. You see, really in a deepest sense possible, according to this text, the Christian could never call into Dave Ramsey and declare themselves truly debt-free.

They can't call in and say that because we always have a debt, a debt of love to discharge to those around us. And I find this personally, as I've thought about this this week and as it's kind of convicted me and settled on my shoulders, I think this is a great way to think about our relationship with one another.

It's something that's kind of refreshing and different and new to me. I don't often think, just confession for a moment, I don't often think of myself as indebted to all of you. Now, I do work for the church, and so there can be a sense of obligation or responsibility or things like that, or even just a sense of love and commitment and a desire to do some good things.

I can think of the good that I do for others as generous, or I can think of it as a kindness or a blessing to others. How many of you know what I'm talking about? When you do something good for a coworker that's undeserved, you think of it as just generous.

I mean, it's me being generous to them. But to think that I owe a debt of love to those around me, I don't know about you, but that turns sour in my sinful mind. I don't owe you a meal when you go in for surgery.

That's just my kindness, right? I don't owe you a hospital visit when you're sick. That's just my responsibility, or that's my love for you or something like that. But no, I have a debt that I owe to the church because we're all bought together, and we're all together in this thing that God is bringing together, and that's where the debt comes out of a relationship with Jesus Christ and a recognition that we are brought intentionally into relationship with one another for the betterment of ourselves and others that we would learn to love.

Why are you sitting here this morning? I hope it's much more, and I think that over time it must become more than sitting here and taking in a show. I hope that there's a part where it turns into a love for the others sitting around you, a genuine commitment, a genuine desire to see their betterment, and that God would motivate and move us, maybe even this next year to transform us from an audience to a church.

I hope, but God forbid, that this is all that we are as an audience together on Sunday mornings. God is not building an audience. God is building a church, a gathering for the glory of His Son, a gathering for the conveyance of love in the culture and society around us, that they would see our love and we'd be known by our love, and it would be something that's winsome and glorious for the world to see around us.

Do we owe each other something? According to the text, we do. Paul pictures love as a responsibility in this text, a responsibility to one another and not merely a feeling. But we need to allow Paul to continue to drive this conversation, because the moment that we use the word love in English, especially in our American society and culture, our minds will almost absolutely always go in the wrong direction when we hear the word love.

You see, Paul is backhandedly commanding us to love one another forever. This is something you'll never be done with. This is something that will carry on till the day you die, the love for others in the church, the love for one another.

He has said there is a debt you owe that you cannot finish paying. It is to love each other in the church, but that love he has in mind is more than kind words for those who are hurting and broken in our midst.

It's more than just hospital visits. It's more than giving meals to your community group during a surgery or during a downtime for a couple that's suffering and going through something. He's talking about a love that takes the shape of good and healthy, God-honoring community.

Really, he defines this love by a strange thing. If you've read, if you follow the logic up through chapter 12, all the way from chapter one to chapter 12, that he reintroduces some of the laws here ought to shock us to some degree, but he really is defining the love in the church toward one another as the shape of the law.

The law provides the shape for what love we express to one another here in this place. It's like there's a container that's gonna hold our love and the container is the shape of the law. And I wanna suggest to you, and maybe you're a little fuzzy, but this is a very contemporary message and I wanna kinda flesh this out for us.

You see, we live in a society that's untied love from a reasonable standard. What does it mean to love? To just kinda have good feelings towards another or to kinda do what I think is good? Think about love detached from law looks like me doing what I think is best for you.

What I think is best for you might have nothing to do with God's intention for you. Do you understand? And that's what's going on in our culture in so many avenues right now. Love is just an empty shape that we can fill anything in and define it in any shape or way that we want and it can look like this in one context and it can look like this in another context.

How many of you have ever just literally been confused about what love looks like in a context? That's why we need a standard. That's why we need an understanding of what is the shape of real love because the fact of the matter is I don't, without God's word, I often will get it wrong what is in your best interest.

Do you know what I'm talking about? I won't be able to get what's best for my wife or what's best for my kids or what's best for my other relationships or what's best for my church. I will get that wrong regularly without something to anchor my love to.

And that anchor is God's good will and plan for humanity as revealed in his word. And so what happens is when we've untied love from the dock of a reasonable standard, the boat starts to drift out a little ways and what we do is we come down to the dock to jump on board love and it's drifted off and it's now unattainable and we can't get on it any longer and we're trying to paddle out to it and we're not able to really discern what love is any longer.

You see, I would suggest to you our culture has whispers and rumors of love but without the truth of God, we make it base, we make it crass. Often many people just flat out when you hear love in our culture, some people literally think about physical intimacy and sexuality.

We make it base and we make it crass while uttering something under our breath about consent. That's the direction that our culture goes with the word love. But look at verse nine for the power of this biblical calling to love one another.

Don't forget as we look at verse nine, by the way, that Paul is seeking to declare love as a motivation for the way we ought to live. And in a discussion of love, he goes back to commands and says, don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet.

That's interesting that he phrases this on the flip side. How many of you think that's a pretty low standard for love? Like, don't harm each other. That's a great place to start. When you really understand, and I'm sure you've seen it, what lies in your heart, this is work.

Now, certainly the way that Jesus defines murder brings that up a notch even. Don't even call somebody fool. Whoever has hated somebody has committed murder in their heart. So you know that Jesus takes these laws and ramps it up a bit and gets down to the spirit and the heart of it.

So Jesus takes these laws in Matthew chapter five in the Sermon on the Mount through chapter seven-ish, and he takes these laws and he ramps them up to the spirit of the law, really filling it out with love for us.

But don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet. Just that covet alone is a really good one for us to work on, isn't it? How do we respond and how do we work to work with one another?

And by the way, he puts a blanket on this. He explicitly states four of the 10 commandments, and then he gives a blanket that covers all biblical laws given by God for the benefit of human relationship.

He says, any of those laws, any of those laws that pertain to the way that we interact with one another, all of those are summed up in love your neighbor as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. That golden rule.

And I want to suggest to you that the flow of this matters significantly. He says that these laws are summed up in love for, love your neighbor as yourself, and love for neighbor, love for each other.

It fulfills, again, it's the shape of the law, and it's what the love fills up is that law that God has set out for us. And he doesn't merely leave us to guess what he means by love. Nor does he merely leave us with laws and commands.

You see, Paul wants to get down to the heart of motivation. He wants to be sure that we understand the underlying reasons he would be encouraging us back to consider laws, after he said you're free from the law.

He has said that explicitly throughout the book of Romans. You don't have to follow the law any longer. You're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone. That's done. We're not talking about that right here.

So that is where salvation comes into the picture, but now how do we live? What motivates the Christian life now that we are in the family of God? What motivates us? He wants to make sure that we understand the core reasons, the underlying reasons, and it's because the law can be applied in two different ways with similar outcomes.

I have to illustrate this a little bit. I can look at a person, and I cannot tell if they are good because they are law-abiding or if they are good because they are full of love. Do you hear what I'm saying?

So you can picture two different kinds of people. Let's start with the first one. Consider one option. A person can approach the law, and they approach the law with duty and fear and a sense of responsibility, and I want to do all the things right so they don't commit adultery, they don't murder, they don't steal, they don't covet, right?

That's what it looks like on the outside. And all the while, internally, why are they doing that? There's all kinds of potential motives, but I would suggest to you that all of those motives for the law-abiding individual is personal.

It might just be they don't want to get in trouble. Self-serving. It might be because it makes them look better or it makes them feel better or it makes some circumstance in their life better, but do you understand what I'm saying?

This person, person A, looks on the outside like a really good individual, and what's going on inside their heart? A self-centered keeping of the law. Now let's talk about the other person on the other side.

The other person looks on the outside identical to this person over here. This person doesn't commit adultery, doesn't murder, doesn't steal, doesn't covet, does some really good things, but what's motivating them?

The love of God in Christ Jesus. Christ's love filling them with the recognition that they have been saved by his death on the cross, and that's radically altered the way that they view the world and the way that they think about it on the inside.

Do you see how these two people might look the same on the outside? Do you see how what's going on on the inside is extremely important and extremely different? Fundamentally different what's going on inside of these two individuals.

Paul's putting forth these two notions for us and understanding that love is the motivation he's driving for. The love of God in Christ poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that dwells within his children.

And so the heart is what matters most. Even in our service to one another, it's what matters most. In both cases, these people love themselves. I wanna point that out. Both of these people love themselves, and the golden rule takes that for granted, by the way.

Love your neighbor in what way? As you love yourself. I give myself some good food from time to time. Do you give yourself some good food from time to time? You watch some fun shows, you have some entertainment, you do things for yourself from time to time?

Yeah, I think all of it. Raise your hand if you do something once in a while. Just go ahead, there's no shame in that. We all do. And so we do indeed love ourselves, and that is a given in the golden rule, but only the redeemed, only those who have experienced the love of Christ and have been embraced by him and really understand their freedom now in Christ, they are the ones who actually love others.

They have an added motivation to love others. In verse 10, Paul goes on to state what is obvious. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. And it's in this that we find that the love for one another fulfills the law.

It completes the law. But it's so important that we see what power is brought here in Paul bringing up the law in the context of describing our motives, our motivation of love. The law still has the purpose of defining for us that shape of love.

See, as I go back to kind of thinking about my illustration about the boat and being moored and then being let go and drifting off, many today are seeking to define love as the highest of ethic. Even within the church, you will hear it now.

You'll hear it in messages, you'll hear it on the radio, you'll hear it in Christian books that love is the highest of ethic, and there's not something so wrong with that depending on how you define love, but when you say love is the highest ethic, what our culture is doing, what many Christians are doing, what many churches are doing, is they're then pulling a switcheroo on the word love, not defining it according to the way that scripture does, not saying that love only works when it's tied to God's good plan for humanity with what he desires and says is good for each other.

Love is a word that has been redefined by our culture to mean a feeling that drives us to passion. It's basically the gist of the definition in our culture. Think about the way that we speak of love in our culture.

We fall into it, right, as if it's a pit or a trap that's laid out for us. We say that love is blind, as if we can no longer make rational decisions when you're in love. We say love is love. How many of you have ever heard that phrase?

Love is love. How many of you know your English teacher would mark you an F for that? You're not allowed to use the word in its definition. Probably the most unhelpful of all definitions is to say, you know what, love?

You know how I'm gonna define that? Love. That's what it is. You know what love is? Love. That's not helpful. How, in what way, shape, or form? Because we say that, because we don't want to give it content.

We don't want it to be constrained. We don't want God's way of love to influence the way that we think it's okay to love. Do you see what I'm saying? There's a motive. Why would we define it so watered down?

Or we say, all love is equal, which sounds really good at face value, except that it's false, because Hitler's love of the German people was not equal to my love for my wife. I don't want you to compare those two.

They are not the same. The way that he would have declared his love for the fatherland is very different than the way that I love my spouse, or I love my church. I'm saying this because we are all being called in this passage to live a life of love, and that requires a tricky navigation in a culture that's all over the place with love.