Romans chapter 13, and start with verse 8.
Let no death remain our commandments, except that continually death he loves one another.
For he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.
The commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not cover.
And whatever other commandments there may be, are stumped up to this one move.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Love those little harms of the enemy.
Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
And do this, understanding the present time.
The hour has come to which we have progressed longer.
Because of our salvation is nearer now than when we first believe.
The night is moving over, the day is over here.
So let us suicide, disease and darkness, and shall only arm our fight.
Let us behave decently, as in the daytime.
Not an orgy to drunkenness, not an expression of morality and adultery,
not an attention to jealousy.
Rather, kill yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And do not think about how to grasp how it is, sorrowful, sinful nature.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, please have your Bible open there.
That's Romans 13.
We're presently going through the series in Romans.
And the big Bible series is the gospel at five.
And when we see the gospel working in our lives,
it shapes us that we can see it through a people of love.
Love for one another.
Which was in chapter 12, verses 9 through 21.
And then in chapter 13, love for the governing authority.
And then in this section, we see love for the world, or love for our neighbours.
But we need a Holy Spirit to help us in this, and we're going to pray after we can help,
as we look at God's Word together.
So let's pray.
Father, we come to you because you have promised to pour out your Holy Spirit upon all those who are.
And therefore, would you please send your Spirit amongst us.
Lord, we ask for your help, so Paul, in Jesus' name.
and pray.
Amen.
So, tell me, have you all paid off your debt?
Have you?
Well, look at verse 7 of chapter 13.
Give everyone what you owe him.
If you owe taxes, take taxes, if it's revenue, then revenue.
As we fall off, we can think of expression of our love to the governing authorities,
we pay all that we owe.
No matter what it is, whether it's the water tax or the property tax,
pay off all your debts.
Now you're feeling quite smug because you have paid your tax.
There's one area of life where we should always be in debt.
Look at verse 8.
Let's say, let's say, let no debt remain like something.
Except, and here it is, the continuing debt to love one another.
You see, the church that has come to believe and experience the gospel will be seen in
a continuing depth to love the world around us.
Because as the gospel takes an effect in our life, it's shaped us into a people of love,
not just for one another within the church family, but for the wider world.
Or as it says at the end of verse 8, love for our fellow hands.
Or at the end of verse 9, love your neighbour as yourself.
In other words, the people we work with, people that we live with, people that we come into every day.
At the end of each year I sit down and I work out what tax I should pay.
I calculate my income, less expenses, then apply the tax rate, it tells me the figure that I have to pay,
and I pay off my debt.
Now when we give the sums, when we calculate and consider the love of God towards us,
when I look and see how Christ has taken my sin debt and made it off with his death on the cross,
when I see how he has treated my sin debt and his protection,
so that I am then treated as your son,
when I calculate all of this, and when I ask that his death has loved and his faithful love towards me,
I am then paid and continually in debt.
Not a debt that I pay to earn his favour, but a debt of grateful thanks that is paid in the currency of love to all those around me.
I don't pay this debt to earn his favour, but rather into grateful expression of love to those around me.
There are three things that we want to learn about this debt of love.
The first one is this, love is only made possible by God.
Let's read verse 18 again.
Let no debt remain outstanding except a continuing debt to love one another,
for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law.
Now, I'm sure we all realise that we don't have to speak with people very long before you realise that loving people,
never mind on a continual basis, is actually really hard in life.
Even the people we are married to, or people within our family.
In fact, without God, loving people is insensible.
Have a look with me back to chapter 7.
Go back to Romans chapter 7 verse 18.
Romans chapter 7 verse 18.
Here Paul is describing his struggle, this is before he is a Christian.
Okay, here he is describing his struggle to obey or fulfil the law without God.
And this is why he says, why do Christ?
Verse 18.
He says, I know that nothing good is in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
For what I do is not the good I want to do, no the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.
Now how many of us can relate to that?
We know we should love the annoying work of God.
We know we should love our grumpy neighbours.
But we just don't seem to do it.
The fact is, we simply chast both they call Paul.
We chast love as we should love.
But here is the point.
God has actually made it possible for us to love.
And how did he make it possible?
Well, continue the argument in chapter 8 verse 3.
Halfway down to chapter 8 verse 3, the middle of verse 3.
This is how God makes it possible to love.
It tells us there that God did it by sending his own son in the life of a sinful man to be a sin offering.
And so he condemned sin in sinful man.
It's good enough that Jesus came to a safe place with us and he was treated as a law-free man to love.
He took us the layer of the earth.
For all the times we are not loved as we should.
And why did he do that?
Well, look at verse 4.
In order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in hand.
That means we are now by our faith treated and accepted and if we have been kept and fulfilled and obeyed the law.
The law-keeping perfection of Jesus is now applied to his power life.
It's now present in our attention.
But something even more incredible than this.
Not only does he take our sin, not only does he give us his perfection, but he gives us, look at the end of verse 4,
so that we no longer live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
He gives us his holy spirit power so that we can obey his law.
Verse 8 of chapter 8.
Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
You, however, the Christian, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit if the Spirit God lives in you.
In other words, God works in us by his Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit and he changes and transforms our lives to make it possible for us to be able to love our neighbours and ourselves.
Love is made possible by God because we are loved by God.
God is made possible by God.
Go back to chapter 13 and verse 9.
Because when the land of God has taken effect it means we can love our neighbour.
Chapter 13 verse 9.
The commandment.
Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet.
They will not commit adultery, do not commit adultery, do not commit adultery.
And, whatever other commandments there may be are all sung up in this one rule, love your neighbour as yourself.
You see when you come to believe and experience the gospel, you see when you come to believe and experience the gospel, you can have love.
The commandments, the law that are described here, is not to earn God's love.
The law is there to teach us.
That's where we learn how to love. The law shows me what love looks like in practice.
So what does love look like? Look at verse 10. Love goes no harm to its neighbor.
That's what love is. There's a very large group neighbor. Not just the person sitting there living next door to you,
but the people who are quite the same way the people who love the broken children every day.
So let me give you a couple of examples of what is love like.
He's given us through us in verse 9. In the beginning of verse 9,
Do not remain the touch. That means because of my love for others, I am not going to take somebody else to smile.
But it also means that I will not look subtly at another woman, whether that's on the TV or on the computer.
Love changes the way we treat and the way we look at one another.
Or look at verse 9. The end of verse 9 says, Do not steal.
That doesn't just mean leaving out of the shop. It means that because of my love for those I work with,
because of my love for the employer, I am not going to die off early.
And I am not going to make up expenses that don't really exist to try and get a little bit more.
I will love my employer. You see, we cause no harm to our neighbor.
We love each other well. And the law is not just don't commit adultery, don't commit murder, don't steal,
but look at verse 9. Whatever other commandment there may be, we are to love our neighbor.
Yes, it's hard, but God has made it humble.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is this. Love is not only made possible by God, but love is spurred off by glory.
So look at verse 11. And do things. That is love your neighbor as yourself, understanding the trend of time.
Now, I get it. Okay? I'm with you on this. We struggle to love people as we should.
And so we need to remember that one day the struggle to love is going to be over, because we will be in glory, and we are going to love perfectly.
You see, right now we are living in a time that we call, or as he refers to it here in verse 11, the present time.
That means we are living in an age between Christ's first coming and Christ's second coming.
Okay? That's the age of the time, of the period that we are actually in.
And the experience within the time we, waiting for Christ's return, there is this battle with the sinful nature.
So look at the end of verse 14. It says,
Do not think about it. I just grant it quite a desire to sinful nature. There is a battle going on inside of us.
The sinful nature doesn't want to love another. It wants to love itself. And so it is batching away us.
But the good news here is, in verse 11, is that glory is coming. Christ is going to return soon.
Look what it says in verse 11. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.
He says, look, wake up. Soon the battle has ended, it is all going to be over, and we will love perfectly and continually.
Our salvation is nearer. The fact that you, I have this morning, means that you are nearer glory than you are, than you are nearer today.
So because of what is to come, go on loving your neighbor.
See if we are nearer.
The earth's nearer, and the expectant lack of glory, and the expectation of glory, in the voyage of the dawn predator, which is part of the chronicles of Narnia.
Let me just read to you a quote, which I think captures the expectation to what were looking for.
Lucy and Edmund and Reepicheep, the mighty mouse, are sailing east towards the very end of the road.
There was no need to roam, for the current stricter of the seven-eighties, none of them slept or ate.
All that night and the fall next day they delighted me toward, and when the third day dawned, with a fright that you or I could not bear,
even if he had dark glasses on, they took a wonder ahead.
It was as if a bowl stood up between them and the sky, a greenish-gray trembling, shivering wall.
Then up came the sun, and at their first writing they saw it through the wall, and it turned into wonderful rainbow colors.
Now they could look to the living sun and see it clearly, and see things beyond them.
What they saw eastward beyond the sun were the plains and mountains. These were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls, however high you go.
No one in the boat started that they were seen beyond the end of the world into Aslan's comfort.
This, said Reepicheep, is where I go on a land.
Then hastily he got into his car and went and took his path. The car went more and more quickly, and beautifully it brushed up the way inside.
For one split second they thought what shaped a Reepicheep at the very top. Then it vanished.
And since that moment no one can truly claim to have seen Reepicheep the last.
But my belief is that he has come safe to Aslan's country and is alive there to this day.
You see, we are people on a journey. We are longing for Aslan's country. We are longing for that sun to rise and for the new day to begin.
Or look at verse 12. The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. We are longing for his glory. We are longing for his glory.
And we are longing for his glory. We are longing for his glory. We are longing to be no more, and we will love perfectly and continually forever.
Glory is on the fire. So go on loving all those that you meet and work with every day.
love is made possible by God, love is stirred up by glory. And the third thing about love is that it is driven by the gospel. Look at verse 12, the second part.
So with the light of glory to come, because of his one day point of the hour, here's how we live in the present, end of verse 12. So let us put aside the demons of darkness and to expound the armor of light.
If we are going to be a loving church, a loving people, we've got to engage in the battle to love. It doesn't come easy, we've got to fight for it. We must put on, verse 12, the armor of light. Or as it says in verse 14, rather close yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the same thing, the armor of light, the clothing of the Lord Jesus. This is what we need to put on as we step out into the temple to be able to love one another.
Verse 13, let us behave decently as in the day coming, not in sexual immorality and to watch me, fulfilling our own pleasure, not in deception,
full of argument and jealous. You see those behaviors that are listed as if they have one thing in common. They all have a deep love for self.
Because all of these behaviors are all about satisfying my divine and fulfilling my pleasures. It's all a very self-pensure of love.
Now, unless we put on the armor of light, we're going to end up following the themes of darkness. That's what's going to happen.
Instead of continually loving others, we will continually love ourselves. We've got to engage in the battle of life. We've got to face up to it.
We've got to face up to it. It's real. It's intense. And the sinful nature longs to be satisfied with ourselves.
That's why Christians do, and why we can at times get drunk. That's why Christians do at times watch porn and talk about others.
And why we have to fight them because we're not going to be surprised because we crave self love. We want to satisfy our own desires. And if we're continually loving self, what we can as a person.
We're too busy trying to satisfy our own needs and our own desires. Instead we need a gospel driven love.
We need a gospel driven love. Verse 14. Rather close yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about it as we have to satisfy the desires of the sinful nature.
Instead of thinking up ways to secretly secretly. Instead of planning and seeing what we can do. Instead we disclose ourselves with Christ.
In other words we let the gospel of Christ shape and transform us and drive us to be a people of love. So what does that look like? What does that mean to do with yourself with Christ?
Well suppose for a minute that your job requires you to wear a uniform. Every time you go to work in the morning you need to put on your uniform. Maybe you're a guard. Maybe you're a doctor.
And every morning when you get up and you put on your clothes. When you put on your uniform. Your uniform, your clothes, it tells you to remind you who you are.
I'm a guard. I'm a guard. I'm a guard. I'm a guard. And it tells you what your job is. I'm going to see justice and peace.
And in the same way as Christians, in the morning as we get up throughout the day, we are to close ourselves with Christ.
We are to remind ourselves of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is the uniform that we dress ourselves in and we put ourselves in. Because the gospel tells us who we are and what we are to do.
It reminds me as I close myself with Christ. That Christ has died through my sins. That he has taken the blame from all the time I have not lost as I should. And that he has now treated me as his own son accepted and forgiven.
It also tells me as he has given me the gift. And the power of his loving spirit that I may cry out to him altogether so that I can have the power to fight the battle of the sinful nature.
He has given to me all that I need to live this life.
So we have the clothes of Christ. We put on the armour of life. We put on the gospel. We remind ourselves of all that he has done. This is what we trusted and this is what we believe in as a church.
We remind ourselves of all that we have been in friendly love by God. And he has made it possible to love one another.
Look at her things. Let no death remain outstanding except the continuous death to life.
We have not lost our own. We have not lost our own. God has made it possible. We fight it hard. But glory is coming. The struggle will be over and we will continually love Christ.
Until we get there. Until we get there. We put on the armour of the life. We close ourselves to Christ. And we go right into the world.
We are demonstrating and living our life. We are living our life.
And Christ has loved us. Let us pray.
Father, once again we are incredibly humbled. When we look at ourselves as we see them. We do not love as we ought.
But in the light of us we are incredibly amazed. When we look at ourselves as we see them. We do not love as we ought.
But in the light of us we are incredibly amazed. That you have loved us. And you continue to love us.
In the light of us. We are so proud of our life.
In the light of us we are so proud of our life. We are so proud of our life.
Father, Father, please. With the power of your Holy Spirit. Enable each one of us.
To act this day and tomorrow. To put on the armour of the light. To show ourselves as we are.
To remind ourselves daily. Of your love to love. And make these changes and transforming.
So that as the world will come. As we grow shoulders in work. As we talk to our makers.
That we will speak words of love. That we will ask him about. And the world will know. That we are your disciples.
Father, we need your hand. We thank you that you have made it.
Father, forgive me Our ancestors.
Father, Lord your yes.
Father, also Lord your marriage to the door.
Father,旅 timeout, and heavenly love.
Father, you will react to that magzaful, and your clerk.
Father, we will do another.
Father, have Jesus, will be there.