Title: Our Debt of
Love
Text: Romans 13: 8-10
Date: Dec 1, 2019
Place: SGBC, NJ
Subject: Our Debt of Love
Romans 13: 8: Owe no
man any thing, but to love one another;
Paul is not saying
that God forbids us to take out a loan. God
made provision for loans under the old covenant. Of course, it is not good to become overly in
debt; debt causes great stress—"the borrower is servant to the lender”
(Pro 22:7). That causes great pressure
and great stress. But Paul is saying
have no unpaid nor unpayable debt
In said in verse 7,
Pay “therefore all their dues [taxes] to whom [taxes] is due; custom to whom
custom.” And we are to do so paying
respect and honor that is due to the magistrate—"fear to whom fear; honour
to whom honour.
Romans 13: 8: Owe no
man anything—have no unpaid or unpayable
debts, with one exception—but to love one another. Love is a debt
we owe to all men which we can never fully pay.
8:…for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 9: For this,
Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou
shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and…any other commandment,
it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. 10: Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is
the fulfilling of the law.
Proposition: Love is a debt we owe to all men but will never fully
pay.
Today, we are
remembering our Redeemer at his table. I
can think of no better subject with which to put us in remembrance of our Lord
Jesus Christ than the subject of love. By
Christ’s love in giving himself for his elect, he paid this debt in full—he fulfilled
the law for his people. Therefore, his
people are to love all men
Divisions 1) Christ fulfilled the law by his perfect love 2) God’s
saints under this law of Christ 3) Some practical things concerning Christ’s
exhortation to us
CHRIST PAID THE DEBT OF
LOVE IN FULL
Romans 13: 8…he that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Christ paid this debt
in full for his people. He fulfilled the
law for his elect by his perfect love. On
several occasions our Lord Jesus Christ declared that all the commandments are
summed up and fulfilled by love. A
lawyer among the Pharisee’s asked Christ,
Matthew 22: 36:
Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37: Jesus said unto
him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind. 38: This is the first and great commandment. 39:
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. 40: On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
When the lawyer tried
to justify himself, asking, “Who is my neighbor”, Christ gave a parable which
said our neighbor is even he who is our enemy.
The lawyer was thinking who is my neighbor that I should love. But in Christ’s parable, he put the lawyer in
the ditch, robbed and ruined. The one
Christ showed being a neighbor to him was a Samaritan. To a Jew, the Samaritans were the worst of
all Gentiles. They had a saying that if
a Samaritan woman was giving birth, no Jew was to help her because the only
thing they would be doing is bringing another Samaritan into the world. The Jews hated the Samaritans. So in Christ’s parable, it was a Samaritan who
Christ made to love and help the Jew who was robbed and ruined in the ditch—not
a Jewish priest, not a Jewish Levite—but a despised Gentile Samaritan. Christ is one we despised above all. Yet, Christ came to his ruined and robbed
people and loved us as himself, saving us from the ditch of our sins.
Luke 10: 29: But he,
willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? 30: And
Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho,
and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him,
and departed, leaving him half dead. 31: And by chance there came down a
certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32:
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him,
and passed by on the other side. 33: But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed,
came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 34: And
went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set
him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35: And
on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to
the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest
more, when I come again, I will repay thee. 36: Which now of these three,
thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? 37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then
said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.
Godly love is not what this world calls love. Love is much more than the absence of hatred. Love does no ill to its neighbor but love is much
more than not doing injury or ill-will. Love
is much more than a deep, emotional feeling. To love is to profit another at
expense to myself, even an enemy: be it money, time, labor, preference, desire,
or all these things. Love is to deny-self
and sacrifice-self in devotion and commitment of your life for another person’s
good. And love which perfectly fulfills the
law is to do so without sin.
No sinner has ever loved God and his neighbor in sinless
perfection, nor can we. When Adam
disobeyed God, he ceased loving God and plunged all his posterity into sin and
death. Being born with Adam’s sin-nature,
we hate God and we bite and devour our neighbor, desirous of vain glory,
provoking one another, bitter envying one another. “For all have sinned, and come short of the
glory of God” (Rom 3:23).
The Lord Jesus Christ,
the last Adam, is the only Man born without sin, who lived and died loving God his
Father with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind and loving
his neighbor as himself—Christ alone!
Christ laid down his life, both, for his people and for God his Father. His
perfect love fulfilled both tables of the law: toward God and toward man.
Theologians like to
argue that Christ only fulfilled the negative side of the law, the justice of
the law, by dying for the sins of his people.
But they say he did not fulfill the positive active side of the
law. But Christ’s perfect love fulfilled
the positive active doing of the law BY him fulfilling the negative, by him laying
down his life for his people, by him bearing our sin and judgment. He said,
John 15: 12: This is
my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13: Greater love
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Mark the words, “as I
have loved you. Greater love hath no man
than this.” That is true! Greater love hath no man that Christ’s love
for his people which made him lay down his life for his friends.
1 John 3: 16: Hereby perceive
we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought
to lay down our lives for the brethren.
But men have laid
down their lives for others. So why was
Christ laying down his life the perfect love which fulfilled the law? Let me give you some reasons why.
One, laying down his
life was the greatest love, the perfection of love, because the Lord Jesus
Christ was immortal. Any other man
who lays down his life for another is only doing sooner what must happen
anyway. If a man gave an organ to
someone he loved and died 20 years before the average life expectancy, he only did
the inevitable and he only gave up 20 years.
He did not lay down what he could have kept eternally. Christ knew no sin therefore he could never
die. Sin is the cause of death—Christ
knew no sin. He could have lived
forever as the GodMan. He alone
could say “No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have
power to lay it down and I have power to take it again” (Jn 10: 18) So Christ’s death for his people is perfect
love because the only reason he died is because he voluntarily was made the sin
of his people.
Two, Christ’s love was perfect because his motive in
laying down his life for his people was pure love alone. If other men lay down their lives there is
some motive that makes it not pure love.
That is so because we are sinners.
Perhaps it is the love from the one a man dies for makes him lay down
his life. Or he feels indebted to the
person already because the person has been so good to him. No sinner has ever laid down his life for
another man without their being a condition in the man or vain glory that moved
the sinner to lay down his life for him.
But Christ’s love was pure love. It
was not that his people loved him; we hated him. It was not that we served him; we rejected
him. It was not that we were his friends;
we considered him our enemy—"We hid as it were our faces from him, he
was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Is 53: 3). It was not that we were his equals; we were
infinitely inferior to him. It was not that
we added anything to him; Christ is the solitary God; we can add nothing to him. Even worse, we were the very cause of him
suffering and dying; he did not have to die if we were not willful offenders. And the very one we offended was him. Yet, the very judgment Christ the Judge pronounced
upon us, he came down off the bench and took all the crimes of his people and all
the punishment and bore the very judgment he pronounced upon us. The Lord Jesus had no motive in his heart but
the perfect motive of perfect love.
Romans 5: 6: For when
we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7: For
scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some
would even dare to die. 8: But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Next, Christ’s love excels all others as perfect love
because no one who died for others ever bore the sins of others. Some have taken the punishment of others;
they answered to justice in the place of another. I read the story of a man who was a judge
whose son stood before him guilty of a crime.
The punishment for the son was that he was to have both his eyes plucked
out. But his father took part of his
punishment and had one of his own eyes plucked out so that his son could at
least still see with one eye. Yet, the
son was still viewed by justice as the offender. His father could not blot out the crime from
the record book. Only Christ took the
sin itself. He was made to bear the
crimes themselves with all the guilt and the shame; the crimes of every elect
child of God. Whatever example of a man
laying down his life for his friends none is like this. A soldier dies for his country but he cannot
bear the sin and shame of each of his countrymen. Brother dies for brother, husband for wife; but
it is impossible for man to be made to bear the offense so that he becomes the sole
offender. With man this is
impossible. But what is impossible with
man is possible with God. God was made
flesh. What man can explain that? As real as Christ was made flesh, Christ was
made sin for his people. We are not
talking about corruption of his nature.
We are talking about the righteousness of the law. Before the eye of God the sin of his elect
became Christ’s sin. Christ owned them
to be his. God owned them to be
his. This was not God playing pretend. How God sees it is how it really is.
Isaiah 53: 6:…rhe
Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Therefore, with the iniquity itself upon Christ, God
imputed him to be one with the transgressors.
Isaiah 53: 12: He was
numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many.
2 Corinthians 5: 21: He
made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him.
Christ bore, not merely the punishment, but all the many
offenses of his people.
Romans 5:16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is
the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many
offences unto justification.
The thing that made this worse is that Christ was perfect
in his holy nature so that he “despised the shame” which he bore. He knew fully how shameful sin is. Oh, the weight of shame Christ bore when he
bore the weight of our sins! How much
worse that was for him that is perfect in heart and hates sin with a perfect
hatred! Christ’s death is perfection of
love because he bore away, not just our punishment but our crimes themselves. His blood not only paid our punishment, his
blood erased our crimes from God’s record book forever!
Lastly, Christ’s death fulfilled the righteous love of
the law because no one laid down his life to suffer the death Christ suffered. None have ever suffered such greatness of
death that Christ dies. None bore such
greatness of sorrow and suffering as Christ suffered. Any death is a bitter thing. But the death Christ died is incomparable to any
other. If we die physically, that is the
first death; if God cast us into hell forever that is the second death; the second
death is an eternal living death which is to be forsaken of God. On the cross, Christ suffered that second, eternal,
living death for God and for his people.
He suffered that death for God in order that the justice of God would be
maintained. He suffered that death for
his people in order that we be justified by God. Christ’s suffered what hell would have been
for us, when he was alive on the cross: wailing and gnashing of teeth, bodily
pain, humiliation, shame, isolation and worst of all being forsaken by God
which tortures of soul, as well as body.
All of that is the love that fulfilled the law. That is what it is to love God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and thy neighbour
as thyself. By that death, by God’s
elect being in Christ, we not only were crucified for not perfectly loving God
and our neighbor, we actively fulfilled the law in perfect love for God and our
neighbor.
GOD’S SAINTS UNDER
THE LAW OF CHRIST
Romans 13: 8: Owe no
man anything but to love one another.
God’s saints are
under the law of Christ which is the law of love. When the Spirit of God creates a new man in
us, he reveals the good news that Christ has fulfilled the law for us by his
perfect love so that we are called unto liberty. Liberty means we have freedom from the curse
of the law, freedom from the strict demands of the law, and freedom from sins
dominion so that we can believe on Christ and love and serve our Redeemer. We are freed from everything but sins presence. And soon Christ shall deliver us from that,
too!
When
born-again the Spirit of God produces faith and love in our hearts—“faith which
worketh by love” (Gal 5:6). Christ teaches us in heart “by love serve one
another.” Love is the one rule God’s
saints are under. Every chosen,
redeemed, regenerated child of God lives by faith in Christ, which worketh by
love. As those Christ redeemed
from the law, we have no other rule by which we live than faith in Christ and
love to one another. But love will be a
debt no child of God fully pays of ourselves.
Do not look at this text and imagine that you can love God and your
neighbor in perfect, righteous love so that you can find acceptance with God by
your love. It will not happen!
We still have our
flesh with all its dead fruit—“adultery, fornication, lasciviousness” and so
on. We do those things everyday at least in thought. But the new man within us created of God, is after
God, it is created and renewed in Christ’s image. Our new man is made of and filled with the
fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is the essence of our new spirit. “The fruit of the Spirit is love…against such
there is no law” (Gal 5:22) In the new
man, the love produced by the Spirit of God loves God and our neighbor
perfectly. That is right! In the new man, there is no sin because it is
made of God. God only makes that which
is pure. In our new man we love God and
our neighbor perfectly with no sin. Here
is the problem, the sins of our flesh will always be mixed in, making our love
imperfect.
Nevertheless by the Spirit’s
power we do love. The Spirit teaches, leads
and corrects us so that we love. It is
the Lord who moves our hearts to love as we ought and to persevere in faith—"the
Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for
Christ” (2 Thess 3:5). Christ’s love for
us is why we love—we “love him because he first loved us” (1 Jn 4: 19).
Since Christ rules
the heart, love rules the heart of God’s saints. Therefore there is nothing legal about love. Nobody ever loved because it was demanded
of him. The whip of the law and the
promises of reward cannot produce the love of God in the heart of a sinner. We love because it is our new nature to do
so. Love is the very essence of our new heart.
We have been made partakers of the divine nature. Love is the very
essence of liberty in Christ! The outcome of love produced by God is that a believer
no longer lives unto himself, and for himself, but for Christ and the good of
others. In our flesh is nothing but
selfishness. But Christ rules the hearts
of his saints so that by his power we no longer live unto self but unto Christ
that loved us and gave himself for us—which means we also live for the good of
our brethren and we love all men.
CHRIST’S EXHORTATION
TO LOVE
Christ commands every
true believer to love all men. When
Christ preached he commanded his people to love all men, including our enemies.
Matthew 7:12: Therefore
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them: for this is the law and the prophets.
When he walked this
earth, Christ also gave his church this new commandment to love our brethren as
he loved us.
John 13:34: A new
commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another. 35: By this shall all men know that ye are my
disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Do not go to Moses to
learn how to love, go to Christ. Christ
is our pattern. We are to love one
another as Christ loved us by giving himself for us. Out motive is Christ’s love for us:
1 John 3: 16: Hereby
perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we
ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Law
mongers—will-worshippers, the self-righteous—speak of so much regard to the Law
of Moses. But they forget the very
essence and spirit of the law for “love is the fulfilling of the law.” They look for sins in their brethren. They expose it. Then they are stern and severe in
disciplining them. All of which is being unrighteous. It is not loving their neighbor as they love
themselves. The self-righteous are
usually not “kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for
Christ’s sake has forgiven his people” (Eph 4: 32). They are mean, hard-hearted, and strict rather
than forgiving. There is no softness,
sweetness, gentleness and graciousness which the law, itself, requires. They
use the law to whip into outward obedience.
We need only the gospel of Christ crucified. Christ’s love in laying down his life for us chastens
us for our lack of self-denial. To live
a life of ease and enjoyment, when I could sacrifice these worldly things to
promote Christ’s gospel more, shames me when I think of what Christ gave for me.
Also, the gospel of Christ makes me
rejoice in my brethren who serve relentlessly in love to Christ and his people. Remember, brethren, anything that is done
that is truly grand before God in the
cause of Christ is motivated and moved by the love of Christ revealed in the
gospel of Christ and him crucified. Spurgeon
said, “When you get to the cross you have left the realm of little men: you
have reached the nursery of true chivalry.”
To give up all, to become a servant to all, simply because Christ loved
me and gave up all for me, that is the power of faith which worketh by love.
Amen!