Clothe Yourself With The Lord Jesus Christ

When we clothe ourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ we will be robed in love, because God is love. And this takes us back full circle to verse 8 in Romans 13: “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law”.

I honestly love this verse. It of course refers to what Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40: “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”.

But what is that debt? “Let no debt remain outstanding…”. What might that debt be referring to? I’m asking?

1 John 4: 16-19 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him... We love because he first loved us.

The debt we can never repay is the reason we love. We love because He first loved us. That gift of love is so huge, so monumental, so unlike anything on the planet – it cannot be repaid.

Think of the love God has given you personally. The embrace you feel as you draw near to Him.

The forgivenesss and relief to a guilty conscience that He has given you through Christ’s death on the cross. Calling you His beloved daughter, His cherished son.

Think of the love that you have received from God’s own hand. Then times that love by 7 billion – the current number of people who God is loving right now on this planet.

Then we get a sense of how great is His love, and why, as long as we live on this globe, we will never be able to repay that love to God or to others – every other person God puts in our path.

Someone at the gathering this week said that clothing ourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ has similarities to ‘putting on the whole armour of God’, a key passage that is found in Ephesians 6.

That’s true, and I encourage you to read or reread THAT passage this week, but it’s another message.

Suffice it to say that we are given ways to apply this passage in a very focussed way in Ephesians 6.

Today is September 11. A day when hate and evil manifested itself in the slaughter of over 3000 people in New York City. We will remember that our whole lives. No doubt.

But may you and I remember even better, to daily clothe ourselves with Jesus Christ. That is how to love one another. That is how to reach the world we live in that is starving for meaning and purpose, for something real. Let’s pray.

God you love us and you’ve sent Jesus to die for us so that we can live our lives in love, in unbroken fellowship with You. May each one here choose to live for You daily, to embrace and be embraced by Your love, and to not conceal but live out that love among those around us. May we be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ holy name we pray. Amen.