Loving Like Jesus Loves Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

On September 29, 94 year old Paul Grimme traded in his walker for a parachute and went skydiving with his granddaughter, who along with his 5 living children had purchased the jump as a gift for his birthday. Although I’ve always thought that skydiving would be a blast, I’ve always deferred to the idea that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is probably not a wise thing to do.

But as Mary and I watched Grimme’s story on the news last week, I commented that if I live to 94, I just might give it a try then. Of course I only committed to doing that if she would do it with me. Since I know this is the very same woman that won’t even go on a roller coaster since she hates that dropping feeling, I really wasn’t going out on much of a limb.

My thoughts reminded me of how when we’re faced with the news that we have only a few months to live or we know we’re nearing the end of our lives here on earth, we often try to cram a lot into those last days. We might travel to places we’ve always wanted to go or to engage in some dangerous activity, like skydiving, that we’d been reluctant to do in the past. And it’s not hard to understand why we would want to indulge ourselves with that kind of “bucket list”.

TENSION

But as we’re going to see this morning, every one of us, and especially those of us who are disciples of Jesus do have a similar kind of deadline facing us. It is a deadline that all of us will encounter whether we are 4, or 64, or 94. And that deadline should motivate us not to indulge our own desires, but rather to live a life in which we love others by serving them sacrificially.

TRUTH

Before we read our passage for today in Romans 13, let me put it in perspective. Once again, if we fail to do that, we may very well miss the important connections to what Paul has written prior to this.

I’ve come to see that the structure of Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome is actually very consistent with the answer Jesus gave when He was asked which was the greatest commandment in the law. Anyone here remember how Jesus replied? (Matthew 22:37–39):

• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.

• And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

To a large degree, chapters 1-11 of Paul’s letter focus on the greatest commandment – to love God. They remind us that we are to love God because He first loved us with the kind of self-sacrificial love that sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins.

The beginning words of chapter 12 serve as a transition from that commandment to the second – to love our neighbors. We’ve referred to those verses every week, but we haven’t actually read them for a few weeks, so would you read them out loud with me?

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

(Romans 12:1–2 ESV)

I would suggest to you that Paul is describing here what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We do that not by just telling God that we love Him, even though that is important. But we show that we love Him by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, asking God to help us do that by keeping us from conforming to the world and by constantly allowing the Holy Spirit to renew, or renovate our minds.

And then in verse 3, Paul begins to focus on how we love our neighbors. We are to do that by using our spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ, by letting our love be genuine and returning a blessing for a curse and doing good even to our enemies, and by submitting to the human authority that God has placed over us.