No Obligation
Text: Romans 13:8-14
I know this is going to sound surprising to those of us who live near, in, or work and/or play in the City of Chicago, but I once saw a police officer turn down free coffee and doughnuts. Yes, that’s right. I was on a “ride along” with an officer in Redondo Beach, California. It was a graveyard shift and we stopped at a local 7-11 for a caffeine pick-me-up and a brief sugar high. When we brought our goodies to the counter, the clerk behind the counter started to wave the officer off, even though I had my money in my hand and the officer was reaching for his wallet. The officer thanked him, but pulled out his wallet and paid for his refreshments. Not being in uniform and not looking like a detective lieutenant, I didn’t have the option of free coffee and doughnuts. When we got back into the patrol car, I asked the officer what that was all about. He said, “Just about everyone tries to offer something to us. Maybe it’s just a way of saying ‘Thank you,’ but, more than likely, it’s a way of trying to buy our services. Take a handout and then, someone comes in, you get a call, and then, you don’t get there as fast as they want, they’ll scream, ‘I gave the police such-and-such, but they didn’t so much as arrive promptly.’ Then, you get in trouble and people claim you’ve been bribed for something as little as a coffee and doughnut. It’s much better simply to say, ‘No!’”
Now, I know that those of us in the Chicago area wish police shakedowns would settle for a coffee and doughnut, but our history teaches us better than that. However, the point of this story rests in the officer’s explanation. He felt it was wrong for any public servant to become obligated, even in the smallest way, to any one individual or institution. It may just be “coffee and doughnuts” today, but it is liable to be paying off a medical bill or putting a kid through college tomorrow. But the implied obligation is there, regardless of the price. And the implied obligation potentially impacts the way the officer might do his duty. Does he ignore a drunken driver to rush to an alarm at the 7-11 or Dunkin’ Donuts? Does he allow people on the road to face danger in order to possibly catch a robber or roust a disorderly drunk at the convenience store or doughnut shop? That police officer certainly showed wisdom in refusing to become obligated to that 7-11 store owner (though, I knew some officers who didn’t hesitate accepting entire meals free at Pancho and Wong’s, the strange combination of Mexican and Chinese food served at a then favorite hangout for the P.D.).
When Romans 13:8 tells us not to owe anything to another person, it is warning us about the dangers of OBLIGATION. Obligation handcuffs us to someone else’s timetable, someone else’s will. The biggest danger of obligation is that it might tie us up when we need to be finding and doing God’s will. We might be dealing with a shoplifter who nabbed a candy bar when we could be stopping manslaughter elsewhere by getting that drunk driver off the street. Whatever that analogy might mean for the Christian life, it means that we would be going through the motions of whatever duty we’ve inherited through obligation instead of actively loving through voluntary actions motivated by authentic concern.
The Greek uses negatives for emphasis here. Owe NO ONE. Owe NOTHING. A strict logician would take the double negative of owing no one nothing and say, “I need to owe something to everyone. The Bible says to max out my credit.” Actually, the piling on of negatives is something like the old Southern saying. “I ain’t gonna’ do it—no way, no how!” In other words, there is just no possible way that I’m going to do something. I like C. K. Barrett’s interpretive translation of this verse: “Let your only indebtedness be the mutual love you are bound to owe as Christians.” [Harper’s New Testament Commentaries: The Book of Romans, p. 250]
I don’t believe this verse is teaching about consumer credit or forbidding believers from purchasing houses with a mortgage. For one thing, except when we are experiencing a bubble-bursting like the current housing market (and even then, folks like Yoon and Peggy have managed to sell a house successfully in the last few weeks), buying a house is actually investing in value. Real estate generally grows in value, so you have to factor in what you might lose if you don’t invest against the extra you might have to pay in interest. We can’t say the same for cars, but there are some of you who couldn’t drive a car at all if you didn’t get one via a payment plan. I don’t want you to feel guilty about that.
But I do want you to hear the thrust of the verse as meaning that we shouldn’t get ourselves in a situation where we couldn’t do what God wanted us to do because of our obligations. If our car payment, our credit card debt, our mortgage, our job, or any obligation is keeping us from being able to move where God tells us to move, we have become more obliged to the bank, finance company, or employer than we are committed to God. So, we need to carefully examine any debt to which we might enter. I don’t believe God wants us to feel trapped financially.
But I don’t believe God wants us to be trapped in other ways. I don’t think God wants us to be trapped in emotional traps. Remember when Elvis sang about a marriage that was a “trap?” [“We’re caught in a trap. I can’t walk out because I love you too much, Baby!”] I know the first part of it says that he loves her, but when the song continues, it indicates that he has done something that has caused her to suspect him. And he says that they can’t build a relationship on “suspicious minds.” Well, you can’t! A relationship of LOVE means that you’re willing to give whatever is necessary to benefit that other person—even above yourself.
Loving my wife means not only that I enjoy being with her and find her to be the most amazing and attractive woman I could ever have imagined, but it means that there are things I change about myself and things I give up in order to see that dazzling smile of hers or hear that sigh of contentment. I don’t feel trapped because I want to make her happy. Those things I supposedly “give up” to make her happy (whether it’s not watching as many sports programs, going to as many game nights, doing the dishes, or getting rid of some of my excessive repositories of books or games) just don’t seem important when I realize what it means for her. And when I do these things, I don’t do them out of duty. It’s not that I’m obliged to wash the dishes. I love seeing how pleased she is when I do them (even though I don’t do them nearly often enough).
We aren’t supposed to love each other out of duty, either. We can’t just paraphrase Admiral Nelson’s last words to his crew, “England expects that every man will do his duty” to “God expects that every person will do his or her duty.” It isn’t about duty. It’s about learning to love like God loves and learning to do what we do out of love. It’s learning that what we do for each other for the benefit of each other is incredibly fulfilling.
Now, the verse goes on to say that “the one who keeps on loving another has filled out the law’s potential.” Okay, that’s a very interpretive translation, but I think it’s pretty strong. The Greek uses a present participle which suggests something that is continuous, a lifestyle of love. The message here isn’t that we can justify ourselves and meet all of the requirements of the law by loving each other. We can’t. We’re still justified by faith in Jesus. We’re still dependent upon what Jesus did for us. However, we can become more of what God intended the law to tutor us toward if we love. Think of it as reaching the full potential of what God intended.
But it doesn’t mean that emotional love makes us perfect. There’s a lot of confusion about that. When I was doing my Master of Divinity degree, a lot of people were talking about Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics. He had taken this verse and others like it to suggest that any action or inaction was acceptable if it was “the most loving thing to do.” The problem with this is that we humans often confuse love with feeling. Imagine the person who feels empathy for someone who isn’t a very good musician. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings so when the poor musician asks about the performance, she says that it was marvelous. The poor musician wastes a large portion of her life trying to prepare for a life as a professional musician. Was that the most loving thing to do?
Imagine a husband who discovers that his sister-in-law is really hurting. He takes her in his arms to comfort her and as she melts into his arms, he decides that the “most loving thing to do” is to comfort her sexually. He rationalizes that it is the “loving” thing to do, but love wouldn’t take advantage of someone’s emotional hurt, love wouldn’t risk the kind of rejection and isolation that person would feel when he went back to his wife or the hurt and estrangement the wife would feel when she found out about the affair, much less the risk of pregnancy and the risk of exposure and shame. It isn’t the most “loving thing to do” when you don’t put the other person first.
That’s why verse 9 spells out some of the sins that God forbids. IF you really love and are learning to love as God loves, you won’t deliberately commit destructive acts. Fletcher grabbed on to a portion of the truth, but he missed the fact that there ARE some ethical absolutes. Paul didn’t want the early church to substitute the idea of love for a new obligation and he didn’t want the early church to use some sentimental idea of love as a substitute for doing what was right. The moral commandments still stand. God gave them for a reason and we disobey them to our peril—even though Christ has guaranteed our salvation.
So, verse 10 reiterates the golden rule idea with which verse 9 closes and repeats the verbal root about filling up the law. Again, I want to emphasize that this doesn’t mean that loving each other or even loving strangers will justify us. Rather, it means that loving provides us with the potential to discover God’s best for us. It means we get to stay out of the trap and find the best of God’s blessing.
But it isn’t easy! The world says, “If it feels good, do it!” and “The ends justify the means.” As a result, we have to be extra alert. It reminds me of God’s message to Sardis in the Book of Revelation. God kept having to tell them to be alert and that must have poured salt into their wounds. You see Sardis was a town that thought it was invincible. It wasn’t, though. Herodotus (In Book 1, Section 84) told about the Telmassians claiming that if King Meles would carry a young lion all the way around the wall, it would magically make the entire city into an impregnable fortress that would never fall. The king carried the lion around the wall, but there was one spot he thought was totally secure because it was on top of a cliff. He didn’t bother to carry the lion by there. Much later, a soldier stood guard on the wall as the city was under siege. It was hot and his helmet fell off and part of the way down the cliff. Rather than face his commanding officers, he climbed partially down the cliff and retrieved the helmet. But the besieging troops so him do it and realized that the cliff was scalable. Guess where they infiltrated the city and caused the city to fall from within? They sent men up that cliff and exploited Sardis’ weakness.
Paul is speaking to believers who are tempted to compromise. Instead of loving each other, they just want to get along. And when we aren’t actively loving, we are lulled into complacency. We’re in danger of being infiltrated while we’re asleep and being destroyed from within. This verse isn’t talking about being asleep in the sense that some people believe you are when you’re dead (I don’t believe that, but some do.), but it’s talking about believers who have gotten too comfortable, who are too at home in the world.
Paul wants to remind us, see verse 12, that time is critical. The night is almost over and the day is almost here. The darkness of this sinful world is almost over and the light of God’s final consummation is near. Of course, a lot of people don’t like these texts from the 1st century that indicate that Jesus is coming soon. They want to know where He is. Well, if Paul wanted us to be aware of limited time in the 1st century, how much more do we need to be aware of limited time, now. If they were in the 4th quarter in the 1st century, we must have the clock running out in overtime, now.
I joke about time because we don’t understand time. God is beyond time. God sees the entire flow of history at once. God knows the optimal moment to enter back into time and fire the final gun. But are we going to be ready? If we want to be, we need to put on the armor of light. That’s one of the images Paul uses to remind us that the world, the secular culture, wants us to surrender so that they don’t have to be bothered with the claims of God against the kinds of immorality listed in verse 13. You have a little exercise in your bulletins.
Here it is:
Match the weapons or protection listed in Column A with the Scripture Verses in Column B
A B
_4__ “weapons of righteousness” 1. Ephesians 6:11
_3__ “weapons of our warfare” 2. I Thessalonians 5:8a
_5__ “helmet of hope” 3. II Corinthians 10:4
_2__ “breastplate of faith and love” 4. II Corinthians 6:7
_1__ “full armor of God” 5. I Thessalonians 5:8b
But lest we think any of this armor is due to our own accomplishments, our own discipline, and our own spirituality, Paul closes his admonition with the command to put on Christ instead of merely satisfying the appetites of the physical life. What is that breastplate of faith and love? It is having faith in our Lord Jesus Christ (even when it looks bad for Him and we don’t understand why He delays or doesn’t seem to answer like we expect) and love both for and by means of Jesus Christ. The helmet of hope in II Corinthians and the helmet of salvation in Ephesians 6 are both dependent upon our Lord Jesus. How are we going to wield weapons of righteousness? It is only possible through Jesus.
Do you see what’s happened here? Paul is placing us on sentry duty. We are to be alert and not asleep. We have been warned that it is that eerie time of the night when the darkness is starting to turn to gray. I worked many nights as a security guard when I was in graduate school and I know this time of day. It isn’t quite dark and it isn’t quite light. It’s just light enough to let you know that you haven’t been to sleep, so your eyelids get extra heavy, but it isn’t light enough to wake you and make you feel ready for the day. I would always get a “second wind” when the actual dawn arrived. It’s time to be extra alert. And if we can’t stay alert, we need to depend upon Jesus.
I think I told you about my old friend Tom Keller. He was on sentry duty during his time in the military and he fell asleep, standing on his feet. Something awakened him and as he opened his eyes, he saw spit-shined boots directly opposite his own. He wanted to curse, but instead, he said, “In Jesus’ name, Amen!” and looked up to face his superior officer. The superior officer, who didn’t like Tom, did curse. He was ready to bust Tom down to lower rank. But while it was a felony (in wartime, a capital offense) to fall asleep on sentry duty, it was no crime to pray. So, Tom’s pretend prayer kept him from getting busted down for sleeping. WE, on the other hand, need more than a pretend prayer. Paul wants us to put on Jesus. WE are to depend on, rely on, and focus on Jesus.
