Christ’s Law of Love.
Romans 12:9-21
There are lots of Christians who seem to think that because salvation is a free gift of grace, that there are no laws involved with the faith anymore. That there are no more commandments. They seem to think the New Testament is a collection of suggestions, principles, and guidelines. They balk at the idea of rules.
But as we see from this morning’s passage, and from other parts of the New Testament, you know that’s not true. There still are rules in the Christian faith.
I’m going to limit myself to three observations; I might not say a lot about the individual commandments we just read. I want to give a framework for why a passage like this is included in our Christian faith. How does it relate to growing into the people God wants us to be?
I. God’s love always keeps God’s law.
Romans 13 says that love is the fulfillment of God’s law. Paul lists a number of commandments – do not covet, steal, lie, bear false witness. This is how we love our neighbors. This is why now, during the COVID-19 crisis, we aren’t meeting together in an enclosed space. It isn’t out of fear, and certainly not out of worldliness. It’s out of concern for our neighbors, those in the congregation (especially the elderly and those with respiratory illnesses), and also the unsaved neighbors around us.
God’s love always keeps God’s law. Not all Christians think that. Certainly, the world doesn’t think it. The world thinks love is sex, or some generic kindness, and often they think it means that love has no rules. That isn’t true. Love fulfills God’s law.
That’s because of God’s own nature. It says in the letter of 1st John, chapters 1 and 4, that God is light and love. God’s very nature is righteous and loving. They’re both true. Love and righteousness unite in God’s person. You can’t really separate them. They’re not the same thing, but they find unity in God. As one of the psalms says, at the cross mercy and righteousness kissed. That’s why God’s love never sins.
The reason God never sins is because He is love. In the famous “love chapter”, 1st Corinthians 13, you learn that love is ethical, as the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, once said. A person can’t love God and knowingly break His laws at the same time.
II. Love always involves attitude and action.
I remember an unfortunate situation, where a man became ill and went to the hospital. A local pastor went to visit him. The sick man had a close relative, who accused the pastor of only visiting because he thought he “ought to.” That’s a very odd way of thinking. A lot of love involves doing what you should, no matter what mood you happen to be in. I would much rather have someone feed me when I’m starving or clothe me when I’m freezing, then just say, “Be blessed, brother” and walk on because they weren’t in the mood.
There are people who don’t seem affectionate, but in reality they are loving. And there are people who give off a vibe of being loving, but they don’t act very loving. This is why it’s important to connect attitude and action. The Romans 12 Bible passage lists attitudes and actions.
For example, some people think Christianity doesn’t involve hating, but that’s not true either. If you really love righteousness, you will automatically hate what’s evil. It doesn’t mean you’ll take personal revenge, but, as King David said, “Lord, because I love you, I hate the wicked.”
That seems alien to modern American evangelicalism. It doesn’t mean we wish the wicked to go to Hell, but we have taken sides. By taking sides with Jesus Christ, we have taken sides against those who hate Him. Even Paul in 1st Corinthians 16 wished anathema on those who actively hate Jesus Christ. So it’s a part of virtue to love what is good and hate what is evil.
The passage talks about serving the Lord with “zeal”. Think of fizzy pop. I hate flat pop. Have you ever drunken flat pop? It’s nasty. The only reason to drink pop half the time is because it’s fizzy. In the same way, God wants us to be fizzy with enthusiasm for Him. Christ criticized the Ephesian church because, even though they had all their doctrines in a row, and were good at testing truth, they had lost their original love for Him.
The passage tells us to rejoice in hope. We have some earthly hope that the world’s governments will be able to deal with this virus. But Christians have the hope of everlasting life. We will go to Heaven, whenever and however we die, and then one day rise again in joy forever. And that hope works backward into our current emotions, no matter how difficult our situation is. Every Christian has a happy ending. Every problem is temporary, even if they last for years.
The passage says to be sympathetic. I have a friend who comes from Western Europe. He jokes about being totally stoic. There’s a time to be able to press through your problems and not be knocked-over by your feelings. But this passage says there is a proper kind of Christian sympathy. These are all attitudes.
Then the same passage talks about actions: share with people in need, open our homes, act respectably. Some Christians say, “Who cares what other people think, we should just do whatever we’re going to do!” But Paul here says to take care to be respectable. One reason we aren’t meeting is mainly not to transmit germs, but it’s also a good testimony to this community at this time. It says we are watching out for them. We don’t want to accidentally give the impression that we don’t care.
Paul says not to curse our enemies, people who persecute us. It doesn’t say we can’t pray for God to balance the scales of justice. In fact, in the very next section it says, “Don’t avenge yourselves, because God will.” Eventually all scales get balanced, whether in this life or the next.
So, we see attitudes and actions. This is love. Not just sentiment, but ethics, and prizing the good of the other person. God’s guardrails lay down, “This is what love looks like.”
And this is how it relates to personal growth: how do you know if you’re growing in the direction that you should? Secular psychology may define growth a certain way, but the Word of God comes and says, “Here is growth, here is maturity. If a we show these attitudes and actions, then we are heading in the right direction.”
“Personal growth” isn’t up to us, to define whatever way we think we’re going. Scripture says, “Here is how a mature and loving human being acts like and thinks like.” That’s really valuable, considering there’s a lot of confusion about who and what we should be.
III. Christ’s laws give us authority.
Parents are trying to teach their children right from wrong. How do you know what’s right or wrong? Our whole country seems to have fallen apart, because people think morality is a matter of personal taste, like flavors of ice cream or liking prints over plaid. All that has done is lead to chaos and anarchy, crime, the family breaking down because everyone is doing whatever’s right in their own eyes.
Because the Bible is the Word of God, we can have authority behind our moral opinions. I can teach you this morning the difference between right and wrong because it isn’t my personal opinion.
Who am I? Who is anyone? Who is any preacher to stand up and say “Do this” or “Don’t do that”? We’re nobodies. We act sometimes like we have our own authority, but our real authority comes from God. It’s communicated down through the teachings of the Bible. By the way, this is why you need to be confident that the Bible is divinely inspired, otherwise even the Bible is just another collection of ideas and opinions.
Then, when the Bible in Exodus says “Do not steal”, or Jesus says “Blessed are the poor, for theirs in the kingdom of God”, or the apostles say “Don’t do this or that”, there’s authority behind it.
This applies to the local church. We have the authority to correct wrong behavior. We have the authority to tell a person in our congregation not to steal, and to make them stop; or to encourage and exhort them in the right direction. Jesus said the congregation has the authority to expel people for bad behavior (Matthew 18). Where does that authority come from? Not from the government, or from themselves. It comes from Christ, and the over-all teachings of the Bible.
We operate under the umbrella of Biblical authority, so that when we say “Do not do this” or “Do this”, we have some basis for having said it.
There’s a lot of confusion about the relationship between law and grace. Saved by grace doesn’t mean there are no commandments. “All sin is transgression”, which means there are still laws. Christians still sin, which means there are still laws. I think Christians confuse the Age of Law with the idea of rules. We aren’t living under Moses’ age of law, but that doesn’t mean there are no laws. We’re living in the age of grace, but under the authority of Christ.
In fact, according to 1st John 3, if a person regularly, consistently, and unrepentantly keeps on breaking God’s laws, that person is not saved. That person has no credible claim to having saving faith. Paul says this in 1st Cor. 5-6, that if a person lives in certain constant sins, they have no inheritance in the future kingdom of God.
Why did Christ die on the cross? We were all condemned by God’s law, for personal sin. Christ didn’t die for himself, he had no sins to die for. He did not represent us to the devil. He died unto the Father and the Father’s law. Death is the one universal penalty for sin.
But did He die to punch us a magic ticket, where we will go to heaven no matter how we live (because there’s no connection between justification and holiness)? The EFCA statement of faith says that we do not separate the grace of justification from the process of sanctification.
Christ’s cross creates a lawful people. God poured out saving grace through Jesus Christ in order to make us new creations. God takes out our old stone heart at the point of conversion, and gives us a new, living heart, born of the Holy Spirit.
Here is the irony and the paradox: Christ died for us apart from our good works, and gives us His righteousness by faith alone, so that we would become a people of good works. This is a big reason why we have to know the laws of God. This is why there are passages like this in the NT.
When I was a young Christian, I attended a church that was very strong on unconditional grace. I need to learn this. But that was kind of all they talked about. But one hot summer, I was sitting on our porch and for the first time I read the sermon on the mount. It gripped me, because my home was loose, amoral, and liberal. The church I attended for some reason thought the sermon on the mount wasn’t relevant to the church age. But I realized, “This is important!” Romans 12 speaks to the same importance.
Link to the sermon video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hurYCbWV4Rc&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0-UJydBwhRm7qi4erYFl85kcdHdshBPp7sHUPE4Hi4jBFf9EAc2WQcops
