The Life Of The Kingdom Begins Now

The Kingdom of God Begins Now

Romans 13:8-14

In times of distress, we often dream of heaven. We cry out “Maranatha” (O Lord Come). We think of the millennium and a reign of the Prince of Peace while we seem surrounded by the noise of war. We await justice while we live in a world where justice is all too often perverted. We seem to have so little strength to combat the moral decay we see around us, so we just resign ourselves to the day when Jesus returns. Everything will be all right then. It is, or course, only right to orient ourselves toward the return of Christ. Paul tells us in Colossians that we are first of all to look upward to Christ who is seated at the right hand of God. Colossians 3:1) In Colossians 3:4, Paul adds:

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Colossians 3:4 NKJV

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

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Paul in Colossians here is addressing the same issue we see here in the Romans text today. We are not called to passively resign ourselves to await the Kingdom. We are called to active obedience and witness to Jesus in THIS world. Jesus Himself in His prayer in John 17 says in John 17:15

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John 17:15 NKJV

I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.

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As we can see, Jesus wants us to proclaim the Gospel to this present evil age. (See Galatians 1:4) We are not called to climb a mountain top an passively await the Kingdom. (See 2 Thessalonians 2:1) The nation of Israel was called out to Sinai in the wilderness to be His people. But the nation of Israel was not to remain forever in this splendid isolation. They would soon enter into Canaan land with its wickedness. It was God’s purpose for Israel to be a witness to the nations. It was to be a message of judgment, but even in the midst of this judgment, Rahab the Harlot would find grace through her faith in the God of Israel.

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So let us now examine this morning’s text from the Epistle to the Romans and see what it tells us about how we should live our lives while we wait for the fullness of the Kingdom to arrive. The first thing we need to do in examining a text is to look at the text which comes before it. At the beginning of Romans 13, Paul teaches us about our obligations to secular authority. We are to show proper respect to the secular authority. We should pay our taxes. We should also obey their laws, so long as it does not contradict what God says in His Word. I would add that if we find that we cannot comply with these laws out of conscience, we should not take up arms against the government and be willing to suffer for conscience’s sake should we be arrested for disobedience.

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Paul here in Romans 13:8 now turns to our Christian obligations. Whereas, once we have met the secular obligations just described, we are free from further obligations. But there is an obligation the Christian has which has no end. when a loan is repaid, the obligation to pay the lender is ended. But even after all our obligations have been paid, the obligation to love one another remains. This is a debt which is always being paid. We are to love one another. Paul is talking about this as love between Christians. If we cannot show proper love to our fellow believer, it is impossible to properly love the unbeliever. Our love for each other is a witness to the sinner. Jesus Himself tells us in John 13:35: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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But what is meant by “love” here? We must strictly define this word in its proper Christian context. It is far more than human love or an emotional attachment. The early Christians adopted the Greek word “agape” to describe this love. It is not “eros” which is sexual love. It is not “philos” which is the love between good friends. It refers to a deeper and even sacrificial love which requires the deepest level of commitment. Jesus himself describes what agape love is all about. In John 13:1 we read: “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” Jesus is about to go to the cross in our place. There is something special about this love to what in the King James says “to the uttermost” which is better than most modern translations which use “to the end.” The Greek word here is “telos” which is hard to render in English. Telos has the idea of the end of a process, such as when a building is completed and is working as designed. The building process has finished. So what is meant here by “to the end.” We find the answer to this in John 19:30: “So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.” The Greek word “finished” is a verb form of the noun “telos’ (tetelestai). The tense of this verb is in what is called in Greek the “perfect” tense which stresses the ongoing ramifications of this act of love. By this, Jesus cancelled our debt and freed us from sin, including the obligation to sin.