Sunday 04 • 29 • 18

Owe no one anything except to love each other. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone. The day is at hand. So then, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies or drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. — Romans 13:8-14

The word of the Lord.

Would you join me in prayer together? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. Lord, you are our rock and our strength and our redeemer. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Gospel Neighboring

Neighbor love, love of your neighbor is big news. It's national news. Coach Chris Hogan was for many years a football coach at Grapevine Faith Christian School, just right outside Dallas, Texas. And every year, his team played the Gainesville State Tornadoes. When they faced off against that team, the games were always at the Grapevine Faith Christian School. They never went to the Tornadoes' field. And that's because the Gainesville State Tornadoes were not a team like any other team.

Gainesville State is a maximum security correctional facility for high schoolers, 75 miles north of Dallas. Every game they play is on the road. All the players are escorted to and from the bus by 12 uniformed guards with handcuffs in their pockets and guns on their hips.

Coach Hogan noticed that every year when the two schools met, no one would come and cheer for the opposing team. The opposing stands were always empty. The stadium was quiet. The Tornadoes were a team made up of kids who'd been given up on, and nobody came and showed up for them.

So Coach Hogan did something that was very newsworthy. He mobilized his team and their fan base to love. ESPN magazine captured this. You can look it up, but as the Tornadoes got off the bus for the game, instead of coming to an empty stadium, they were greeted by cheering fans. They ran through a 40-foot cheering line and then through one of those big paper breakthrough things that teams run through.

As the game started, cheerleaders appeared on their side of the field. Half of Grapevine Faith's cheerleaders were cheering for the opposing team. The bleachers were filled with families from Grapevine who were holding up signs and cheering for individual players by name. As the game progressed, the announcer began calling the plays of individual players. This made national news. This was a big story.

The kids who were interviewed said, "Nobody comes to my games. Nobody comes and cheers for us." This story was passed on by families everywhere—moms telling their kids about it. It became a big story, and Chris Hogan, who is a believer and a Christian, was welcomed by the president of the NFL to his personal box for the Super Bowl.

Now, why is that such a big deal? Why is that national news? It's because we live in a world where people are dying for a lack of love. We live in a time when people are just looking for a love life preserver because they are drowning in an ocean of loneliness. People feel like individually we live on little islands, and we're asking, "Would someone please build a bridge from the mainland?" We long so much for connection.

When we open up this passage in Romans 13, it's not hard to see what this passage is about. Twice it's repeated here—verse 9, love your neighbor; verse 10, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Paul talks five times in three verses here about love of neighbor, and let's be specific: enemy neighbor, critic neighbor, stranger neighbor. This isn't love within the body. We talked about that a couple weeks ago. This is love for the people out there. Love for those outside of the fellowship of God's people.

So today, we're going to look at gospel neighboring. You're here on a like gold star Sunday. All my points begin with the letter M. Never happens, okay? So you can remember it.

Four points, real briefly: the mandate of neighbor love, the magnitude of neighbor love, the motivation for love of neighbor, and finally, the method.

The Mandate for Neighbor Love

This is in verses eight through ten. Now, this is really odd because Paul starts here using a word that you and I would never use to describe love. When we think of love, we think of it as a feeling, as a response or reaction to somebody. We think of it as something where we are interacting with and responding to something lovely in the other. But Paul uses the language here of owing, of debt, of obligation—words we would never think about in connection with love. He says in effect here, love is an unpaid debt.

Now, don't misunderstand the first part of this passage. When he says, "owe nothing to anyone," he is not talking about your money. He's not talking about Dave Ramsey or your credit cards or your finances. This word is always used not in connection to financial arrangements but in terms of ought, should. This is meant in terms of obligation. There is one debt, in other words, that we should never be able to repay. There is one debt we will never be able to pay. We'll never be able to say, "I have loved enough. I am done. I have fulfilled that. I'm finished with that." He says, treat love like an unpaid debt.

Now, that sounds odd but in the gospel that makes perfect sense. The gospel comes to us with news that we have a debt of sin that we could never pay. We couldn't come close to paying it. What we owe God in terms of our sin, the obligation we owe him, we could never pay. And the gospel comes to us with news of a savior, Jesus, who pays a debt that he didn't owe. He comes as a sinless one who comes and voluntarily lays down his life for you and pays in his blood all that is owed by the father so that you are forever welcomed into the family of God.

See, it's put in those kind of financial terms. We've been reading through the book of Romans—chapters one through eleven are all about our vertical relationship, us and God, and about the lengths to which God has gone to ransom sinners like me and like you to himself and to bring us into the family. And how that puts us in a category where that status can never be changed and never be affected. Therefore, in chapters twelve through sixteen, Paul turns the corner and talks about our horizontal relationships with one another. And this is the connection point here.

If God has paid the ultimate debt for us, the way we pay him back—which we never could—is not actually in our vertical relationship with him but is in effect turning that out on other people. Instead of paying it back, it's paying it forward to other people around us, to people outside of the community, to love of neighbor. This is why we say Christian love is always subjective and not objective. Objective looks for something beautiful and lovely in the other person and says, "I respond to that in you and I love you." Subjective love says, "God so loved me because of nothing. I love you. I love you because of how he has loved me." Unbelievable love. It's different from all other kinds of love.

Gospel Neighboring

Scott Sauls, a pastor in Nashville, tells a story of a very strange prayer meeting where this kind of love showed up. He says:

Once we were meeting with some friends for prayer and just before we began to pray, in came a husband and wife whom we'd never met before. They had been invited by someone else in the group. The man's name was Matthew, and he was visibly drunk. His wife had a desperate "somebody please help me because I'm dying inside" look on her face.

And as we prayed together, Matthew decided to chime in for ten minutes. His drunk prayer went on praying some of the strangest things: "God protect us from the Klingons. That's Star Trek. God, I really want a Jolly Rancher right now. Would you please bring us some Jolly Ranchers? God, please move my bananas to the doghouse." This was all part of his prayer.

After we finally concluded praying and the amen, everyone looked at me, the pastor, of course. What will the pastor do? Thankfully, I didn't have to do anything because a woman from the group filled with love and wisdom offered Matthew a cookie that broke the tension. As that woman gave him a cookie and entertained conversation with him about Klingons and such, five or six others went over to his wife and begged for insight how they could help.

Man, neighbor love. Subjective love. Why did the drunk man—had he done anything to deserve the cookie? I mean, this is just gospel neighboring, paying forward grace. This is the kind of incredible response Jesus calls us to.

In all my years of pastoral ministry, I have never met anyone who was scolded into being a Christian. I've never met anybody who was shamed into being a Christian.

I've never met anybody who was guilted into being a Christian, but lots of people who have been loved into the kingdom of God. Lots of people who have experienced the kind of love that is not deserved, that there's no reason in you why this love is given to you. And yet others have shown you Jesus.

Here's the rest of Scott's whole story. This little interaction, this way of responding with love and no condemnation first, became one of the most transformative experiences I have ever witnessed. The kind hearted offer of a cookie led to a different kind of mob. A mob of grace coming around this couple and their two young boys, which led to a month of rehab, which led to sobriety, which led to a restored home and restored marriage, which led to Matthew becoming a follower of Jesus, which led to them joining the church, which led to him later becoming an elder in our church. Wow.

The Magnitude of Gospel Neighboring

Let's be honest. Do we really know what love means? I think a lot of times we think we do. But do we really know what love means?

Dan Allender in his book Bold Love says this:

Love, we use this word so easily and might even think we know a bit about it. It's what we all long for and pine away for and seek after with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. It's something we all want to get and in our better moments, we want to give it. And yet there is no more demanding occupation than love. It's pointless and worthless to live and not love. Love is the most essential life giving gift we have to offer another human being. It's also the least likely and the least natural and the least consistent response that's offered in the most mundane moments, much less during the most difficult, soul demanding struggles when we are threatened, reviled, or harmed.

And see, we find that in this passage because what's described here in verses eight through ten. Paul says, love is the fulfillment of the law. Now he's not talking about our civil laws; he's talking about God's law in the Old Testament—613 laws that are spelled out for the Israelite people, mostly concerning love of neighbor. And Paul says of this love, it is the fulfillment of all of those. Love is the fulfillment of all of this. And Paul says that all this love could be summarized in one command. You know it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

We call it the golden rule, right? The golden rule. Even if you've never been to church, you know the golden rule: Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

But I think it's better. I heard someone describe this recently. We should probably not call it the golden rule. We should call it the golden ruler. Because it provides a yardstick for measuring really how loving I am and you are. It provides a way of measuring our success and maturity and effectiveness. How well do you love?

Now lots of people who are critics of Christianity say, "Look, the golden rule exists in all the world religions. There's nothing unique about that to Christianity." To which I'd say, wait. And I did my research on this just to make sure, but it's true. If you look at all the major world religions, they have some version of the golden rule stated negatively, which means don't treat other people the way that you wouldn't want to be treated. Don't treat other people the way you wouldn't want other people to treat you. That's something that I could do.

But this is where, again, Christianity is unique and Jesus is unique. Because when Jesus said the summary of the law—this is an echo from the Old Testament, but the summary of the law is love—he's saying something infinitely higher than just negatively, "Don't treat other people as you wouldn't want to be treated." He's saying no, not just don't do that, but seek out love as you want to be loved.

You know that little word "as." It's a gigantic preposition in that statement. It's a little tiny word and it packs a gigantic punch. See, a lot of people would say, "Well, wait a second. Love my neighbor as I love myself? I don't really like myself very much, so how does that apply to me?" Wait on that. Because while you may fit into the category of somebody who has low self esteem, the reality is that we are people who think about self, obsess about self, dwell on self, obsess about self to the exclusion of a lot of other people all the time, whether we have high self esteem or low self esteem.

John Piper writes it this way:

The Bible says in effect, I start with your inborn, deepest defining human trait—your love for yourself. That's a given. I don't command it. I assume it. All of you have a powerful instinct of self preservation and self fulfillment. We all want to be happy. We all want to live and live with satisfaction. We all want food for ourselves. We want clothes for self. We want a place to live for yourself.

You want protection from violence against yourself. You want meaningful or pleasant activity to fill your days. You want friends to like you and spend time with you. You want your life to count for something. All of this is self love. Self love is the deep longing to diminish pain and to increase happiness. It's what Jesus starts with when he says, "as yourself." Everyone without exception has this human trait. This is what moves us to do anything. In other words, make yourself seeking the measure of your self giving.

So let's apply this. If you are energetic in the pursuit of your own happiness, be that energetic in the pursuit of the happiness of someone else. If you are creative in pursuing your own happiness, be as energetic and creative in the pursuit of other people's happiness. If you are persevering and long suffering in the pursuit of your own happiness, like we all are, be as persevering in pursuing the love and the happiness of someone else. See, the Bible is not just saying seek for your neighbor the same things that you have. But seek in the same way with the same zeal and energy and creativity and perseverance. Make your own self seeking the measure of your self giving.

Man, isn't that high? Do we really know what love is? Again, Dan Howard says this. He puts it so well. He says, "Sometimes I can love quite well—much as for a short time an alligator can run faster than a horse. But more often than not my legs are short and my skin is scaly and my expression is intimidating. And like an alligator, I am not very much of a long distance runner or a long distance lover."

We need Jesus to learn to love like this.

The Motivation for Gospel Neighboring

Third, look at the motivation for gospel neighboring. He says this in verses 11 through 13. It gives us an analogy about the time being short. We must understand verse 11—the present time. What is the nature of the present time?

The night is nearly over. The day is beginning. — Romans 13:11-12

You can identify with this. It's getting light outside. I better get up. Maybe I overslept my alarm. I've got to get up and go to work. That's the analogy he's giving here. But it's not just our time is short, as in, you know, I'm getting older. It's in the big picture—time is getting short. He's talking about the return of Jesus Christ, the second coming of Jesus. He describes this in terms of night and day, darkness and light, sleeping and waking up. And he's saying, "Wake up, church."

You know what we look like when the way we look at life? We're like, "Hey, I've got all the time in the world." No. He's saying wake up, church, because Jesus is returning.

See, Christians, we know this. We have the ultimate inside scoop. We have the ultimate spoiler. We've seen the end of the movie. We've read the end of the book. We know how this turns out. We know all the plot lines work out. We know Jesus wins. I love the book of Revelation because it's one of those books where I'm like, "Hey, you know, we go through all kinds of ups and downs in this life, but we know Jesus wins in the end. We know how this is all going to turn out."

If that's the case, does that deadline dominate your relationship with other people? Is there a sense of urgency? Do you have the sense of like, "Wow, time is short, hell is real, Jesus is coming back"? Is there a sense of urgency to people that you know—your neighbors, your coworkers, people in class with you, people who room with you, people in your apartment building, people that you casually know? Do you have a sense of urgency? Time is running out.

See, that's his motivation. Wake up because the time is short.

The Method

And finally, the method. The method of gospel neighboring is verse 14. This point, you may be exhausted by this passage, but I got good news for you. This last one, the method, is the key.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. — Romans 13:14

Now to understand what he's talking about, you need to understand something about first century clothing because it works different from the way that we think of clothing. When we talk about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, we would think of that as like putting on a garment, putting on a piece of clothing, changing clothes. But he's talking about something that you probably know if you've read much of the Bible.

The way that first century clothing worked was it was layered. You had an inner tunic and an outer one that you wore. The inner tunic was like your undergarments, and you slept in it. You took off your outer garments to go to bed. In the morning, you put on whatever outer garments over that tunic to go to whatever was appropriate for your work—whether it was the marketplace or fishing or farming or housework, whatever. But you put on that outer tunic for doing that, but you slept in the inner one.

You know this if you've studied the crucifixion of Jesus.

When Jesus was on the cross, the guards who were there overseeing his execution gambled for his inner tunic. It was one seamless garment woven from top to bottom, so they didn't want to tear it. They instead played dice to figure out who won it. So unlike all the movies and storybooks you've ever seen, Jesus was not on the cross wearing anything. He was naked. His inner tunic was removed. And so he died shamed and uncovered and exposed. His death was not only bloody and gruesome, it was incredibly shameful.

But when Jesus comes into the life of a person, he finds us in our guilt and our shame. He finds us exposed. Think of Adam and Eve leaving the garden in their sin, naked. And we are told that God came and clothed them. And God comes and clothes us. As we've studied the book of Romans, we see from the very beginning, God gives his people the righteousness of Jesus. He clothes us in the righteousness of Jesus. He covers our shame. He covers our guilt. We are not exposed. He was exposed for us so that we can be clothed.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. — Romans 13:14

He's not talking about the inner garment. He's talking about the outer one. If you're a Christian, God has already clothed you in the righteousness of Christ. Nothing can change that. When He looks at you and deals with you, He always sees the perfection of Jesus and relates to you on the basis of that. You are perfect in His sight. And yet, day to day, we are called in order to love others, in order to work out our salvation, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. To put this on, not with regard to our salvation or justification, but with regard to our sanctification. So we might put on our outer garments, our garments appropriate for loving others.

So putting on Christ means not how God sees you, but how you see yourself for neighbor love. So how do we love like Jesus? It means that we get near Jesus, and we know what it's like to be with Jesus.

The Good Samaritan

You know the parable that Jesus tells in Luke 10. Many of you know it even if you've never spent much time in the church. The story of the Good Samaritan. A young man comes to Jesus and says he's completed all the commands. And Jesus tells him, "Well then, one more thing: love your neighbor." The man asks, "Well, who is my neighbor?" And Jesus tells the parable.

There was a man walking along a road who was attacked by robbers, beaten up, and left for dead. Along comes two different religious professionals who go out of their way to avoid the man. And finally, along comes a Samaritan, an outsider, a stranger, a foreigner, who binds up the man's wounds, puts him on his own donkey, takes him to an inn, and pays for his bill and has him restored. And Jesus asks, "Which one was the neighbor?" And of course, the young man replies, "The one who showed mercy." And Jesus says, "Go and do likewise."

I think there are two ways to read that parable. One is from a position of privilege and power, identifying ourselves as the person who has a lot to offer. And there's a way you can read it like that, but I think we are intended to read it first as if we're the person who's beat up and left for dead. We identify ourselves in the story with the man not as the one who's got all the resources, but the person who's left in the gutter. And Jesus comes along and finds us in our need, finds us in our weakness, finds us in our inability. And He comes and binds our wounds. And he comes and heals us. That's when the gospel clicks. That's when we know we're ready to go and love our neighbor. When we have learned that we need much of him.

Practical Applications

I want to give you a couple of practical applications for this. I'm going to give you three things with regard to how we as a community need to learn to love our neighbor. These are all from Dax Palmer, so I'm going to pass these on.

Pray, serve, give.

Pray. This month of May and June, we're going to commit to an intentional prayer focus on our neighborhood here in Downtown Raleigh. This means gathering for prayer walks around our community and asking God to show us what he sees. We'll gather together and walk around. We'll pray out loud and pray for God's work in this area. Pray for other churches. Pray for his ministry and what God wants to have happen here. That'll be over lunchtime. If you're interested in that, we would ask you to write the word "pray" on your card. Now if you don't feel comfortable praying out loud, you can still come.

You can still come and walk around, pray silently, or just watch. But this is an opportunity for us to put ourselves in a position of saying, God, what do you see? What would you have us do here?

Second, serve. We're gonna be putting together welcome baskets for local businesses and apartments and organizations surrounding our church. And take them to them and say, we're just glad you're our neighbor. Love CTK. And if you'd like to help bake cookies, if you'd like to help put together those baskets, if you'd like to help deliver those baskets, if you want to do that, I'm gonna ask you to write on your card, serve.

And finally, give. We're going to be putting together a donation basket for the local rally rescue mission. And that's items that they need when they interact with the homeless community here. There are lots of things that are needed and we would make those available to you.

Response Cards

In just a moment, if you would, would you raise your hand if you'd like an index card to respond to today's sermon? You can write down your name and contact information. You're gonna write down one or more of these three words:

Pray — I'll be a part of a prayer walk.

Serve — I am willing to help be welcome and say we love our neighbors and deliver those around our neighborhood.

Give — I will supply needs for the local rally rescue mission.

Brothers and sisters, owe no one anything except for this, to love.

Closing Prayer

Would you pray with me together?

Father, we come to you as people who admit that while we like the idea of love and we like to be on the receiving end of love, we're people who don't know much about loving. Would you teach us how to love our neighbors? We need you. We come in our weakness and our fear. We come in our self protection and our pride. And we come to you and ask that you would open our hands, open up our lives. Help us to love because we have been so loved, because the time is short, and because you have called us to be your hands and feet. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.