COVENANT PULPIT Your SELF-INTERST on the altar Romans 13:8-10 June 26, 2011 Rev. Trent Casto Covenant Church of Naples PCA 6926 Trail Boulevard, Naples, FL 34108 (239) 597-3464 www.covenantnaples.com
Early on in Dostoevsky s novel The Brothers Karamazov, we encounter a lady who is struggling in her life of faith. In particular, she is struggling to believe in the reality of life beyond the grave. So she goes to see an elder monk at the monastery in order to learn how to prove this reality to herself. The monk tells her that this cannot be proven by any argument or explanation, but only through the practice of active love, that is, loving her neighbor indefatigably through action. She responds to the monk that she so loves humanity that she often dreams of forsaking all that she has, leaving her family, and becoming a sister of mercy to serve the sick and the poor. It s a noble dream, but when she has it she is forced to ask herself if she could really love like that for long. If the patient whose wounds she is bandaging doesn t express his gratitude, but instead complains to the supervisor about her subpar performance, could she go on loving him? What if instead of being thankful, the needy people she gives so much to begin rudely commanding her around or abusing her services or complaining about what she hasn t done. What then? Would she be able to go on loving? At this moment she comes to a conclusion about her dream of love that most of us aren t brave or honest enough to put into words. She says, If anything could dissipate my love to humanity, it would be ingratitude. In short, I am a hired servant, I expect my payment at once that is, praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise, I am incapable of loving anyone. Her dreams of loving humanity vanish, and she wonders if the monk can help her. The monk replies, I m sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Have you found that to be true in your own life? That it s much easier to dream and envision yourself doing great and loving deeds than to actually do them? That it s much easier to stand and declare your love for faceless people on the other side of the world than to actively love the person standing in front of you? I can be sitting in my chair enjoying my coffee and early morning quiet time, reading a wonderfully uplifting book on parenting and smugly patting myself on the back for all the loving fatherly acts I dream of myself doing. Then my sweet daughter lets out a loud cry signifying she s awake an hour earlier than she should be, before I finish my coffee or have a look at the paper, and she wants attention. Suddenly all of my noble dreams of selfless love come crashing to the ground with the first opportunity to practice love in action. Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. And yet, the Scriptures say in more than one place that we must love one another. It s our principle for today: You must love one another.
It s such a simple statement, and it s a beautiful dream, but how do we turn that dream love into active love? That s what we re going to answer this morning under these four points: 1. Why You Should Love One Another, 2. How You Should Love One Another, 3. Why You Don t Love One Another, and 4. How You Can Love One Another. I. Why You Should Love One Another The first reason Paul gives in our passage for why you should love one another is because 1. You owe it to one another. In our text from last week, Paul closed in 13:7 by giving the command that we ought to pay to all whatever we owe them, whether it s taxes, or revenue, or respect, or honor. Then he says in verse 8, Owe no one anything, except to love each other In other words, all those debts that you can pay up fully and be done with (mortgage, car payment, taxes, etc.), you should pay them up fully and be done with them according to your agreements. But the debt of love we owe to one another is an unlimited debt that we can never be done paying. We must pay it to one another daily, and yet still we will always owe it. There is no time at which we can ever say, I have loved enough. Now who is it that we are to love like that? Verse 8 says literally in the Greek, the other. The article is important, though most English translations don t bring it out. It s not enough for us to simply love an other, or some other, but we must love the other. The other is not some person we arbitrarily choose to love, but rather each and every person God puts in our path. i The first reason you should love one another is because the Bible says you owe it to one another. You owe it to whomever God puts in your way. But there s another reason we find in this verse. Paul says you ought to love one another because 2. You owe it to God. Look at verse 8 again, Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. What is the law? The law is what God requires. God gave this law to his people in order that they could live in such a way as to show the world what He is like. You owe obedience to God, for he created you and you bear his image. You are his representatives on earth. As a representative you have no right to do what you want. Rather, you must do what the one you represent wants, and what he wants is for you to love others, whether it s an elderly neighbor, a harsh librarian, an emotional black hole, or a drug addict next door. You are called to live in such a way that the world can look at you and see what God is like, and what God wants the world to see is that he is love. Why should you love one another? You should love one another because you owe it to each other and you owe it to God. Love is at the heart of God s law. This is all pretty clear, we should love one another. But
there s much more room for disagreement over this second point, and so let s consider what Paul has to say regarding II. How You Should Love One Another In some ways the Bible is quite specific about how we are to love one another, and in other ways we have to do more of our own thinking. The first thing Paul tells us here is that 1. You must love one another in an ongoing way. I m just going to touch briefly on this because I already covered it in verse 8, but notice again this ongoing debt to love one another. Love that is not truly love will cease. Love that is not really for the other person but actually just to serve my own needs will end when those needs are no longer being met. But true love, Christian love is ongoing. It has no stopping point because it is a persevering love. As 1 Corinthians 13:7 says, love endures all things. That s the first thing. We must love one another in an ongoing way. 2. You must love one another in accordance with God s commands. In verse 8 Paul has just said that the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Now some have taken this to mean that we can dispense with all the rest of the commandments. That so long as we have a loving feeling, we can do whatever we want. But that s not what Paul s saying at all! In fact, look at verse 9 where he mentions specific commandments because they show us what love looks like in action: 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. These specific commandments are given so that we can see in a practical way how love looks in everyday life. No one can claim to be loving and at the same time be violating God s commands. Furthermore, verse 10 says, Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. But just because you re not harming your neighbor doesn t mean you re loving him. Many people mistake niceness for love, but it s quite possible to be nice to someone and not love them. In fact, being nice can be a way to avoid loving them! Love not only does no wrong to a neighbor, but love actually does right. It s not enough to simply not steal from him, but the commandments would point us to actually give to him. It s not enough to simply not commit adultery against your spouse, rather you should love them and give yourself up for them. Do you see why it s necessary to have specific commandments that show us how to love one another? Love doesn t do away with law, rather love needs law for direction. Without law, without commandments, love very quickly descends into some vague, sentimental, dreamy thing that can be twisted to achieve whatever end we want. For example, someone might justify an adulterous affair because of love. They may think to themselves, it s really not fair to my current spouse to keep on being married to them
because I don t love them. But I have strong feelings of love for this other person and that must be from God. God wouldn t want me and my current spouse to go on being miserable when I so deeply love this other person. I believe God is leading me to end my marriage and to marry this other person. This happens all the time! But if we consider that God s Law defines what love is, then we would know that committing adultery is not love toward my spouse or anyone else. We must allow God s Word to define for us what love is, and how love acts otherwise we will find ourselves doing things in the name of love that have nothing to do with love at all. But know this: keeping the commandments is not enough. It s entirely possible to be keeping God s commandments and not be loving God or your neighbor. Of course, this isn t really keeping God s commandments, as Jesus repeatedly pointed out to the Pharisees, but we often mistake it as such. Keeping the commandments because you think it will put God in your debt, or some other person in your debt, or so you ll look good, or be praised by men--none of this is love. The commandments are fulfilled when they re performed out of a loving gratitude to God and a sincere desire for the good of others. It s a tall order I know, but let s take it one step further. We re also told that 3. You Must Love One Another In The Same Way You Love Yourself. We already saw it in verse 9, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The Bible isn t commanding us here to love ourselves, it simply is recognizing that we do love ourselves. Now, you may be saying, I don t love myself. Actually I hate myself. C.S. Lewis is helpful here. He draws a distinction between loving someone and liking someone. To like someone is to be fond of them, to enjoy them. For various reasons, you may or may not like a person, including yourself. But to love someone is to desire their good. To love yourself is to desire your own good. And this we all do for ourselves, whether we like ourselves or not. Along these lines, loving others doesn t necessarily mean you like them or have natural affection for them either, but only that you are wishing and seeking their good as much as you wish and seek it for yourself. Liking someone will obviously make it easier to love them, but it is not a necessary condition for love. ii So to sum up, we are to seek the good of others, out of gratitude to God and for his glory, in an ongoing way, without ceasing, in accordance with God s commands, with every single person we encounter. Always. This is the sum of the commandments, and this is how we must love one another. III. Why You Don t Love One Another That leads quite naturally to this third point about why you and I don t love one another as we should. And it s important that we consider this so we can really understand what we re up against. If you trace the biblical storyline from beginning to end, you will see that it s not natural for
us to not love one another. We were created to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. But as a result of Adam s sin, and as a result of our sin, we have become selfcentered sinners. That s the fundamental reason that you and I don t love right any more. But at a more surface level, there are two other reasons we don t love one another as we ought: 1. Sometimes it s hard to know the loving thing to do. Even though God has given us a great many commands that help us to know how to truly love one another, life is too complex to prescribe exactly what should be done in every possible circumstance. For example, Jesus says us in one place to give to the one who asks of us. In general, that s a loving thing to do. But what do I do when the person who asks me for money has every intention of using that money to buy drugs to shoot up their arm and neglect their children. Is it loving him to give him money? We may have to find some other way to love him and it may not be simple. Or suppose you manage employees and you have one who is significantly underperforming and harming the company. Love for your employer or shareholders might dictate that you fire this man. But the man s wife is in chemotherapy, he s got three children to care for, and a growing number of medical bills. What do you do? The commandments give us direction and love drives our actions, but we still need wisdom to determine the most loving thing to do. Sometimes loving is hard because it s hard to know the loving thing to do. But probably more often, the reason we don t love one another as we ought is that 2. Sometimes it s hard to do the loving thing we know. Why? Because to actively love someone else usually requires that I put my selfinterest aside. Seeking the good of my neighbor puts my own interests at risk. Consider the example I mentioned a moment ago. When my neighbor comes to ask me for money and I know he intends to shoot it up, I could give him money and that would get him off my back. Or when he comes, I could simply tell him to go away. The attractiveness of both options is that I could justify doing either one out of love, and then sit back down and read my book with my self-interest intact. But to really love him, I may need to offer to take him to a meeting to get help. I may need to watch his children while he goes to the meetings. I may need to help him put together his resume so he can find gainful employment as he sobers up. I may need to be his friend. Any or all of these options are a threat to my self-interest and this is one reason why we find it so hard to love in action. I think the other major reason it s hard to do the loving thing we know is that it makes us vulnerable. You could be rejected, or perhaps you could be taken advantage of. It s quite possible that you could be disappointed when your love doesn t help, or when the person you ve loved shows absolutely no love or gratitude in return. The prospect of all these scenarios and more may cause us to say with the lady in Dostoyevsky s
novel that in the final analysis, we re not capable of loving anyone. And it s true. But then we come to the final point. IV. How You Can Love One Another If you take God s command to love seriously with all it entails, or any of his other commands, you see quite quickly that you don t measure up. You and I don t love in the way God requires. When we re confronted with God s requirements and we see we don t measure up, we can do one of three things. First, we can reduce God s requirements to a level we think we can meet: I don t really have to love everyone, all the time, without giving up, as much as I love myself, etc. Second, we can pretend we do somehow meet God s requirements: I m not that bad, here s a time I loved that way, I love better than him, etc. Both of these are ways of establishing our own righteousness before God and ultimately keep us from recognizing how deeply unrighteous we really are. The gospel for these people can be summed up in this way: try harder! But that s not good news at all because you ll find that no matter how hard you try, you ll fail to measure up to what God requires. The third option is to confess that what God requires is good, and that you don t have the resources in yourself to meet those requirements. And here s the good news: He knows and that s why he sent Christ! Jesus didn t come to just teach us how to love or tell us that we should love, but he came to actually love for you and for me, on our behalf. Christ came to fulfill the law, to do what we could not do, to satisfy the law s requirements for all who will put their faith in him. And he did! Consider how perfectly and completely he loved. You and I at our best struggle to truly love even those closest to us. But Jesus loved his enemies, even you. In his last moments on the cross he didn t cry out for judgment on his enemies but he cried out for their forgiveness. You and I struggle to put our self-interest aside for even just a short while to actively love someone else, but Jesus permanently put his self-interest aside when he left heaven to fulfill his Father s plan on this earth, including being betrayed and crucified on a cross. That wasn t for him. That was for you. Look how he s loved you! While we re afraid to love because it will make us vulnerable to rejection, to abuse, to being taken advantage of, Jesus took the most vulnerable position possible when his arms were widespread on the cross bearing the totality of God s wrath for you. He didn t just die for you, he lived for you, he loved for you. What perfect love! Now you who have put your trust in Christ are accepted by God as though you too have loved perfectly. This is how God sees you. You can t add anything to what Christ has already done for you. It s finished! So does this mean you don t have to do anything? No! Now you must do what the law says, not in order to be accepted by God or to establish your own righteousness, but because God has accepted you and has put the Spirit of
Christ in your heart. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 8:3-4, God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us Christ fulfilled the law perfectly and died in our place so that we could fulfill the law, so that we could truly love others. Why can we now truly love others? Because we have been truly loved. Now we must soak in that love, we must rest in that love, we must continually go back to that love until we actively love. This is how we go forward and upward in loving God and others, by going back to his love for us, seen mostly clearly in the person and work of Christ. 1 John 4:10-11 says, In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. You see, the way to go forward in loving one another, is to go backward to God s love for you. We learn to love by being loved. And as you soak in his love, and as you go back to his love, you will go forward and upward in loving one another in action. The elder monk was right, Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. We see this truth illustrated most clearly in the harsh and dreadful cross. Yet it is because of the active love shown on that cross that our duty to love one another is transformed from a harsh and dreadful thing into a joyful expression of gratitude flowing from a heart changed by God s love. Brothers and sisters, let us love one another. Copyright June 26, 2011 by Covenant Church of Naples / PCA i C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2, 2 vols., International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2008). ii C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: Comprising The Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 115.