INTRO
Tina Turner once asked a powerful question, one that became a hit song of the early- eighties. She asked, “What does love have to do with it?” Her song is replete with two, rhetorical questions: “What's love but a second hand emotion” and “Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?” When listening to her song, you can hear the agony in her voice; we can hear how her marriage to Ike Turner inflected pain, sorrow, and abuse, under the guise of what humanity deems as a sick kind of love.
Turner later told her story; one named after her song. The movie depicted the life of abuse she faced; and how she found the courage to break away in order to find — what she called — love’s “sweet old fashioned notion.”
Tina Turner’s song and movie echoed C. S. Lewis earlier sentiments about humanity’s sick love. Lewis said: "It is easier to be enthusiastic about humanity with a capital "H" than it is to love individual men and women, especially those who are uninteresting, exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive. Loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.
Unfortunately, as humans, we’ve got that one down really well. However, that’s not the way God wants things. If God were to answer Turner’s infamous question; the same question humanity’s been asking for eons — he’d answer with this one, simple word: “everything.” Love’s got everything to do with it.
This morning, we’re going to look at why love’s got to do with everything, and why it should be the most precious, and old-fashion notion of all. Because, when we fail to truly understand God’s old-fashion notion of love, then we tend to fall into Satan’s sick trap of not loving each other at all, and instead moving through life coming up with excuse-after-excuse why others aren’t always worthy of our full love.
With that, let’s open our bibles to Romans 13:8–10 — this can be found on p.1765 of the pew bible. Let’s look at how Paul echoed Jesus and the earlier prophets, in terms the Bible deems as “the law of love.”
LOVE FORGIVES ALL
Let’s read VV8-10 together. READ VV 8-10. Paul starts out by talking about letting no debt remain outstanding. That’s interesting language. What Paul was getting at here was that God expects us to forgive others, as Jesus has already forgiven us.
The Apostle John wrote, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” What Paul was saying here, echoing the Apostle John, was that Jesus cancelled our debt on the Cross of Calvary. He cancelled our debts to sin — he outright forgave our debts —through love. God so loved us that he was willing to cancel our debt to sin by sending his Son Jesus to take on our sins for us. Ya know, that’s such good news.
Now, this word that Paul used here, in regard to canceling a debt, is the same one that Jesus used in the parable of the unmerciful servant. The Gospels record of the time when Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” After their dialogue, Jesus told the disciples this parable to illustrate how love cancels all debts to sin.
Jesus said, “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
Okay, so what the Apostle Paul was getting at here is that, because God so loved us and cancelled our debts on the cross of Calvary through the blood of Jesus Christ — thus cancelling our sin debts — then we too should cancel the sin debts of others. In other words, Love forgives all. Love looks past all grievances. Love puts aside the deeds of darkness and puts on the armor of light (as we heard in our Epistle for this morning).
Paul was simply saying, “True love forgives all, and doesn’t harm.” Using Tina Turner’s words, “love’s got everything do with it” — the it being how we’re to live and interact with one another. Let’s keep reading this verse and by pulling it apart a bit more.
Notice how Paul put a twist on the word debt. He said, the only debt we should have outstanding to one another [is love], for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.”
Simply put, Paul was saying, “The only thing we should owe each other is more love.” When we start doing that — Paul says —well, then we’re truly fulfilling the commandments. When we do that, then we’re fulfilling God’s rule of law; God’s law of love.
THE RULE OF LOVE
We like to say in our country that we’re a nation founded on the rule of law. What laws are those? Well, those defined by the United States Constitution. Interestingly though, our laws really only mirror the Ten Commandments — in general kind of way. But even those, we might say, could be summed up by summed up by loving God, and loving one another.
In one of his most infamous conversations with the Pharisees, Jesus said this in response to this question. “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mt 22:34–40.)
But have you ever noticed how hard that it is to do?
LOVE DOESN’T HURT
Yesterday, after Lori Lake’s memorial service, I had a nice talk with a wonderful woman of God. As we talked, she said, “Jason, thank you for challenging me about how we’re to love one another.” She continued by saying, “Sometimes people are really hard to love.” She was realizing that while we often think that other people are really hard to love — and that may very well be true — we should not take the liberty to not love on other people, just because we become irritated with them — the things that CS Lewis said are exasperating, depraved, or otherwise unattractive.
This honest Christian, woman was saying, in effect, “I know that I often fail to live up to Jesus’ command to love God and other folks.” It’s like she was saying was, “Sometimes I just don’t want to love on other people, because loving other people —when I think their unlovable — takes effort; and it makes me uncomfortable”
You know, I appreciate her honesty. I said back to her, “I’m often the same way.” But in the words of many wise folks, we have to say, “Who said life is suppose to be easy or comfortable, sweetheart?” Ya know, if true love were easy, it would be more evident. If true love were easy, none of us would need to be sitting here this morning!
I think if we’re all honest, we’d all have to nod in agreement to these notions. In all of this, what was going on within the heart of my friend yesterday was simply the Spirit of God challenging her with the God’s timeless sentiment that asks, “Where’s that sweet old fashioned notion that I’ve poured into you from the blood of my Son, when he forgave your debt with his selfless love?” Let me ask you, is God challenging your heart this morning too?
See, I’m asking because, when we look upon others with scorn or ridicule. When we snarl at others with our voices, and burn into them with eyes of exasperation; when we think that we’re better than someone else; when we believe that we know better than others; when we criticize one another and nitpick over the dumbest of things — well, then, we harm our neighbors. When we perceive others are arrogant, when we judge other people, when we shake our heads with disgust — well then, we harm our neighbors.
These are just a few things that we do to harm our neighbors; these are just a few of the things we do to rob others of the love that God has given us — the love he pours into us, and likewise expects us to pour into others.
Leviticus 19:18 says, “Do not… bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. Paul said in Romans 15:2, “Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” In writing to the Church in Corinth, Paul said, “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. (1 Co 10:24.)
What the Bible is saying to us is this: when we treat our neighbors, as we ourselves would want to be treated —when we treat the stranger within our midst the way we ourselves would expect and want to be treated —well, then we’re loving our neighbors; then we’ve got down that sweet, old-fashion notion of love; well, then we’re truly living according to the law of love.
WE JUST NEED TO LOVE MORE
Ad lib, and close with prayer.
