Chico Alliance Church
Pastor David Welch
“A Debt of Love”
Romans 13:8-10
Review
Paul began this section of applications with an appeal to the marvelous mercy shown by God both to individuals and groups of people.
As a response to such mercy, Paul calls us to renew our thinking which is the basis for transformed living.
This whole section focuses on various aspects of life where we need to renew our thinking.
Regarding our dedication to God
? Think rightly about the mercy and majesty of God and respond by living a life fully dedicated to his service
By such a sacrifice we fully demonstrate the value, the satisfaction and the depth of God’s will and ways.
This is a well reasoned response of worship to such a majestic and merciful God.
? In light of his mercy we are to refuse conformity with this world’s ways of doing things and live transformed lives on the basis of renewed Biblical thinking.
Regarding our place in the body of Christ (3-10)
? We are not to think more highly or lowly about ourselves than we ought to think.
? God enables each one differently to function within His body.
? There is one body with many members who have differing functions all inseparably connected and responsible to one head Christ.
? With proper thinking we are to properly use our God-given gifts on behalf of the body energized and directed by the Holy Spirit.
? We are to show genuine love without hypocrisy.
It is a love that abhors evil and clings to good.
It is a love that continually accepts each other as devoted members of the family.
It is a love that seeks to outdo one another in showing honor and value.
Regarding our purpose in life 12:11
? We are to be diligent not lazy
? We are to boil over by the energy of the Holy Spirit
? We are to become slaves to God’s agenda
Regarding difficult times (12:12)
? Maintain an eternal focus and hope
? Never give up under tribulation
? Persist in prayer
Regarding saints in need (12:13)
? Share resources to meet needs
? Show hospitality to express acceptance
Regarding difficult people 14-21
? Speak well, not ill 12:14
? Identify with their circumstances
? Apply the same standard you use for yourself
? Don’t think yourself better but be willing to work with others.
? Don’t be a know it all.
? Never pay back evil for evil to anyone ever!
? Give thought to what is good for others.
? Live in peace by all means possible if at all possible.
? Never avenge yourself
o 1 - Let God do His thing to them.
o 2 - Let us do good things for them.
? Don’t be conquered by the evil but conquer the evil by doing the good
Regarding government (13:1-7)
? Remember that God establishes all governments
? Government serves God’s purposes
o Reinforce and reward the good work by praise
o Restrain the evil work by punishment
? We must submit to God’s authorities
o Pay
o Obey
o Pray
The next section (8-10) of Paul’s letter addresses proper thinking regarding our neighbor.
Each of the three verses contains the word neighbor. How are we to think and act properly concerning our neighbor? Dictionary defines a neighbor as one living or located near another. As in many issues, the Bible and Jesus elevate the concept of neighbor to loftier levels.
Luke ten recounts an encounter between Jesus and a slick lawyer.
One day a lawyer asked Jesus a most serious question.
Jesus responded with an equally thought provoking question back to the lawyer.
The lawyer answered well and Jesus urged Him to follow his own insight.
The lawyer then asked another question hoping to avoid the implications of his own answer.
Jesus responded with a well known story providing keen insight into God’s idea of a true neighbor.
Today I want to consider the conversation between Jesus and the lawyer.
Then I want to consider our current passage from Romans.
Finally I want to close by considering the story of the Good Samaritan and draw out four specific characteristics of a true neighbor.
First, the encounter.
Our current passage in Romans addresses this same question.
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "YOU SHALL love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Romans 13:8-10
Literally this passage says, “stop continually owing anything to anyone except to love.
To owe is to be obligated or bound to someone. We are not to be continually obligated to anyone for anything except to love them.
Love is a debt that never gets paid off.
“Oh I’ve loved enough.”
“I have put in my time for loving them.”
“I was kind last week.”
“I ministered yesterday.”
We need our thinking renewed regarding our neighbor.
We need our thinking renewed in regard to our calling to minister to others.
The law is an expression of the character of God communicating what is both essential to his nature and foreign to his nature. The law tells us what God cannot do and would not do. The law conveys what God does because of who God is at the core of His being. The essential nature of God is love and therefore if you practice love, you will automatically keep the law.
The Biblical criterion for loving our neighbor is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
This slick lawyer intended to test Jesus and it ended up that Jesus tested him.
Jesus caused him to face his selfish core.
He realized deep down in his heart that he failed the test of loving his neighbor.
Most of us fail that test. Most of us love ourselves and our close family and sometimes just ourselves.
We have a difficult time loving our neighbor.
God’s love goes beyond refraining from doing evil but doing good. We have a ton of excuses why we can’t love someone. Paul puts us under obligation to love everyone, always. What a revolutionary thinking.
The law sometimes focuses on the things we are not to do to a neighbor.
Since we are selfish by nature, we need specific examples of what it means to show love.
The law says don’t steal from your neighbor.
Don’t take your neighbor’s wife.
Don’t covet your neighbors stuff.
Don’t lie about or to your neighbor.
These along with many other specific example of love.
Romans twelve has listed examples of unhypocritical love.
1 Corinthians 13 provides line after line of specifics of what real love does and doesn’t do.
When the lawyer tried to circumvent his guilt for violating the law he so eloquently summarized by redefining terms, Jesus raised the bar of relationship to our neighbors by telling a little story -- the story of the Good Samaritan.
Jesus replied and said, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. "And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. "Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. "But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. "On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.' Luke 10:30-35
Perhaps a slightly different view of this story might bring the characters into focus.
What was Jesus’ point for telling this story? What did he intend to point out? Jesus was answering the lawyer’s question regarding who is my neighbor. Who do I have to love as myself? Surely that doesn’t mean everyone?
Surely I don’t have to minister to those that are difficult? This parable answers the question, “Who is my neighbor?”
Let’s look at the candidates offered in the story and make some basic observations.
First we encounter the man who was unexpectedly mugged while traveling out of town.
Jesus didn’t really focus on the man in need.
All we know is that the man was in desperate need not due to any fault of his own.
We don’t know much else about him.
Some preachers make a big deal out of details never intended by the parable.
“Down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” If you travel out of Jerusalem to anywhere it is down.
The point is that this person in desperate need.
He was probably a fellow Jew.
The second person of note is a Jewish priest, one charged to intercede for man to God.
This is someone who should have had a heart for people.
Perhaps a pastor in today’s thinking.
He saw the situation. He was aware of the need but when he saw avoided the situation.
The third person mentioned in the story was a Levite.
Levites were chosen by God to represent Him and serve in the temple.
They were charged with tending God’s stuff.
Perhaps this might be an elder in today’s thinking.
Like the priest, the Levite saw the situation but intentionally avoided involvement.
The fourth character was a Samaritan.
Samaritans were “half-breeds”.
These were Jews from the Israel who had been taken by the Assyrians and intermarried with the Assyrians. Neither Jew nor Assyrian.
The general Jewish population despised the Samaritans.
They would take great pains to walk around Samaria just to avoid contact with one.
This Samaritan was traveling through the area and became aware, like the others, of the desperate situation of the wounded and dying Jew.
He, of all people, would have been justified to pass by on the other side.
After all hadn’t Jews continually mistreated his people?
Why should he help someone who hated him and his kind anyway?
Both the priest and the Levite were obligated to serve their fellow man.
Yet this Samaritan does not pass by but ACTS.
Jesus calls on this slick lawyer to make a determination as to which one of these proved to be a neighbor.
"Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands?" And he (the lawyer) said, "The one who showed mercy toward him."
Now the climax of the encounter!
Hearing without doing is worse than not hearing at all.
Jesus calls for action on the part of the lawyer.
Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same." Luke 10:36-37
Do what? Don’t duck the duck!
Tend wounds.
I have generally answered this question by looking at the man in need.
My neighbor is anyone in need.
Yet Jesus defines a neighbor from the other side of the equation.
The one who ACTS is the one who proves to be a true neighbor and fulfills the law of love.
The one who ACTS makes timely and regular installments on his debt of love.
Both the priest and the Levite apathetically avoided helping one in need.
Only the Samaritan ACTS with love.
The opposite of love is not hate.
The opposite of love is indifference.
There are many reasons for our indifference to the needs of others.
Too focused on self
Too saturated with the enormity of the needs of people in our world
A sense of personal helplessness
Personal weakness
Perhaps the greatest hindrance from being a true neighbor characterized by ACTS of love is self-centeredness.
Our thinking is self-focused not ministry-focused or others-focused.
We become too wrapped up in our own little world and meeting our own needs.
This is the culture in which we live.
Me first and you if I have anything left over I may invest it in others.
I invest my resources of time and money in what serves ME first.
So what characterized a true neighbor in the story of the Good Samaritan?
What is it that demonstrates obedience to the loyal law of love and thus fulfills the whole law?
Jesus call our attion to four characteristics of a genuine neighbor.
A true neighbor is known by their A.C.T.S. of love.
? Concerned Awareness
The Priest and the Levite both saw the situation.
They were aware of the need but it was not a concerned awareness.
Many times we actually try to develop social tunnel vision so that we don’t see.
We figure that if we don’t see it we won’t have to be responsible to do anything and get involved.
Many remember the story of the girl who was beaten to death in New York while hundreds of people looked on but did nothing.
We need to see with God’s eyes.
We need to look around us.
Opportunities for ministry are everywhere.
? Deep Compassion
Awareness must however move beyond simply being aware of the needs around us.
We must let the love of God with which he has flooded our hearts to extend beyond our own life and flow to others.
We must not be afraid of feeling compassion.
This is a character thing.
This comes only from time spent with the God of love.
This comes when we begin to see things as he sees them.
For when we see with the eyes of Jesus we cannot help but feel what Jesus felt.
Many times in Scripture we are told that Jesus was moved with compassion.
It means to be moved in the inward parts.
There is something that stirs deep inside us.
The Priest and Levite saw the situation and moved to the other side to avoid involvement.
The Samaritan saw the situation and was moved with compassion.
But a feeling of compassion is not enough.
A genuine feeling of compassion must express itself in action.
Every time Jesus was moved with compassion he was moved to action of some kind.
The Samaritan, moved with compassion, ministered a healing touch to the wounded man.
? Healing Touch
and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. Luke 10:34
The first thing to do is to tend the wounds.
Heal the broken hearted.
We live in a broken world with broken people.
God calls us to be channels of his love and healing.
The second is to bring them to a place where continual healing can take place.
? Personal Sacrifice
It costs to be involved in ministering to others.
It is a personal sacrifice of time and energy and often money.
A true neighbor is one characterized by ACTS of love to those in need.
Application
Obviously we cannot minister to every need we might see.
We all have limited resources.
Yet God calls us to be like the Samaritan.
He calls us to be characterized by:
? Concerned awareness
? Deep compassion
? Healing touch
? Personal Sacrifice
Satan is a robber and a mugger.
He comes in to kill and destroy and steal.
You are all called to ministry.
The nature of a true believer is to be a genuine neighbor.
We are to love God first and then, drawing on that relationship, engage in ACTS of love to our neighbor.
God never releases us from this debt of love by one balloon payment.
It is a lifetime debt.
Many still lay in the ditch because those who profess to represent God have passed by.
It is not that they have not been aware of the need.
They have seen and purposely passed by on the other side.
An indifferent neighbor avoids, passes by.
A loving neighbor ACTS.
Not only is he aware but feels deeply which motivates him to not only extend a healing touch but to offer continual personal sacrifice and care.
We may not be able to continue personally or have the insight to complete the healing process but we can get them to a place that can facilitate continual healing.
The biggest struggle with a message like this is the decision to minister to others instead of maintaining selfish pursuits.
Will I become involved in the needs of others?
Will I keep making regular payments on my debt of love?
Only when I come to realize God’s infinite love for me and through me will I be filled with all the fullness of God who is love.
Who is my neighbor? Anyone in need that God brings to my attention.
That may be my physical neighbor.
That may be someone at church or work.
That may be someone I bump into at the store on the street.
That may be someone a world away.
But a better question yet, “What kind of neighbor am I?”
One who avoids or one who ACTS.
It is this kind of love that breaks down the walls and barriers to the gospel.
This is the music to the good news of Jesus Christ.
For God so loved the world that he acted.
He saw the need
He felt deep compassion.
He extended his healing touch
He personally sacrificed his only son to meet our need and left us in the hands of a healing Holy Spirit until we become completely well.
Blessing
May God fill you to overflowing with his infinite love.
May your life be characterized by ACTS of love to your neighbor.
Awareness
Compassion
Touch
Sacrifice
