Romans 13_8-10 The Unpayable Debt of Love
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Summary
In this episode, Pastor Ken teaches a sermon on the theology of authority and the role of the church in society. God has restored the authority that was lost in the fall through Adam, and through the Great Commission, He has restored it to His own Son, Jesus Christ!
Transcript
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Amen. Well, what a blessing it is to preach this powerful passage of scripture that was
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more difficult than I expected. For the past several weeks, we have learned about the intersection
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I offered a sermon on the theology of authority,
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where I talked about how Jesus reclaimed the earthly authority
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We also discussed how that authority has been restored in Christ,
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And it is why, in the Great Commission, Jesus says,
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In other words, in the gospel, the authority has been restored and sanctified,
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Now, we learn that authority and civil government are inherently good.
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They are intrinsically good in and of themselves.
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They are part of God's design to punish evil, to reward what is good, and to maintain order in society.
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Now, we also learned that while God is the source of all authority or power,
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that we have to learn how to separate power from persons.
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And that essentially, persons can be corrupted, which is called tyranny.
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When rulers are not ruling according to God's law, we call that tyrannical.
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now we have the freedom in god's word to resist tyranny we are called to reject tyranny and to
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obey god but we are also called to obey just and right authority even if it is in opposition with
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our own desires. Now, if we refuse, God promises in chapter 13 that he will use civil authorities
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to bring his wrath and his judgment upon us. If you want to disobey one of the civil magistrate's
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rightful legislative laws, God can and might punish you for that reality.
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Now part of our submission was to give these authorities what is owed to them
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In verse 7 Paul told us, render therefore to all what is owed
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Taxes to whom taxes are owed, customs to whom customs are owed
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Fear to whom fear is owed and honor to whom honor is owed
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Today in verses 8 through 10 we shift from our obligations to authorities
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That is the shift that is occurring in this transition.
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So in verse 7, it was give to the authorities what is owed.
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Oh, no one, anything except love to one another.
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For he who loves another has fulfilled the law.
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i'll tell you what this is a very difficult passage because there is a lot of camps of
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interpretation on it there are two primary views on this passage and i'm going to give them both
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to you the first is that this passage oh no one anything except to love one another is saying
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there is a complete prohibition on christians borrowing or accumulating debt
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some of the most profound theologians that you all respect have landed at that position too.
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So it's not like a strange position. Great Puritan thought leaders, some great, you know,
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18th, 19th century reformers have landed at that position. That would mean no mortgages,
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no credit cards, no loans. The second position at which I hold to is that Christians should hold
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or should not withhold any man their due. Now it's going to take me a minute to bring out the
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exposition on this position. So just bear with me for a minute. Calvin says, quote, the apostle does
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not forbid us to contract debts, but requires us to render to every man his due so that no one
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should be defrauded, end quote. So the rationale for this position is that borrowing and lending
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are consistently permitted throughout the Old and New Testament. So when we think about something
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isolated, it's easy to come to a particular conclusion if you don't take into consideration
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the whole counsel of the Word of God. Now, when you look at the whole counsel of the Word of God
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on the matter of lending, of debt, of loans, of borrowing, you quickly realize that this passage
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interpreted in the first view would come into conflict with the rest of the Bible. And I'm
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going to give you a handful of verses, but Jesus, for example, in Matthew 542 says, give to the one
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who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. End quote. Deuteronomy 15,
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seven through eight speaks on those who are in the covenant. And it says, you shall not harden
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your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall be open or you shall open
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your hand to him, generosity, and lend to him, loan, a sufficiency for his need, whatever it
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may be, end quote. Psalm 37, 21 says, the wicked borrows, but does not pay back. Okay, so I think
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that really is the crux of what Paul is getting to in this particular verse. Do not owe and be
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unable to pay back. That's the principle I think at hand here. Do not owe and be unable to pay back.
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Now you might be thinking, well, wait a second, Dale, I'm looking at the verse here in verse eight.
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And if Paul really means do not withhold a man's due, then why does he say, except to love one
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another. Are we supposed to withhold love too? You're going to get into like a logical,
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linguistic conundrum. If you just kind of go on that passage of scripture, I was doing this
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as I was studying. No, this is the crux. This is the key to understanding this passage of
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scripture. Now, Paul is saying, pay attention here, do not borrow and be unable to pay back.
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the only time you can be unable to pay back is with the debt of love which can never be paid back
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okay it takes a bit to get there but that is what this passage is saying the only time you can
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be unable to pay back is with the debt of love which is unable to ever be fully paid back so
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there are two lessons, two lessons here. First, it is not inherently sinful to borrow money.
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I will say that. But it is sinful to have debts that are not paid unless it is the debt of love
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in which we are all in debt and unable to pay back. Second, love is the currency that should
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always be in circulation. This is the currency that should be in circulation among one another,
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A debt that can never be fully repaid, but continually owed to one another.
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So then in the second half of verse 8, we see the word for.
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We know that the word for is a signal that you're about to have an explanation.
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Whenever you see the word for, it's an explanation clause.
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And so it tells us, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.
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So Jesus tells us that the sum of the law is to what?
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To love like we are indebted to God because we are.
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we are indebted to love one another because of the love of God given to us in Christ
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1 John 4 11 gives us the reason for our indebtedness it says beloved if God so loved us
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we also ought to love one another right fundamentals basics you start to see that Paul is
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in alignment with the systematic teaching on this particular matter Jesus in John 13 34 to 35 says
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quote, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you,
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you also are to love one another. But notice that Paul does not tell us that law keeping
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is what fulfills the law, but love. He's not talking about moralism. It's not law keeping
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said on the verse. He says, quote, Paul's design is to
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reduce all the precepts of the law down to love
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commandments when we are maintaining love for God and for
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men. I don't know about you, but it can become difficult
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constantly interpreting if the way that I'm behaving is actually according to God's will.
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The greatest way to determine that is to kind of dumb down everything.
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I know it's difficult when you're in a particular complex situation to determine,
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The question may be unable to be answered clearly with the kind of surrounding realities.
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But what you could ask yourself is, am I loving God and man in this particular decision?
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And I think that's a really simple and very helpful way to examine motive.
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Calvin's observation, I believe, is confirmed in the next verse when Paul sums up and says in verse 9,
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for the commandments quote you shall not commit adultery or you shall not murder you shall not
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steal you should not bear false witness which is lying you should not covet and if there is
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any other commandment all are summed up in this saying namely you shall love your neighbor as
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yourself. In verse 10, he says, love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment
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of the law. There's some rich theological depth here. You're welcome to continue to study this
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on your own. I'm going to try to pull out a little bit of it for you. Again, we see that
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this passage begins with the word for again. This is important. Again, we are smart Bible
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interpreters we don't want to be 10 20 30 years in and not understand how grammar works so that
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we can make right and faithful interpretations of the scripture and so when we see the word for
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it's a term of explanation you can almost sometimes put the word because in place of for
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but we start off with chapter 9 or verse 9 with for the commandments well you go oh what is he
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talking about so if you go up to verse 8 oh no one anything except to love one another for he who
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loves one another has fulfilled the law term of explanation for the commandments you shall not
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commit adultery shall not murder you shall not steal you should not bear false witness
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you shall not covet he's going on bringing explanation to what he said
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that is this is an explanation or the rationale for the phrase for he who loves another has
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fulfilled the law. What does that mean? Okay, the Ten Commandments, just a little bit of theology
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here, is broken up into what's called two tables of the law. The first table is the first four
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commandments and our relationship with God. The second table is the last six commandments and
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it's our relationship to one another. And so you might hear a theologian talk about the first table
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or the second table of the law. And that's what they mean by those realities. Now, Paul cites
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commandments six through 10, which is, he leaves out honor your father and mother, which is kind
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of a unique law because it has to do really with the family. But he's dealing with commandments
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six through 10, which make up basically the entire second table of the law, speaking to how
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we should deal with one another outside of a family unit. And the point that Paul is trying
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to make is that to love is to law keep and to law keep is to love. Okay. To love is to law keep
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and to law keep is to love. Now, if you have a perverted view of love or law keeping,
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then you mess this up. But if you have a biblical view of love and of law keeping,
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All righteousness has been fulfilled in Christ keeping the law perfectly
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in which we receive that righteous record given to us by faith.
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We are perfect law keepers not by our own works
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We work from salvation, which is a big distinction in the way and the reason that we obey.
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And so Paul is calling for love that is displayed in obedience toward your neighbor.
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A form of love, a form of obedience that is displayed in your relationship to your neighbor by law keeping.
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Again, if you have it in the right Christian framework.
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It's allowing the works and the love for others to overflow from the love of God given to you.
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You may have heard me say, a great way to love your neighbor is to make sure it's illegal for
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them to kill their baby. A great way to love your neighbor is to make sure that it's illegal to
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commit adultery. A great way to love your neighbor is to make sure that they are not ruled by pagan
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God-hating politicians. It's a great way to love your neighbor is to actually
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produce a society which is in alignment with God's law.
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That is to say, true love seeks God's standard of good.
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True love seeks God's standard of good, his law, and he seeks it for others.
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I seek God's standards of love and good for others who are not even saved.
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I want this city to be ruled by Christian laws and principles.
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I want this nation to be ruled by Christian laws and principles.
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I think it is the best thing for the Muslim.
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I think it is the best thing for the Hindu and the best thing for the atheist that this nation is ran by people who are Christian.
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And that is in alignment with God's law, which is loving.
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This is why I believe Christians ought to be theonomists,
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A theonomy is that we take the general principles and extract them from God's law
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and apply them to the modern legislative realities.
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Because if we don't base man's laws off of God's law,
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what are we basing on? Ourselves. We become a law unto ourselves. No, we should have every law
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that we have should be based in scripture. We should have arbitrary laws that we create. No,
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we need to be fighting as Christians to make sure that the laws, the government is in submission
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and alignment with God's will. Now, loving people through law is an important argument for a culture
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who first hates God's law and thinks that it's evil, and a church who calls obedience legalism.
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Okay, we got two enemies, two foes. You got one side where you got the world that says
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God's law is wicked because it doesn't allow me to do what I want to do. And then in the church,
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you get a whole group of people that says your calling for law-keeping and obedience is legalism.
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okay i forgot the phrase but it's like for most people legalism is when someone tells me to do
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anything i don't want to do um that that's pretty common in the church you tell someone to obey
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and they go legalism no you would never survive in the pearson era under that perspective
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paying back the debt of love paying back the debt of love which we can never be
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Now, you're not keeping the law to earn justification.
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You're not keeping the law to be a moralist, to be a legalist.
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So if you want to be like Jesus, then try to keep the law.
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Now, again, you'll never be able to keep the law.
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He who fails at one point has become guilty of all of it,
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It doesn't mean that we just kind of give up on the law.
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Christ secured our salvation through keeping the law.
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Again, our law keeping does not secure, it does not maintain, it does not sustain our salvation.
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Six times in the book of John, Jesus speaks of the relationship of law and obedience.
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John 14 through 15, it says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments.
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Now, I don't think that this is necessarily a contingency phrase.
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Those people who love me, they'll keep my commandments.
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John 14, 21, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.
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There's another way of kind of seeing the observation nature of it.
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See those law keepers over there who do it from love, from gospel motivation, resting in Christ?
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It's not a contingency like, hey, if you stop keeping the law, you're out, man.
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If you don't keep the law, you've lost your salvation.
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If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him.
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And we will come to him and make our home with him.
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Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.
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If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
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Now the greatest way to abide in the commandments
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we will fail in our obedience and loving others.
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and all of these dimensions are vital to interpret clearly
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if you do what I command you so again too often
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a problem in the early church Paul speaks to it pretty often Romans chapter
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6 verse 14 should we keep on sinning that grace may abound
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But Paul's talking about, should you intentionally?
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There was a group, the antinomians, that were actually saying, let's be as bad as we can
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be, because if the worse we are, it will actually
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magnify God's grace. How amazingly stupid that is.
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god's god's law is so good or sorry god's grace is so good i'm gonna actually be so bad to show
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how good it is because look grace will cover it all and and truly i it will but that's not
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should we keep on sinning that grace may abound no no keep the commandments
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not for justification i'm not calling for people to go and keep keep all the festivals and all the
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things that have been fulfilled in christ i'm not i'm talking about the moral law the decalogue
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We also need to be reminded of the words of Jesus in Matthew 5, 17.
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Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
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That is, the righteous requirement of the law has been fulfilled in Christ.
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to meet the righteous requirement of the law that you can't keep.
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If Christ didn't abolish the law but fulfilled it,
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Well, it means the law is still here, and it's doing something.
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Well, it's condemning sinners, that's for sure.
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It's reminding us of the state of grace that we are in.
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I'll tell you what, because the law is still out there condemning sinners,
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I used to not think soberly about the standard of righteousness.
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that God has. God didn't come through Christ to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Now,
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the law is still good. It's so good that Christ kept it. It's good for society.
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It's not how we're justified, but it's good for society. It's good for us to uphold.
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Now, since we're talking about love, I want to just shift for a second
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to a little bit more practical and I think pastoral
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In my experience, a person's love for their neighbor
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I believe that looking at someone's love for their neighbor
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than looking at someone and trying to determine their love for God.
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Anyone can display love for God through religious acts.
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It's very difficult to determine the motive, the intention of the heart.
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Man cannot look at the heart, but we only see the outside.
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But when it comes to a person's relationship with other people,
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those actions are more easily tested because they are felt.
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The vast majority of gossip in the church is around this particular matter.
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The point is, is that if you actually love God, you'll actually love people.
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If you actually love God, you'll actually be patient with people.
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If you actually love God, you'll actually be kind to people.
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If you actually love God, you'll actually be joyful toward others.
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If you actually love God, you'll actually seek peace with other people.
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If you actually love God, it'll show in how you treat other people.
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It is the revelation, the mirror, the response, the reflection.
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If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar.
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For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, who he has not seen.
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There's a person in my life, not a member of this church, who calls themselves a Christian,
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but the pattern of their behavior toward others gives me serious doubts.
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again the only reason and the only way that we can examine somebody else's state
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is by their fruit we've given no other metric by god to determine if someone is a believer
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other than profession of faith and fruit i don't know where your heart is there are probably lots
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of people who i don't think are saved or saved and there are probably lots of people who i i think
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are saved and aren't saved. That's why Jesus says, don't separate, uh, the, the wheat from the
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tares. You're going to, you can mess it up. Wait until I return and I will separate them because
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I can see clearly. So we don't know we're bad judges, uh, bad judges of this type of reality.
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But that being said, this person in my life does not operate toward others in a way
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Rather, they operate in a way that seeks to extract
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That is two radically different ways of operating.
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or do you seek to extract what you believe is owed to you?
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they operate from a place of scarcity which reveals they do not have the riches of Christ.
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which reveals that they don't have the riches of Christ.
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You know when you meet someone who knows Christ
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because they operate from a reservoir of riches.
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The born-again believer does not operate in a pattern of bitterness or grumbling or ungratefulness
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because they see themselves as unworthy heirs of the kingdom of God.
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Ephesians chapter 1, if you want to follow along with me, it's verse 3 through probably 14.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
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with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
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that we should be holy and blameless before him
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in love he predestined us for adoption to himself
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with which he has blessed us in the beloved too much.
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The forgiveness of our trespasses, another blessing.
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which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight,
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okay this is already starting to get overwhelming overwhelming in him we have obtained an inheritance
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more blessing having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things
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according to the counsel of his will so that purpose clause so that we who were first to
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hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
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In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel
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of your salvation, more blessing, and believed in him
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were sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit, more blessing, who is the guarantee
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of our inheritance, more blessing, until we acquire possession of it to the praise
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is that your life and yes you know what there are times where we do need from the body but we do it
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because it's real not because we're entitled for it not because we we we're asking for it when we
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don't really need it no every one of us has needs there's no weakness in asking for help in time of
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need. That's not what I'm talking about. Believers do not have conditional generosity or conditional
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kindness or conditional joy or conditional love. We have unconditional joy and unconditional love
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and unconditional kindness. There is no circumstances or conditions by which will
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change our joy and our hope and our generosity and our love to one another because we are
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Paul is saying is that if you love God, you will love others. If you love others,
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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.
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And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
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Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.
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If you want to know why that person in your life who calls themselves a Christian but isn't loving, doesn't love,
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people who know god love people there are varying degrees of maturity and
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manifestation of that reality there's sanctification in this process i don't expect
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the maturity from a nine-year-old that i do from a 28 year old i don't expect the maturity from
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a new believer that i do from someone who's been in the faith for 40 years
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with everybody's heads bowed and eyes closed except Jesus
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with no repentance and no understanding of the biblical gospel.
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As I conclude here, Robert Haldane summarized this passage of scripture in an interesting way.
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He said, love prevents everything the law forbids.
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In other words, true love, where that love reigns, there's no room for hatred.
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Because true love prevents everything the law forbids.
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When we truly love, it makes obedience to God's command a joyful response to grace rather than some burdensome duty.
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That we are to owe man nothing except for love.