Alright brethren, let's go to
Romans chapter 13. Romans 13. Our subject this morning is our
debt of love. Our debt of love. Verse 8, he
says, O no man anything but to love one another. Now Paul's
not saying that we can't take out a loan. That's not what he's
saying. Of course, it's not good to become
overly in debt. Scripture tells us the borrower
is servant or slave to the lender. And with that comes a lot of
pressure and a lot of stress. But Paul is saying here, have
no unpaid nor unpayable debt. When the note comes, pay. That's
what he's saying. Have no unpaid or unpayable debt. Look at verse 7. Render, pay
therefore to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due,
custom to whom custom, and pay respect and honor. Do it with
paying respect and honor because that's due. He says, Fear to
whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe no man anything. Have no
unpaid or unpayable debt with one exception. There's one exception. But to love one another. But
to love one another. Love is a debt that we owe to
all men. Believers and unbelievers. It's
a debt we owe to all men which we will never fully pay. Look at verse 8. For he that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this thou shalt
not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,
thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet, and any
other commandment It's briefly comprehended in this saying,
namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill
to his neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling
of the law. Love is a debt we owe to all
men, but we will never fully pay. This debt's gonna always
be outstanding. Because we owe this. We owe this. Now today we're remembering our
Lord Jesus at His table. And I could think of no better
subject to put us in remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ than
the subject of love. The subject of love. Now, by
Christ's love, by Christ giving Himself for His people with perfect
love, for God and for His people. Our Lord Jesus Christ paid this
debt in full. He paid it in full for His people. He fulfilled the law for His
people. And therefore, from a debt of
gratitude that we owe to Christ, He says now, you love all men. You love all men. I want to look
first of all at how Christ fulfilled the law by His perfect love.
And then secondly, I want to look at how God's saints are
under this law of Christ, to love. And then thirdly, we'll
look at a few practical things concerning Christ's exhortation
to us, to love. Now first of all, Christ paid
this debt in full for his people. Our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
the law for his elect by his perfect love. Verse 8 says, he
that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. And that one who has
done it is Christ. Now, on several occasions, go
to Matthew 11, On several occasions, I'm sorry, Matthew 22, on several
occasions our Lord Jesus Christ declared that all the commandments
are summed up, all the commandments are fulfilled by love. He said
this on several occasions. A lawyer from the Pharisees came
to him on one occasion He's trying to trip him up, and he asks this
question, Matthew 22, verse 36. Master, which is the great commandment
in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,
and the second is likened to it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. On these two commandments hang
all the law and the prophets. Now, if you look over at Luke
chapter 10, this lawyer was trying to justify himself. after the Lord told him this.
Verse 29, Luke 10, 29. He willing to justify himself
said unto Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Now there's no doubt
this man was thinking, who am I supposed to love? Who's my
neighbor that I'm supposed to love? Listen to this parable
our Lord Jesus gave. Jesus answering said, a certain
man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. This was a Jew. He
went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. And he fell among thieves which
stripped him of his raiment, wounded him, and departed leaving
him half dead. That's you and me by nature. We were left dead in the ditch,
robbed, just in the ditch of our sin and pollution and corruption
before God. Look at this. And by chance there
came down a certain priest that way And when he saw him, he passed
by on the other side. I'm sure this Jew that our Lord
was speaking to thought surely that priest was going to be the
one that helped him. But no, the priest passed by
on the other side. And likewise a Levite, and he's
probably thinking, oh this is going to be the one that helps
him right here. A Levite, when he was at the place, came and
looked on him and passed by on the other side. but a certain
Samaritan. This is the most despised race
and people by the Jews. They said a Gentile, the Samaritans
were the worst of all Gentiles. They said if a Samaritan woman
was having a baby, do not help that woman have her child because
all you've done is brought another Samaritan into the world. They
hated and despised the Samaritans. And look at this now. The lawyer
was asking, well, who's my neighbor that I should help? And the Lord
didn't put him in the position of helping anybody. The Lord
put him in the ditch. And he put this despised Samaritan
as the one that's helping him. Look, and a certain Samaritan,
as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, he
had compassion on him. and went to him, and bound up
his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own
beast, and brought him to an end, and took care of him. And
on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave
them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him. Whatsoever
thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee. And
then he asked the man, Which now of these three thinkest thou
was neighbor unto him that fell among thee? And he said, he that
showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, go
and do thou likewise. Do thou likewise. Godly love
is not what this world calls love. Godly love's not what natural
man thinks of as love. Love's much more than an absence
of hatred. Love is, it does no ill to its
neighbor, but it's even more than simply not doing ill to
its neighbor. Love's much more than a deep
emotional feeling. You know, oh, I just, I got this
feeling. I got this tingly feeling. I
think I'm in love. It's much more than that. To
love is to profit another. at expense to myself, is to profit
another at my own expense, even an enemy, be it money, be it
time, labor, my personal preferences, my desires, or all of these things. Love is to deny self. Love is
to sacrifice self in devotion and commitment of your life for
another person's good. Did you get that? It's to deny
myself and what I want and what I feel and what I think and what... It's to deny myself and it's
to sacrifice myself in devotion and commitment of my life for
another person's good. And love which perfectly fulfills
the law, that love which perfectly fulfills the law is to do all
this with a complete absence of sin. No sinner has ever loved God
and his neighbor in sinless perfection, nor can we. Nobody has ever,
no sinner has ever loved God and our neighbor with sinless
perfection, and we can't do it. When Adam disobeyed God, he ceased
loving God, and he ceased loving his posterity. He plunged us
all into sin. And being born with Adam's sin
nature, we hate God. We hate God. Scripture says by
nature, we hate God. we bite and devour our neighbor. You know that's true and I know
that's true. We are desirous of vainglory, we provoke one
another, we have bitter envying of one another. That's what the
fleshly heart is, the fleshly nature. For all have sinned and
come short of the glory of God. That's what that means. We've
never loved God perfectly and we never loved our neighbor perfectly.
But the Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam, he is he that loved
God and his neighbor perfectly. And he fulfilled the law. He
loved his father with all his heart, with all his soul, and
with all his mind, and he loved his neighbor as himself. And
Christ alone is the one who did this. Christ laid down his life
both for his people and for God his Father. He laid down his
life for God his Father and for his people. He perfected both
tables of the law. The first table is to God, he
perfected it by perfect love to God. The second table, which
Paul quotes here in our text, is to our neighbor, and he perfected
that table in perfect love. Theologians like to argue that
Christ only fulfilled the negative side of the law, that he fulfilled
the justice part of the law by dying for his people. But they
say, but he didn't fulfill the active part on the cross. the active obedience to the law.
I beg your pardon. Brethren, our Lord Jesus Christ
perfected love, the active fulfilling of the positive obedience of
the law by him fulfilling the negative. It was by Him laying
down His life for God and His people that He perfected the
active obedience of the law. It was by Him fulfilling the
justice, the negative side of the law, by bearing our sin and
our judgment, that Christ fulfilled the active part of the law in
obeying the Father and loving Him and loving His people as
Himself. He said, this is my commandment,
that ye love one another. Now listen, as I have loved you,
greater love hath no man than this. That a man laid down his life
for his friends. But listen to what he said, as
I have loved you, greater love hath no man than this. And that's
true, greater love has no man than Christ in the way He loved
His people. Never. In this, hereby perceive
we, this is how we behold, this is how we perceive the love of
God. Because He laid down His life
for us. He laid down His life for His
people. But now men have laid down their
lives for other men before. That's been done in history.
So why is our Lord Jesus' love perfect love? Why is His love
in laying down His life for His people, why is that the perfect
love that fulfills the law? Let me give you several reasons.
One, laying down His life was the greatest love. It was the
perfection of love because, first of all, the Lord Jesus Christ
was immortal. Any other man who lays down his
life for another, he's only doing sooner what must happen anyway. If a man lays down his life for
another, he's going to die one day. He's just doing it a little
sooner than he would have. If a man gave an organ to somebody,
to somebody that he loved, and he died 20 years before the average
life expectancy. He only did the inevitable. And
he only gave up 20 years. Now, granted, that's a great
thing. But in comparison to Christ,
it's nothing. It's nothing. That man didn't
lay down what he would have kept eternally. Christ laid down what
He would have kept eternally. Christ knew no sin, therefore
He could never die. Death had no claim on Him. The
wages of sin, the payment for sin is death. Christ knew no
sin. He could have lived forever as
the God-man. He alone could say, no man taketh
my life from me. But I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down.
I have power to take it up again. He's the only man who was immortal,
who could live forever, and yet laid down his life for his friends. The next thing is Christ's love
was perfect because his motive in laying down his life for his
people was pure. It was pure love. Pure love. If other men lay down their lives,
there's some motive that makes it not pure love. That's just
always the case with a sinner. There's some other motive that
makes it not pure love. The love from the one that they
die for? Maybe that's why they do it,
because the one that they're dying for has loved them so.
Or maybe they feel indebted to the person already. They've been
so good to them. But Christ's love was pure love. Think about this. It was not
that his people loved him. We hated him. It was not that
we served him. We rejected him. It was not that
we were his friends. We considered him our enemy.
We hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and
we esteemed him not. It was not that we were his equals.
We were infinitely inferior to him. He was not that we added
anything to Him. He's the solitary God. We can
add nothing to Him. Worse, we were the very cause
of Him suffering and dying. He did not have to die if it
weren't for us being willful offenders. We offended Him. He was the one
we sinned against. And yet the very judgment that
the Judge, the very judgment that Christ the Judge pronounced
against His people, the Judge came down off the bench and took
the place of His people, took the crime, He took the offense,
and He took the punishment. and He laid down His life for
His people. Brethren, that's pure motive. There was no motive in His heart
but the perfect motive of perfect love. Look back at Romans 5. Here's how the Spirit of God
says that. Romans 5, 6. He speaks of the love of God
shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, and he says,
for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ
died for the ungodly. This is how the love of God is
shed abroad in our heart. This is how we are constrained
to love, right here. It's all at the cross. Everything
God does is at the cross. That's where we were justified.
That's where we were made holy. There's where the wisdom of God's
on display. There's where all the attributes
of God are on display. That's how our sinful flesh is
mortified at the cross. God's so wise he chose everything
to be at the cross. Look into the cross. In due time
Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous
man will one die. Yet perventure for a good man
some would even dare to die. God commendeth his love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. No motive, no motive but the
perfect motive of perfect love. And then Christ's love excels
all others as perfect love because no one who died for others ever
bore the sins of the one they died for. Nobody that ever died
for another bore the sin of the one they died for. I want you
to understand what that means as best we can enter into it. Some have taken the punishment
of others. Some have done that. Some have
taken the punishment due to others. You've heard the story of the man who
was the judge and his son came and stood before him and was
guilty. And the judgment was that he was to have both his
eyes plucked out. And the judge said spare one
of his eyes and pluck out one of mine so he can still see. He was bearing part of the punishment
that was due to his son. But only Christ took the sin. Only Christ took the crimes. Only Christ took the offenses
with all its guilt and with all its shame. He's the only one
that ever did that. With man, it's impossible. You
can't become the offender. But Christ can do, God can do
what men can't do. He was made flesh. Who can figure
that out? He was made flesh. And He was
made sin for His people. It's one who knew no sin. Whatever
example of a man laying down his life for his friend, none's
like this, brethren. A soldier dies for his country.
That's a great thing, but he does not bear the sin and shame
of each of his countrymen. A brother dies for a brother,
a husband dies for a wife, but it's impossible for man to be
made to bear the offense, so much so that the judge beholds
him as the only offender. That's what we're talking about
when we talk about Christ made sin. And all the guilt that went
with it, to know that guilt, especially from one who knew
no sin and hated sin, to know the shame of it and to bear it
all. So much so that in the Psalms,
He said, He called them my sin, my iniquity. He wasn't just playing
make-believe. It was that real of a substitution. He was numbered with the transgressors. And He bore the sin of many. The Lord hath laid on Him the
iniquity of us all. Not just the punishment. The
iniquity itself. He made Him sin for us who knew
no sin. We might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Look at Romans 5.16. I think
this says it very clearly. Romans 5.16. Not as it was by one that sinned,
so is the gift. The gift is not like how we became
sinned. There was one offense. But the
free gift is of many offenses. unto justification. Christ bore
many offenses. And what made this worse, brethren,
for our Redeemer is He was perfect in His holy nature as He stood
in our room instead. He had a perfect hatred for sin. He had a perfect love of righteousness. And there He is, knowing that
He's the only one judgment looks to as being the offender. Being the one who committed the
crime. He himself did no sin, but when
he stood there, he stood there as the one who had. Do you get
what I'm saying? We're not even talking about,
we're not talking about corruption of his nature. That doesn't even
have anything to do with righteousness. That's holiness. We're talking
about before the law of God. We're talking about how God viewed
him. And how God views you is a reality. Whatever, however God views you,
that's how it is. And God viewed him as the one
who committed the crimes. And only him. Only him. And so Christ's death is a perfection
of love because He bore away not just the punishment but our
crimes themselves. His blood not only paid our punishment,
His blood erased our crimes forever from the record book. You can set a man free from the
punishment and men call that pardon. But the crime is still
on the book. We're talking about Christ absolving
our crime by being made to stand in our room instead as real as
he was made flesh. And then Christ's death fulfilled
the righteous love of the law because no one laid down his
life to suffer the death that Christ suffered. None suffered such a greatness
of death. None bore such greatness of sorrow
and suffering. Nobody did. Any death's a bitter
thing. We speak of death now while we
got our health so lightly. But when you come time to where
you know you're really facing it, that's when it's a bitter
thing. I remember, I just read this
somewhere, I forget where I read it, but somebody asked this elderly
lady who had cancer and was just on the verge of dying, they said,
what's it like to live like you're dying? And she said, what's it
like to live pretending you're not? It ought to hit us that bitterly
all the time, We're dying. We're dying. We don't need somebody
to say we got cancer. We got it. We're dying. We're dying. And any death's
bitter, brethren, but Christ's death is incomparable to any
other death. If we die physically, I've said
this to you many times, if we die physically, that's the first
death. But then if we come into God's presence and He casts us
out into hell forever, forever separated from God, forever to
bear hell, that's called in Scripture the second death. And that's
a living death. That death never ends. On the
cross, while He was alive, Christ suffered that second eternal
living death. He suffered that on the cross
for His people. He did it for God in order that
the justice of God would be maintained and He did it for His people
in order that we would be justified before God. Christ suffered what
hell would have been for you and me when He was alive on the
cross. He suffered what hell would have
been for us and satisfied the justice of it. What did he suffer? He suffered wailing and gnashing
of teeth. That's what hell will be. Hell will be God taking the restraints
off of everyone around so that they can do to you whatever comes
into their heart to do. And that's what God did on the
cross. He took the restraints off the devil, he took the restraints
off of the men that hated Christ, and there was wailing and gnashing
of teeth. He suffered bodily pain. He suffered
humiliation. He suffered shame. He suffered
isolation. And worst of all, he suffered the torture of his soul
in being forsaken by God. That's the love that fulfilled
the law. Did you hear that? That's the
love that fulfills the law. That is loving God with all thy
heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor
as thyself. And it was by that death, by
God's elect being in Christ, we not only were crucified for
not perfectly loving God and our neighbor, but we actively
fulfilled the law in perfect, holy love when Christ fulfilled
it. Now, I want to consider God's
saints under the law of Christ, which is the law of love. You
are under the law of Christ. Christ is our master. He is our
ruler. We are to do as He commands.
When the Spirit of God creates a new man in us, He reveals the
good news that Christ has fulfilled the law for His people by His
perfect love so that we're called unto liberty. Freedom from the
curse of the law, freedom from the strict demands of the law,
freedom from sin's dominion in our nature so that we can actually
believe on Christ and love Him. Freedom. The only thing we haven't
been freed from is the presence of sin. The Spirit of God produces
faith and love in our hearts. Faith which worketh by love. Christ teaches us in the heart,
by love serve one another. Love is the one rule God's saints
are under. The one rule, every chosen, redeemed,
regenerated child of God lives by faith in Christ, which worketh
by love. That's the rule we're under.
Those Christ redeemed from the curse of the law have no other
rule by which we live than faith in Christ and love to one another. But this love will be a debt
no child of God will fully pay of ourselves. In other words,
don't look at this text and think that by loving your neighbor,
you're going to fulfill that law in perfect righteousness
and make yourself accepted to God. That ain't happening. Christ
did it. Christ did it. We still have
our flesh with all its dead fruit. You can go to Galatians 5 and
read all about it. Adultery, fornication, lasciviousness,
murder. That's still in us. We do that
every single day of our lives, at least in thought, in our flesh. But, there is a new man inside
of his people that is created of God. It is after God. It is in Christ's image. It's
made of and filled with the fruit of the Spirit. It's made of this
fruit. It's filled with this fruit.
It's very essence that makes our new man, our new spirit,
is this fruit of the Spirit. He that is born of the Spirit
is one spirit with Christ. We've made partakers of the divine
nature in this new man. The fruit of the Spirit, number
one, is love. Number one is love. And it gives
all those fruits in Galatians 5, faith and meekness and longsuffering. And at the end of it, the fruit
of the Spirit is love. Against such, there is no law. The law wasn't made for a righteous
man. The man who's righteous, the
law can say nothing to him. That's you and me and our new
man with Christ in us and us in Christ. That new man's righteous. That new man's holy. There's
no law against our new man. And that new man, as Paul said,
that's the real me. That's the real you. This other
old man of flesh is just a dead body that we're carrying around
until one day when we put him off. And in that new man, I want
you to hear this now, in the new man, the love produced by
the Spirit of God is the fruit of the Spirit, it's produced
by the Spirit of God, and that love loves God and loves our
neighbor perfectly. Perfectly. With no sin. The problem is, The sins of our
flesh will always be mixed in, making our love imperfect. But, nevertheless, God tells
us to love, to love. The Spirit teaches us to love.
The Spirit gives us fruit to love. The Spirit teaches us and
leads us and corrects us. It's the Lord who moves our hearts
to love as we ought. Paul said, the Lord directs your
hearts into the love of God. He's the one who directs us and
guides us to love as we ought. Christ's love for us is why we
love. We love Him because He first
loved us. And love rules the heart. Love
rules the heart of God's child. Therefore, there's nothing legal
about it. There's nothing legal about it
where love rules. Listen to this statement and
think about this. Nobody ever loved because it
was demanded of them. Nobody. And this love is not something
you can take a law and whip people and frighten people and promise
them reward and demand they love. You can't produce love that way.
Only the Spirit of God. Love is the very essence of heart
liberty. Love is our nature, the new nature. That's what it is, love. And
the outcome of love that's produced by God is that man no longer
lives unto himself and for himself, but he lives for Christ and he
lives for the good of others. You would never say this about
yourselves, so I'll say it about you. You're an example of what
I'm talking about. God's love has made it so you're
not living for yourself. Oh, there's a lot of living for
yourself mixed in. But it's the spirit of God in
that new man that makes you sacrifice to have a nice place to worship,
to have the gospel preached to you, and to send it forth into
this world and do what you can for your brethren. That's the
love of God doing that. He is Him producing that. Now
let me lastly give you a few practical things on this exhortation. Christ commands every true believer
to love all men. He said in Matthew 7.12, therefore
all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you. You
know this. You've heard it from your youth
up. People call it the golden rule.
This is the only rule for God's people. It's love. All things whatsoever you would
that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. For this is the law and the prophets.
When he walked this earth, Christ gave his church this new commandment.
Now that he says to all men. Do to all men whatsoever you
would have men do to you. That includes our enemies. When
He walked this earth, Christ gave this commandment to us concerning
our brethren. A new commandment I give unto
you, that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye
also love one another. By this shall all men know that
you are my disciples, if you have love one toward another. He gave us the new commandment
and He gave us the pattern that we are to follow. He said, love
one another as I have loved you. You want to see how to love?
Don't go back to Moses. Go to Christ. Look to Christ. Christ loved by laying down His
life for us. Hereby perceive we the love of
God because He laid down His life for us. We ought to lay
down our lives for the brethren. That's our motive. Christ laid
down his life for us. That's our motive. That's our
constraint. That's what moves us. He laid down his life for
us. Whatever I have to suffer, whatever
preferences I have to give up, it's not going to be anywhere
near what Christ suffered. Not anywhere near what Christ
gave up. Christ gave up everything. Lawmongers
and wheel-worshippers and the self-righteous, they speak so
much of regard for the law. They're always talking about
the law, but they forget the very essence of the law, the
very spirit of the law, love. Love is the fulfilling of the
law. They look for sins in their brethren, and when they found
them, they humiliate them, they're strict with them, they're harsh
with them, they discipline them in strict, in a strict and hard
way, and that's all being unrighteous. Every bit of that. Every bit
of it. It's not loving their neighbor
as they love themselves. It's not doing to their neighbor
as they would have their neighbor do to them. The self-righteous are usually
not kind, they're not tender-hearted, they're not forgiving one another
as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven His people. They're
mean, they're hard-hearted, they're strict rather than forgiving.
There's no softness, no sweetness, no gentleness, no graciousness,
which the law itself requires. None of that. And they use the
law to whip into an outward obedience. We need only the gospel of Christ
crucified. That's it. Why? Because Christ's love in laying
down His life for us chastens us for our lack of self-denial. When you behold Christ, brethren,
it chastens me to live the life of ease that I live. To live
the life with so many useless worldly things that I have. It
chastens me when I behold Christ and I hear about Christ. It chastens
me not to sacrifice these things that I have, these comforts that
I have, that I don't have to have. It chastens me not to sacrifice
them so that I can promote this gospel more and spread this gospel
forth into the world more and do whatever I can do for God's
people. When I hear what Christ did for me, I don't need a whip
of a law. You don't have to dangle rewards
before me. Just tell me what Christ did
for me and that chastens me. That brings me down to see that
I've not done anything like God. Oh, it makes me rejoice. It strengthens
me. It makes me want to love. But
that's what I'm saying, at the same time as it makes me want
to love more, it also keeps me from being puffed up in self-righteousness
by showing me I haven't loved nearly like He loved me. And I'll tell you something else
it does. It makes me look at my brethren
and not be critical of them. It makes me look at my brethren
who serve the Lord relentlessly and it makes me say, I want to
be like them. That's what Christ crucified
does. It doesn't whip you. It doesn't try to force you to
do something you don't want to do. It doesn't make you critical
of your brethren. The cross of Christ strengthens
us and constrains us to love. It chastens us where we don't
love as we are and it makes us see our brethren as loving so
much more than we. Isn't God wise? God is so wise. Spurgeon said this, when you
get to the cross, you've left the realm of little men. You've
reached the nursery of true chivalry. That's right. To give up all,
to become a servant to all, all because Christ loved me and gave
up all for me. That is the power by which we
believe on Christ and by which we work by love. to behold all
that He did for me, all that He gave up, that's the power
of faith and love. That's it. I pray God will bless
it. We're going to observe the Lord's
table now.