Evangelical Free Church of Embarass

Extra Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

Father, we give You thanks that we can now go into Your word, back to see what You have for us, what You have put between the covers of this book by inspiring Your servants. I pray, God, that You would minister to us today. Help us understand what we’re hearing and seeing and help us, especially, to know how to apply it in our own lives. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

If your Bibles are still open to Matthew 22, that’s good. We will get to Romans 13, which is where we are in our series through Romans 12 and 13, but I wanted to start with the text that is our extra reading today. It’s a familiar text. It talks about the two greatest commandments. Jesus is asked one day what the greatest commandment might be, and He says that the greatest commandment has to do with love; that you love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind. Then He adds that there’s a second. The second greatest command is like it in a sense that it involves love. He says the second greatest command is: you will love your neighbor as yourself. Then He makes an interesting statement. He says, “On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” Some of your Bibles might say that the law and prophets “hang” on these commandments. Another version says that love is the basis for these laws and the prophets. They’re all based on loving God and loving people. Picture this: you have the love for God and the love for people (loving other people) and then hanging on those two you have all that was in the Law and written by the prophets. So what’s Jesus saying there? He’s saying that loving God, loving people will allow you to fulfill the Law and all that the prophets wrote. Love is the key to all of that.

I want to go through this second greatest command, because when we get to Romans 13, Paul is going to bring it up and we want to be familiar with it. Jesus says that the second greatest command is that you love your neighbor as yourself. First of all it has to do with love. The word that appears there is “agape” which is that unconditional commitment to serve the best interests of another. It’s the same word that appears in the greatest command, love the Lord your God. So, this agape love is in both commands. It is that unconditional commitment to serve the best interests of another person. Love your neighbor as yourself. Be unconditionally committed to serving your neighbor’s best interests. Sometimes when we try to do that, when we seek to carry out this instruction from God’s word and to love other people, we get frustrated, maybe because they don’t love us back and we wonder how many times do I have to express love to these people before they will love me back. It’s not fair. We get frustrated. Sometimes we get frustrated because it seems like they demand that love of us, they’re expecting it and they verbalize the expectations and that frustrates us. Sometimes they don’t accept the love. They outright reject the expressions of this love and that frustrates us because we would sure like them to accept it and receive it, and even say thank you. It frustrates us when they don’t. Sometimes people misunderstand our expressions of love, they misinterpret them, and to them they aren’t expressions of love even though that’s what it was from our end. So that frustrates us.

There were 3 sons who left home and went off and they all did well in life. So all three of them sent gifts back to their elderly mother. The first one gave her a big new house to live in. The second gave her a Mercedes with a driver, and the third gave her a very unique gift. It was a parrot, but it wasn’t just any old parrot. This was a parrot that, for the last years, had been taught to recite the entire Old and New Testament. All you had to do was speak out the chapter and verse and the parrot would recite it. And this third son, knowing that his mother loved the Bible but her eyesight was going – she couldn’t read – bought this unique bird and gave it to her. Soon after, the mom sent letters of thanks to her three sons for the gifts. To Milton she wrote, “The house you built is way too big. I’m living in only one room but I have to clean the whole thing. What were you thinking?” She wrote to Gerald, the second son, “You know I’m too old to travel. I stay home most of the time, so I hardly ever use that Mercedes you gave me. And besides, the driver is so rude. What a waste of your money.” And then to the third son she wrote, “Dearest Donald: You have the good sense to know what your mother really likes. The chicken was delicious!” J Sometimes, we try our hardest to express love to people. We know our heart, we know that we are trying to serve their best interests and express that love and yet, it can get so frustrating because people misunderstand it, they misinterpret it, they don’t accept it, they reject it. So sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard to follow that second greatest command: Love your neighbor as yourself. But remember, it’s agape. The love Jesus is talking about is unconditional. So it really doesn’t matter if they misinterpret it, if they misunderstand it, if they don’t accept it, if they demand it. The idea is it doesn’t matter. I am going to be committed to serving the best interests of others unconditionally, because that’s what God wants me to do. It’s the second greatest command.

Notice, that command says love your neighbor and the Greek word for neighbor means “near,” so your neighbor is the one who is near. Anyone around you is your neighbor. When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, the conclusion there was that your neighbor was anyone in need, anyone around you who was in need. It didn’t matter if they were Samaritan or Jew, man, woman, boy, child, it didn’t matter. Your neighbor was anyone near who had a need. So the second greatest command says, “Love your neighbor.” Have this unconditional commitment to serve the best interests of those around you, whoever they are. Your neighbor. Then He says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” What we have to recognize as we look at this verse is that that last part of the verse does not present a second command in the verse. I have read books that indicate that there’s perhaps another command in this verse and the command is: love yourself. They read, “Love your neighbor as yourself and they say that implies that we’re supposed to love ourselves, so therefore the Bible teaches a love of self and before you can love your neighbor you have to love yourself. There’s only one command in that verse: Love your neighbor. He says, “Love your neighbor AS yourself.” You see, we already love ourselves. We don’t have to be commanded to love ourselves. We already look out for ourselves, our interests. We’re protective of ourselves. We think about our needs. So the commandment says just like you love yourself, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor just like you love yourselves. Be concerned about their needs. Be concerned about serving their best interests just like your are about your own. So that’s the second command.

Then He says you do it and it fulfills the Law. “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and prophets.” So if I love my neighbor, I’ll fulfill the law, I’ll fulfill the commandments.

Now, turn with me over to Romans where we’re studying these weeks. That was Jesus speaking in Matthew 22. We come to Romans and we see the writings of Paul and he is going to say basically the same thing as Jesus said. Paul has been talking about the transformed life. In Romans 12:2, he says we’re not to be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We’re to be different and he goes on to talk about the transformed life, some of the things that are true if we live the transformed life. And he comes to verse 8 of chapter 13. So let’s read that (verse 8-10). “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. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.” So in those verses, Paul is talking about love, and you’ll notice he makes reference to the second greatest command, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” So he’s talking about the same thing, this unconditional commitment to serve the best interests of others.

By the way, verse 8 starts with the phrase that is not the message of this passage. He says, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.” That little phrase doesn’t bring the message of the passage. This isn’t a passage about whether we should have debts or not and whether we should take loans or not. People have taken that little phrase, “owe no one anything but love” and built a whole system of teaching on the subject of debts and loans and all this type of stuff. What that phrase is is a bridge from the preceding verse to this passage. Notice in verse 7 he concluded that teaching on how we should relate to governing authorities with saying if you owe takes pay your taxes. If you owe custom, pay custom. Pay what you owe. And then he says, as kind of a bridge moving into the next subject owe no man anything except to love one another. So it becomes kind of a bridge. Pay the government what you owe them, and love each other.

So the subject of verses 8-10 is this love for each other. In the transformed life, we love people. We love our neighbors. Let’s see what he says. More than once, he talks about this idea of love fulfilling the law. Verse 8, “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Just like Jesus said in Matthew 22. At the end of verse 9 he lists some commandments and then he says if there’s any other commandments it’s summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So again, the idea is that the commandments are summed up in this idea of loving your neighbor. And then verse 10, “Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.” So three times Paul says that this love for each other, for your neighbor, will fulfill the law.

So the question we’re going to deal with this morning, very quickly, is how does that happen. How does love for others fulfill the Law? How does it do that? Paul brought up four of the commandments from the Law for us. I’m going to add 2 because in the Ten Commandments, there are 6 commands that deal with relationships with people, 4 that deal with our relationship with God. When we love God, we’ll be keeping the first four; when we love people we’ll be keeping the last six. So let’s look at the 4 (people commands) Paul brings up and then the other two. We’re just going to briefly talk about how loving people helps fulfill those laws, those commands.

Do not commit adultery. Paul brings that up here. He says the law says don’t commit adultery. Don’t be unfaithful to your spouse. Now, how does love fulfill that law? Do you know why I choose to be faithful to my wife? It’s not because there’s some law out there that tells me I have to. It’s not because I have posted in different places in my house and hanging from the mirror in my car, “Do not commit adultery.” I choose to be faithful to my wife because I love her. I have an unconditional commitment to serve her best interests. I stood in a church before God and witnesses one night in August of 1973 and I looked into that woman’s eyes and I said, “I will love you till the day I die.” And it was a commitment to unconditionally love her no matter what – sickness, health, poverty, riches. I made a commitment, a love commitment. So I don’t need a law that says, “Don’t commit adultery.” I don’t need to post that law somewhere to keep reminding myself because I love that woman, and I continue to express that love, I fulfill that command. Love fulfills the law.

You shall not murder. I would say that the best interests of another person are well served if you don’t murder them, wouldn’t you, that the best interests of most people is that they live? So if I love my neighbor, if I have decided that I am going to serve the best interests of people around me, that never leads you to take someone’s life. Murder isn’t motivated by being committed to the best interests of another person, by loving them. It’s something else – hatred, jealously, envy, bitterness, whatever – but if I love, I’m going to fulfill that command. I’m not going to take someone else’s life. So I don’t need that law written in black and white for me necessarily if I love my neighbor, because by loving him or her, I am fulfilling that law.

Do not steal. Paul brings that up. He says in verse 9, “You shall not steal” reminding them of that. Stealing takes away from someone. When I steal from someone I am taking what is theirs from them. What does love do? Love gives, right? Love gives! That’s a characteristic of love, so if I’m loving my neighbor, the desire on my heart will be to give not take from. So that kind of love will help me fulfill the law that says don’t steal. Stealing is a violation of love. So love will keep me from stealing from another person. It will motivate me to give instead. Have you ever been robbed? Have you ever had anything stolen from you? I know of someone who had their house broken into and things taken, and they talked about how they felt so personally violated, even though they weren’t home at the time. But the fact that someone had broken into their home and taken things, they felt personally violated. I didn’t really understand that feeling at that time but then a couple years ago, we were staying at a motel down in the Cities and when we got up in the morning my van didn’t look right. It turns out, somebody had stolen my wheel during the night. They took the whole wheel off and the van was just lying on the ground on the hub there. I felt violated. It was just a wheel of a van but I felt like somebody had personally violated me, personally wronged me. Not just taken something material, but they had personally wronged me. It was amazing how that felt. So then I could understand how those friends of mine felt when they said they felt personally violated. When someone steals from you, they are wronging you, they are violating you. That’s not love, but when we love our neighbor we want to give to them. We will not wrong them. You notice what verse 10 says. “Love does no wrong to its neighbor.” So if I will love my neighbor, I won’t steal from him. I’ll fulfill that law.

Do not covet. (verse 9) To covet is to have that strong consuming desire to have what isn’t yours, to have something that someone else has. A lot of times the coveting will move from wanting what someone else has or wanting what isn’t yours to actually negative thoughts about the person who has it. It might be something material. It might be a talent. It might be an honor – just anything that someone else might have. And when I covet that, I have this consuming desire for it and pretty soon I not only have a desire for me to have it but I wish they didn’t and it begins to affect my feelings about that person. It just consumes me. Again, if I loved people, if I loved my neighbor and I was committed to their best interests, how would I feel about what they have? I would be glad for them. If I love you, I’m glad if you’re honored. I don’t covet that honor. I’m glad if you have a certain talent. I don’t covet that talent. I’m glad that you have a certain SUV. I don’t covet that because if I love you, I’m committed to your best interests, so if you have something that makes you rejoice, I’m going to rejoice with you. I’m not going to covet it. So loving your neighbor can fulfill the law that says do not covet, because when I love you, I will be glad for what you have instead of coveting it.

(Then a couple others that Paul doesn’t mention there but they’re in the Ten Commandments, in the Law, and since he brought up four, we’ll bring up two more that deal with relationships.) Honor your father and mother. How does honoring your father and mother become fulfilled through love? If I’m committed to serving my parents, if I’m committed to their best interests, if I love them, I will honor them. I’ll respect them. I’ll obey them. I’ll listen to them. Sound like fantasy? I’ll show appreciation to them. All those things that are a part of honor. If I love them -- and remember it’s an unconditional commitment to serve the best interests, it’s unconditional love. Even if you think your parents are old-fashioned, even if you think your parents have no clue what’s going on, you can still have an unconditional commitment to love them and express love. And if you do that, you’ll fulfill the law that says honor your father and mother.

You shall not bear false witness. Lying to someone, lying about someone is not an expression of love. Giving false testimony about something, accusing someone falsely is not an expression of love. Think about it. Did you lie to anyone this week? Did you lie about anyone this week? Did you accuse someone this week of something that was not true? The Bible says, “Do not bear false witness.” Now, if we love our neighbor, we’re committed to their best interests, aren’t we? So obviously lying to them or lying about them, falsely accusing them will not be something we will want to do, because that’s not in their best interests.

So again, loving my neighbor fulfills that law to not bear false witness. It’s a pretty simple concept that Paul’s talking about here, and he’s just echoing what Jesus said in Matthew 22 that love fulfills the law.

So how do we link that with the transformed life that Paul is talking about? Well, here’s how I do it. The transformed life is a life of love, not a life of law. The transformed life, this life that Paul is instructing the Christians to live, it’s not a life of law. It’s a life of love. It’s a life that is motivated by love, a commitment to serve the best interests of people and a commitment to serve God. (Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.) The transformed life is simply a life of love, a life that is lived out of love for God and love for people. You see, that love that we can have for people is an inner thing, it’s something inside of us that motivates us. Law is an external thing. Law is something that is put on us, and sometimes even with threats (do this or…). So you have love, which is an inner commitment to the best interests of others, and then you have laws that are placed on us. And Jesus, and then Paul in Romans 13 say if you have that love for people, that inner motivation, you will automatically fulfill that external law. The transformed life is a life of love.

A man brought his little daughter to the carnival one night. As soon as they got in through the gates, she ran to the cotton candy booth and she bought herself this huge mound of the sugary treat. And she came back to her dad with this huge piece of cotton candy and he said, “Honey, how are you going to eat all that?” And this is what she said, “Don’t worry, Daddy. I’m a lot bigger on the inside than on the outside.” J When it comes to motivation, what’s on the inside is much more effective than what’s on the outside. On the outside you have laws. Yes, don’t steal, don’t commit murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t covet, don’t bear false witness, honor your father and mother. From the outside we have those laws. But Jesus, and then Paul is saying if, on the inside, you have a love for your neighbor, an unconditional commitment to serve his or her interests, you will fulfill those laws. And a motivation of love on the inside is much bigger and more effective than laws from the outside. Love fulfills the law so instead of having to learn all the multitudes of laws, you just take the two greatest commands. Loving God and loving people, you do that and you’ll fulfill all of it. And the transformed life is like that. The transformed life is a life of love. It’s motivated by love for God and love for my neighbor and I live my life out of this commitment to serve the best interests of other people.

When I do that, Christ-like love becomes the standard for all my relationships, no matter who. Whether it’s my spouse, or my children, or my friends, or my enemies, a Christ-like love becomes my standard for those relationships. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Even as I have loved you, love one another.” He becomes the standard, His love for people, His commitment to the best interests of others becomes my standard. And that’s what the transformed life is all about. It’s about love, love motivating me, not so much law motivating me. The law isn’t bad, but the law coming from the outside isn’t as effective and long lasting as love coming from the inside. So we need to be motivated by love and we’ll fulfill the law. That’s the transformed life.

As you live your life, are you motivated more by love or by law? Really, the people who need law are the people who don’t love. The people that don’t have this love that the Bible talks about need law because they don’t have that internal motivation to do what’s right. They need law from the outside. But if I’m living the transformed life as God intended me to live by the power of His Spirit in me, love for my neighbor becomes the motivator. As I relate to everyone based on that love, that commitment, I fulfill all the law. It’s a life of love. Let’s pray.

Father, we want to be like Jesus. We want to be like Jesus who was unconditionally committed to our best interests and He was willing to do whatever it took to show that love and express it. He was motivated by love. He was love. And Father, now He commands us to love each other, to love our neighbors. And God, I pray You would show us how to do that. Empower us to do that and in so doing, Father, to fulfill all of Your principles, all of Your laws and Your commands. Father, I pray that as we go from here to love You and to love others, You would be glorified and honored because we want our lives to just be this fragrance that the world is exposed to and we want them to see there’s a difference in this Christian life, that it’s a transformed way of living, Father. Help us to be different, to be motivated by love, to live by love. In Jesus’ name, amen.