Romans 13:8-14 - "Put on Christ"
/“Put on Christ”
Romans 13:8-14
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
When it comes to following rules, are you the kind of person that strictly follows the letter of the law or do you tend to try to find a creative interpretation of the rules? When I was in middle school, my class went to a YWAM ropes course for team building exercises and the facilitator told us the rules of the challenge. Then, he said, that “creative cheating” was allowed, so anything he didn’t *explicitly* say was against the rules was fair game. I was enthralled with this new idea of creative cheating because I was a die-hard, legalistic rule follower and the idea of cheating without actually cheating was incredible to me.
One of my primary ways of understanding if I was being a good Christian or not was if I had followed all of the “rules” of being a good Christian. No swearing, dressing “appropriately”, not drinking at high school parties, and on the list went. Essentially, I was the kind of teenager who read Romans 13 and only paid attention to verse 13– the list of things not to do. I figured, if I could just avoid doing all the things that would make me a “bad” Christian, then I would automatically be a “good” Christian. Quite the legalist, no?
What I missed then, was the first part of today’s lectionary passage. I missed what Paul was saying about love. He says that all the commandments can be summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is why we avoid drunkenness, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy, as the NRSV puts it. Those can get in the way of our ability to love others. They are stumbling blocks, as he’ll say elsewhere. But, of course, I skipped right over all that to a list of rules that I thought I could follow because “love” seemed too simple and too hard to measure to be the real answer.
I find it a bit ironic that all these years later, I decided to do a short series on neighboring for my first few Sundays here, and then I’d head into the lectionary for the next few weeks. But of course, I didn't closely read all the passages ahead of time and so to my surprise, when I read the passage from Romans for this week, I realized it is almost exactly what we’ve been talking about for the last few weeks— “love your neighbor as yourself.” Here it is– that pesky love showing up again, despite my grand plans. When I read it, I got a bit nervous, to be honest because I thought “how am I going to say something new about loving our neighbors after 3 Sundays of it?” But my job isn’t really to say “something new” , it's to bring the scripture passage into conversation with us for today. So here we are with Paul’s command to love one another.
I see a theme in the New Testament readings this month, which is what it means to live a life of faith. We don’t want a faith that shows up for an hour on Sunday mornings and then has nothing to do with the rest of our lives, do we? We come because we believe, or perhaps we believe because we come, but then we must figure out, what does it mean not just to believe but to live out our faith? How can we live in such a way that our faith matters to our daily lives?
Love is something that takes our faith far beyond Sunday mornings. It sounds so simple, but we all know that loving people, even or especially the people closest to us, can be very hard sometimes! Lately, I’ve been going through a conflict with some people close to me that has been long or painful. It’s the kind of conflict that takes turns lying dormant in the background and rising to the forefront of my mind and life. This conflict has brought out my least gracious self and there are times when I imagine a forthcoming confrontation and I angrily think to myself, “What do I owe them? Nothing!” I am hurt and defensive and completely shut down. And then, I read Romans and Paul says, “Owe no one anything” and I think, “aha! I am justified in my anger and resentment!” and then I keep reading… “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Dang. That’s a gut punch if there was one.
What do we owe one another? It reminds me of one of the first questions ever asked in the Bible. In his anger and jealousy, Cain kills his brother Abel and when God comes looking for him, Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God doesn’t answer that question directly, but the rest of scripture does, in a way. From caring for the least in our society to loving our enemies to keeping the unity of the church, the Bible says over and over, “You are nothing but your brother's keeper! You owe each other love, and love is everything!” We belong to one another, whether we like it or not.
It’s such an important commandment and yet such a difficult one to do. Our pride, our anger, our grief, and our impatience can so easily get in the way of our ability to love others well. On days when it is hardest for me to love others, I imagine the metaphor Paul uses in the second part of our passage– “put on the armor of light… put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” I imagine myself “putting on Jesus” and then it is Christ who is loving through me. I don’t have to be strong enough or loving enough on my own, I just need to put on Christ and let him love through me.
I want you to think of who is your greatest challenge to love right now. Maybe it is a neighbor, a friend, or a family member. Maybe it is someone in your gym class or a coworker, who just drives you crazy. They don’t love you as you want them to and they hardly seem to deserve your love in return. When you next interact with them, I don’t want you to think, “okay how can I work harder at loving them?” Instead, I want you to imagine putting on the armor of light– Christ himself– and letting him love through you. How would Christ love them?
Friends, you don’t have to do the hard work of loving others on your own. Christ is with you every step of the way. When it feels impossible to love as Christ loved you, let him love through you. For love is the fulfillment of all the laws.
