Step into the Light

It's election time – it's come quickly hasn't it?  I wonder if you've ever thought about what these campaign weeks must be like for the politicians and hangers on?

It's a time of possibility and hope, and of uncertainty and fear.  Those in power have a lot to lose; those in opposition have a chance to seize power.  Their future hangs in the balance.

So it's a time for putting your best foot forward, for looking stately, in control, for smiling broadly and making connections with people.  It's not a time for leaving your microphone on while you're having a gripe.

There's a real sense of purpose about everything they do in these last hours of the campaign.  It's amazing how an election clarifies their vision – their task is very clear and they pursue it ruthlessly, if not always effectively.

And this morning we're going to see that we need to re-shape our lives around coming events just as ruthlessly as those power seeking politicians.  This second half of Romans 13 tells that our lives must be re-shaped around the second coming of the Lord Jesus, and that means radical love for each other, and radical dealing with sin.  You might say a total revolution of how we view our lives.

Total Revolution is in fact the title of this whole series in Romans 12 - 16.  These weeks are all about a total re-imagining of our lives.  Rob kicked us off three weeks ago with a sermon from Romans 12 – and if you haven't heard that, I recommend getting on the website and listening to it because it was an excellent introduction to these last five chapters of Romans.

Just to fill you in very briefly, Paul wrote this book as a letter to the Christians in Rome.  The letter focuses on the theme of God's grace, or his mercy, in salvation:  Every person rebels from God and comes under God's wrath, his righteous anger.  But because Jesus died in the place of sinners, every person can be forgiven and escape God's wrath.  So, being made right with God isn't a matter of what we do, but simply of accepting what Jesus has already done for us.  Simple.

Only it's not quite that simple because people have got it into their heads that the only way to get right with God is to keep the law of the OT.  Like today when most people still think Christianity is about working to be good enough for God.

So, Paul has to explain and defend the idea that it's not about what we do, but all about what Jesus has already done for us.

That's what he spent the first 11 chapters explaining… Here at the end Paul shows us how the rubber hits the road.  God's mercy doesn't mean we can just do whatever we want.  Far from it.  God's mercy leads to a total revolution in how we live.

Last week we saw how that extends to how we think and act towards our government – we need to submit to authority and in a democracy that means working to influence and improve society through politics.  Again if you've not heard it, jump on the website and have a listen, and if you've not got a copy of the election briefing pick one up on the way out – they won't be much use next week!

But this week Paul comes back to one of the big ideas from chapter 12 – Love.  In chapter 12 he told us that love must be sincere, we're to love good and hate evil, and we're respond to evil with love.  That opened up the topic of politics – but he hasn't quite finished with love yet.  So we're going back to finish it off, and surprisingly the reason Paul hasn't finished with love is because he wants to re-open the whole issue of the law!  But it's not just law he's interested in, he's even more interested in the future.  So we'll split the passage into two sections that focus on these two topics – the law and the future.

Two points:

1)    We Owe it to Each Other to Love One Another Because Love Fulfils the Law

2)    We Love Because We Live in the Light of the Coming Day

So let's start with the first:

We Owe it to Each Other to Love One Another Because Love Fulfils the Law

8Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbour as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

Is Paul saying we can't borrow money?  No, verse 8 says 'let no debt remain outstanding'.  We can debate the problems and benefits of debt another day, the point here is that we shouldn't let our debts remain outstanding – we should pay what we owe, we should be good debtors.

And while we can pay off our debts in most areas, love is a debt that always remains.  We always owe a debt of love to each other.  So we always need to continue to love.

Love isn't like a mortgage that runs for 25 years and then it's paid in full.  And Love isn't like the gas bill that comes once a quarter and then we can forget about it.  It's a constant obligation that is never paid up.

And we're to love each other because love fulfils the law.  There's been plenty about the law in Romans: Christians aren't under the law, but under grace – but the law does teach us what God wants. God made us to live under his rule and authority, so God's law reveals the way we're designed to live.

So what the law teaches will be the best thing for us, it tells us how to live.  And the law can be summed up as 'love your neighbour as yourself'.  Paul's quoting the Law, the passage from Leviticus we heard earlier – the passage Jesus also quotes as a summary of the law. When you ask 'what does the law say about how to treat other people?' the answer is, 'it tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves'.

But how does love fulfil the law?  Well, the commandments command us not to act in ways that are 'unloving', like the examples Paul lists for us Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet.  Let's take the first as an example: Do not commit adultery.  Adultery – taking someone else's husband or wife – attacks another person's marriage by taking the intimacy and trust that belongs to them.

But isn't it true that it's easy enough to hold back from full on adultery while making every effort to see that other person's marriage fail, thinking you can step in afterwards?   You can keep the law while still doing harm.

But what does love do in the same situation?  Love recognises marriage as a precious and potentially fragile relationship that needs to be protected and encouraged and nurtured – if you truly love the couple you'll want their marriage to succeed, to be a joy and a delight.  So you'll pray for them, avoid undermining their relationship, avoid potentially compromising situations, avoid criticism and negative judgement and interfering and gossip and you certainly won't present yourself as an alternative to someone else's spouse.  Love seeks the good of the other.

And so it is with murder and stealing and coveting and all the other OT laws.

Love fulfils the law in a way that simply keeping the commandments doesn't.

And note love fulfils the law – it doesn't supersede the law so that love can be in disagreement with the law.  Love isn't an excuse for lawless behaviour.  God rules out things that are harmful to us, that are against his design for us, so breaking the commandments means doing harm.

Going back to sexual ethics for a moment - Lot's of people today say 'if we love each it can't be wrong'.  Love becomes an excuse for adulterous affairs, and for unmarried sex, homosexual sex, bigamous sex, pretty much anything sort of sex we can imagine.

But you can't fulfil the law by breaking it; love gets to the spirit of the law and enables us to keep it more , not less.

I've already illustrated this to some extent with 'do not commit adultery' but we're in election week so I can't help mentioning a shining example from our parliamentarians – the expenses scandal.

That was a classic case of keeping the rules while violating the spirit of the law.  Expense allowances are designed to enable our representatives to serve us in parliament without ending up out of pocket (an idea we got from Romans 13.6 by the way).

But the key words in that sentence are 'to serve us' –voted representatives are supposed to act for our best interests;  instead they treated the expense accounts as a top up to their pay, and they used them to get ahead in the property market.  They served themselves instead of serving the people they were supposed to be representing.

But it's just too easy to see other people's mistakes – do you see the challenge for us?

As a church we pride ourselves on being welcoming – tea and coffee, free gift for newcomers, welcoming conversation – and that's exactly as it should be, let's do it all the more, if you see someone standing on their own, go and talk to them, if you don't know someone you've seen a dozen times already, go up and introduce yourself, etc. etc.

But it's not enough to be merely welcoming.  We're not a social club, we're a family.  We're to bear each others burdens, to love sincerely, to go the extra mile… the continuing debt to love one another requires a deep level of commitment to each other.

That sort of commitment can be expressed in our small groups, showing hospitality, eating meals together, sharing possessions, gifts, talents, knowledge, wisdom; in helping each other to raise our children right, mentoring the young, directing teenagers and students, giving guidance to newly marrieds, or new parents, to using our gifts or skills to meet needs, to getting together to pray for each other, to genuine concern for people in need, to asking 'how are you going?' and expecting a genuine answer…

Not things the staff do, not things 'the church' does – things we all need to be doing for each other.  See we're not talking about warm fuzzy feelings, or massaging egos, we're talking about genuinely serving others needs before our own.

Now this might get a bit intrusive – we can't love deeply like this if we aren't prepared to let others into our lives, and they us.  That might be more than we bargained for when we walked in the door, but openness and honesty are the key stones of love.  Don't you want to be part of a family of brothers and sisters who genuinely care for your needs, who recognize when you're feeling down and lift you up, who challenge your failings and encourage your success?

That's what we want to become.  That's the challenge for us.  We always owe it to each other to love, because love fulfils the law, it's what we were designed for.

See there's a certain edge to what Paul's been saying that only increases as he goes on to the second section in our passage this morning.

1)    We love because we live in the Light of the Coming Day

11 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

'Do this understanding the present time…'  What does understanding the time do for us?  Well timing is everything isn't it?  Understanding the time tells us what we should be doing now.  If you want to get elected, you need to be campaigning hard.  Or, if your exams are coming up, now is the time to study, if you're hoping to look good on the beach this summer, now isn't the time for eating extra slices of cake.  If the contractions are coming every couple of minutes this might be the time to call the hospital.  If the once a year half price sales start next week, this isn't the time to buy your sofa.  You get the idea…

So what's the time?  What's to understand about our time?

Paul uses this striking image of night and day.  The night is nearly over, day is nearly here … He's talking about the end of life as we know it and the beginning of the kingdom of God.  But Paul wrote these words 2000 years ago and nothing much has changed since then – was the night really nearly over?

I want to briefly say three things.

First, the Bible makes it clear that there is nothing stopping Jesus coming back except his kindness, 2 Peter 3.9

9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God is bringing the end, and it will come suddenly, but God is holding back to allow time for people to repent – for sinners to be saved from hell by trusting in Jesus.

Second: It is nearly here in the sense that in Jesus some things that belong to the future have broken into the present – Jesus' death and resurrection are the beginning of the final judgement day.  So we talk about 'now but not yet' – some aspects of the coming kingdom of God are 'now', they're already happening, like Jesus seated at God's right hand and sending the Holy Spirit to live in us, and like our fellowship with each other, our gathering as the church; But some aspects of the coming kingdom of God are 'not yet', they're still in the future, like the resurrection/transformation of our bodies and our physical presence with God.

So thirdly, When will it arrive?  Bible deliberately doesn't tell us when Jesus is coming back – but it always says it will be soon.  Why not give us a set date? If we had a date would be tempting to delay cleaning up our act until he arrived!  - Like the election cycle, all three parties put something through my door promising to get the car park demolished and the new Trinity Square built, but where have they all been for the last thirty years?

Not knowing the date means we have to be always on guard, always preparing for his return, and the fact that it is close means we'e encouraged to actually look forward to it, it is coming, we do have hope, we can hold on, even in the darkest hour.

We might put it like this – if we think of time as like a road moving ever onwards into the future, then since Jesus death and resurrection we can picture a great gulf opening up just to the side of the road, a gulf that takes time into eternity, into the age to come.  Now, since Jesus, all time is always teetering on the edge of eternity, and one day all will slide off into the final judgement.  And all of us personally will also slide off into judgement, either when we die, or when the whole lot goes. So for all of us it's never more than 80 odd years away at the most, which in the context of eternity is the mere twinkling of an eye!

So Paul wasn't wrong, and it's not misleading to say that the day is near, it is, it's right on top of us, it could come at any moment.

So that means we live in the light of the day.

Day and Night is a powerful contrast isn't it – as different as night and day, light and dark.  And it's not just about the contrast, but night is limited and always gives way to the day.  The dawning of a new day brings hope and a fresh start.

You might think of perhaps of a vampire film, the heroes just have to get to sun rise and the threat will disappear, because vampires they can't bear the light of day.

The things that are associated with this present age are the things of darkness – Paul mentions orgies and drunkenness, sexual immorality and debauchery.  We don't associate these things with the day but with the night, and in the same way they aren't going to happen in the new creation, in God's perfect Kingdom, because they can't stand the light of day.

Those things aren't appropriate for the age that's coming, so take them off, you don't want to wearing that suit when Jesus comes back.

But there's more to this image – because different days bring different things and we prepare for them differently.  Tomorrow's a bank holiday, you might have a later night than you normally would on a Sunday.  But when you've got to get up and go to work in the morning, you don't stay up all night.

So Paul says take off the things of the night, but look at what he says we're to put on – verse 12 – we put on the armour of light.  What's the time?  It's the time of battle, like the vampire analogy, we're under siege – from sin, from temptation and evil desires, from the world that leads us astray, and from Satan who wants to see us fall.  So put on the armour of light so that you can fight.  Don't entertain thoughts of sin, don't idly play with temptation, fight for your life.

The point is that the things of this world are passing away – time is edging ever closer to that precipice into eternity.  The things that may seem appropriate to this age are not at all appropriate to the age to come.  In that day we will see the value of the Christian virtues like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self control.  Right now they seem oddly out of place.  The person who loves others gets burned, we all know that. The person who serves others, gets treated like a door mat and walked all over, we all know that.  The person who's gentle and self controlled get's overlooked for promotions.  The person who's kind get's ripped off.

Christian behaviour seems odd and out of place.  That's because we're still in the last hours of the night.  But that won't be the case when the new day dawns and God's kingdom comes in, in that day everything will be reversed, those will be the only appropriate ways to behave.  And the night is coming to an end.  So get ready for the day by putting on the right behaviour suit.

Now what will that look like in practice?

certain TV shows,heavy drinking, going out to get drunk, gambling, violence, going out to start a fight, pornography, - all these things are inappropriate for Jesus' people, the old cliché applies, would Iyou like to be doing this when Jesus comes back?

Jealousy and dissention – here's a more middle class, respectable sins; but just as unacceptable as drunkenness and orgies.  Suspect they'll be more our problems.

Alertness – easy to get complacent and fall into sin, or just into pattern of regular life and slowly forget that this isn't all there is.

Do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature – easy enough to day dream about how to achieve sinful ends.  Don't even entertain those thoughts.

There are sure to be more applications as we reflect on what Paul is saying and let these things sink into our hearts.

Simple passage, we owe love to one another, not just simple friendship, genuine, deep relationship. Can't have 200 best friends, but require a degree of openness and concern and involvement in each others lives, a degree of vulnerability and honesty.  And we look forward to the end of this age and the completion, the fulfilment of God's Kingdom, so we turn away from things that are unsuitable for that time, because they are all wrong for the day that is coming.