By J.D. Walt

Prayer of Consecration

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.

Jesus, We belong to you.

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Scripture

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:8–10 (NIV)

Consider This

Today’s text feels at best like a hard left turn and at worst like whiplash. We go from talking about submitting to the government and paying our taxes to all of a sudden talking about love. This is one of those places where the chapter break (which is not part of the inspired text) throws us off. We tend to think new chapter, new subject, but the chapter break actually interrupts Paul’s ongoing flow of thought. He’s talking about love for the whole of chapter 12 and then he turns to one of the difficult test cases for love—the dad-gummed government.

Paul is essentially saying submitting to the government and paying taxes is not ultimately about your compliance with the government for your own sake. It is about living for the sake of the good of the larger order. Paying taxes is not about you. It is about other people. And it is about God. In today’s text, Paul is pulling the thread of love back around.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

For the longest time in my life, I obeyed the rules, but not really. I obeyed them as long as people were looking, but left to myself—much of the time—all bets were off. You see, I had a self-focused orientation with law and rules. Take the speed limit laws as an example. 

Growing up, I would obey the speed limit if a) my parents were in the car or b) there was a policeman in the vicinity. Otherwise, I drove as fast as I could without feeling like I was endangering myself. In other words, I assumed the law was there for my good and because I knew I was an exceptional driver, I believed I could go faster without hurting myself. So, no harm no foul, right? 

Wrong! In retrospect, it never occurred to me that the speed limit laws were not about me at all but about other people. The law was designed to protect other people from me and me from other people while piloting a three thousand pound hunk of metal. The point? I had a self-focused orientation with the law. It never once occurred to me that it was for the sake of other people and the good of the larger order. 

My approach was to obey the law to the extent my interest was served which included a) compliance in front of the right people to maintain my reputation, while, b) getting where I wanted to go as quickly as possible. This is both self-interest and self-righteousness. The problem here is not with the law, it is with me. My fallen nature is to protect my self-interest while projecting my self-righteousness. Others do not come into that equation unless it is to deceive them. This is the deep, dark, and dastardly nature of sin. 

The gospel changes our nature from sin (i.e., self-interested self-righteousness) to love (i.e., others-interested relational righteousness).

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 

The purpose of the law is love. It is about God and other people. 

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”and whatever other command there may be, [you shall not speed] are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

The goal of life and the will of God is to become the love of God; which requires consecration (i.e., in view of God’s mercy to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice—Romans 12:1), leading to transformation (i.e., which is what happens when we “conform not to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind.”).

Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. 

Rather than a left turn or worse—whip lash, Paul just pushed on the accelerator of where he was going all the while. 

   

Prayer

Abba Father! Teach us to love until we have become love. We confess we are sinners and yet we profess faith we are becoming saints. Holy Spirit, would you fill us to overflowing with the love of God? Would you transform us by the renewing of our minds such that our love is not a fake self-interested self-righteous sham? Give us understanding such that our old perspective is undone and we begin to see everything through the lens of love—the blessing of neighbor and the good of the order. In other words, let Jesus be our vision. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.