“What Is A Christian?” Part 8” by Romans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
We are continuing, tonight, our current Series, "What Is A Christian?” Previously, we discussed the characteristic of agape` love in answer the question posed by our Series title, “What Is A Christian?” In one of the Daily Devotionals I read every morning, the following verse was referred to. I saw that it had application to our review and examination of the Christian's life and agape` love.
It is the account where a lawyer asked Jesus, “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 like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40).
I would like to point out before I defer to my trusted Bible Commentaries, that both the First and Great Commandment to which Jesus referred, and the Second Commandment that Jesus said was like unto the First have agape` love as the common denominator.
The Apostle Paul phrased the same idea in Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: 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 if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
We are going to look at both of these Scriptural passages tonight. First, as a Commentary to Jesus' identification of the Great Commandment, I would like to share with you the comments and insights found in the Sermon Bible:
“Matthew 22:37: The Mind’s Love for God. I. Is it not manifestly true that besides the love of the senses, and the love of the heart, and the love of the soul, and the love of the strength, there is also a love of the mind, without whose entrance into the completeness of the loving man’s relation to the object of his love his love is not complete?
Is your greatest friend contented with your love before you have come to love him with all your mind? Everywhere we find our assurances that the mind has its affections and enthusiasms, that the intellect is no cold-hearted monster who only thinks and judges, but that it glows with love, not merely perceiving, but delighted to perceive, the beauty of the things with which it has to do.
II. Christ bids His disciples to love God with all their minds. Is there not something sublimely beautiful and touching in this demand of God that the noblest part of His children’s nature should come to Him? "Understand me," he seems to cry, "I am not wholly loved by you unless your understanding is searching out after My truth, and with all your powers of thoughtfulness and study you are trying to find out all you can about My nature and My ways."
III. There are ignorant saints who come very near to God, and live in the rich sunlight of His love, but none the less for that is their ignorance a detraction from their sainthood. There are mystics who, seeing how God outgoes human knowledge, choose to assume that God is not a subject of human knowledge at all.
Such mystics may mount to sublime heights of unreasoning contemplation, but there is an uncompleteness in their love, because they rob one part of their nature of all share in their approach to God. Love God with all your mind, because your mind, like all the rest of you, belongs to Him; and it is not right that you should give Him only a part to whom belongs the whole.
Give your intelligence to God. Know all you can about Him. In spite of all disappointment and weakness, insist on seeing all you can see now through the glass darkly, so that hereafter you may be ready when the time for seeing face to face shall come. Phillips Brooks, Sermons in English Churches, p. 22.
The Beatific Vision. I. Our feeling of the beauty of goodness comes, as St. John tells us, from Christ, the Light who is the life of men, and lights every man who comes into the world; and that light in our hearts, which makes us see, and admire, and love what is good, is none other than Christ Himself shining in our hearts, and showing to us His own likeness and the beauty thereof.
But if we stop there, if we only admire what is good, without trying to copy it, we shall lose that light. Our corrupt and diseased nature will quench that heavenly spark in us more and more till it dies out—as God forbid that it should die out in any of us.
II. It is but a faint notion, no doubt, that the best men can have of God’s goodness, so dull has sin made our hearts and brains; but let us comfort ourselves with this thought—that the more we learn to love what is good, the more we accustom ourselves to think of good people and good things, and to ask ourselves why and how this action and that is good, the more shall we be able to see the goodness of God.
And to see that, even for a moment, is worth all sights in earth or heaven. Worth all sights, indeed. No wonder that the saints of old called it the "Beatific Vision," that is, the sight which makes a man utterly blessed; namely, to see, if but for a moment, with his mind’s eye what God is like, and behold He is utterly good.
No wonder that they said with St. Peter, when he saw our Lord’s glory: "Lord, it is good for us to be here;" and felt like men gazing upon some glorious picture or magnificent show, off which they cannot take their eyes, and which makes them forget for the time all besides in heaven and earth. And it was good for them to be there; but not too long. Man was sent into the world not merely to see, but to do; and the more he sees, the more he is bound to go and do accordingly.
St. Augustine, though he would gladly have lived and died doing nothing but fixing his soul’s eye steadily on the glory of God’s goodness, had to come down from the mount and work, and preach, and teach, and wear himself out in daily drudging for that God whom he learnt to serve, even when he could not adore Him in the press of business, and the bustle of a rotten and dying world. C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 1.
Matthew 22:37-38: There are two reasons why men do not love God. For one of them there are great excuses; for the other there is no excuse whatsoever. I. In the first place, too many find it difficult to love God, because they have not been taught that God is lovable, and worthy of their love. They have been taught dark and hard doctrines, which have made them afraid of God.
They have been taught ~ too many are taught still ~ not merely that God will punish the wicked, but that God will punish nine-tenths, or ninety-nine hundredths, of the human race. That He will send to endless torments not merely sinners who have rebelled against what they knew was right, and His command; who have stained themselves with crimes, who wilfully injured their fellow-creatures:
but that He will do the same by little children, by innocent young girls; by honourable, respectable, moral men and women; because they are not what is called sensibly converted, or else what is called orthodox. Often—strongest notion of all—they have been taught that, though God intends to punish them, they must still love Him, or they will be punished—as if such a notion, so far from drawing them to God, could do anything but drive them from Him.
Our love must be called out by God’s love. If we are to love God, it must be because He has first loved us. If we really believed that God who made heaven and earth was even now calling to each and every one of us, and beseeching us, by the sacrifice of His well beloved Son, crucified for us, "My son, give Me thine heart," we could not help giving up our hearts to Him.
II. Provided—and there is that second reason why people do not love God, in which I said there was no excuse—provided only that we wish to be good, and to obey God. If we do not wish to do what God commands we shall never love God. It must be so. There can be no real love of God which is not based upon the love of virtue and goodness, upon what our Lord calls a hunger and thirst after righteousness. "If ye love Me, keep My commandments" is our Lord’s own rule and text.
C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, p. 214. References: Mat_22:37.—H. N. Grimley, Tremadoc Sermons, p. 212; C. Taylor, Expositor, 3rd series, vol. vi., p. 363; S. Macnaughton, Real Religion and Real Life, p. 85; E. Bersier, Sermons 2nd series, p. 176. Mat_22:37-40.—H. W. Beecher. Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 229; see also Plymouth Pulpit, 10th series, p. 7. Mat_22:39.—G. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons, p. 189; C. Kingsley, The Good News of God, p. 41.
The Preacher's Homiletical adds to this, “A “legal” snare.—Once more we find the Pharisees laying a word-trap for the Saviour. They appear to have been stimulated to this fresh effort by hearing that the Sadducees have been silenced (Mat_22:34). How sweet the hope of at once confounding Him and distancing them! They appear also to have learned wisdom by their previous experience.
Not now about the rule of the Romans (Matthew 22:17), but about the law of God do they ask. Not this time in the doubtful company of the Herodians, but by the lips of one of themselves—and he, apparently (Mark 12:32-34), a man of well-deserved repute as an interpreter of that law—do they speak. Very profound, accordingly, and unusually difficult is the question they ask. Equally complete, however, for all this, the reply they receive.
I. The special difficulty of the question asked seems to have lain in more matters than one. It lay, first, in the extreme width of its scope. “Which is the great commandment in the law?” How exceedingly ample the field surveyed by that question! Who can take it all in at one time? It is like asking a man to point out off-hand the most important star in the midnight sky.
If he is looking to the north, he is turning his back on the south. If he is giving special attention to this portion he is giving none at all to all others. Who but God can “count the number of the stars?” (Psa_147:4; see also Num_23:10). Not less, next, is the difficulty involved in the exceeding variety of this field. “One star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:41).
So also do the different groups of enactments to be found in God’s law. On how many sides, and in how many ways, do they affect the duty of man? Political and ecclesiastical, ceremonial and moral, domestic and foreign, private and public, social and civil—these are only some of the aspects under which they look at our life. Who can arrange them so that they can all of them be, as it were, looked at at once?
And who, without doing that, shall be sure of being able to distinguish and sever from amongst the whole manifold multitude, the very greatest of all? The bewilderment, in short, is hardly less than the magnitude of the task. Lastly, the question is difficult—most difficult of all indeed—because of the peculiar sanctity of this field. However varied these many enactments in some respects, there was one vital point in regard to which they were all exactly alike.
By the pious Israelite they were all rightly regarded as having the same supreme majesty behind them. Whether greater or less in man’s fallible judgment, they were all spoken by God. “Thus saith the Lord,” “I am the Lord,” are declarations to be found repeatedly in the letter, and always in spirit, in every page of that “law.” Who, therefore, can undertake safely to point out differences between its enactments?
And who, above all, shall so do this as to put his finger on that which is greatest of all? The very attempt to do it involves peril of the direst possible kind. Hence, not improbably, indeed, one principal reason of proposing it to the Saviour. With His pretensions He ought to be able to settle even such a difficulty as this.
II. The Saviour’s reply to this insidious and perilous question consisted of two principal steps. In the first of these He, practically, narrowed the field of inquiry. And did so, most wisely, by showing simply how God Himself had done so already. As the “lawyer” who had asked this question very well knew, God had put one portion of that multitudinous and manifold collection of statutes and ordinances known by the name of the law, as it were by itself.
He had done so, partly, by the special place and manner of its original promulgation (Exodus 20:1-18); partly by the special care taken by Him on that occasion to restrain His utterance to that portion alone (Deuteronomy 5:22); and partly by the fact that He Himself had then written that portion alone with His own finger on two tables of stone (ibid.).
This being so, the Saviour will now, as it were, follow this lead. What God Himself has thus visibly exalted above the rest of His law, He will treat as so being. And will confine Himself, therefore, to searching in it for that which is greatest of all. In the next place, the Saviour, taking up this portion alone, proceeds to explain its structure and force.
Briefly, its “structure” is this: that it consists of two groups. That the first group teaches man as a creature to love his Creator; and teaches him also that he cannot do this too much. That the second group is also a commandment to “love,” and, therefore, “like” to the “first.”
That it differs from it, however, in teaching man, as God’s creature, to love his brother man as being the same; and to do so, therefore, with just the same degree of love as he bears to himself. The “force” of this analysis, it will be seen, therefore, is of a two-fold description.
On the one hand it shows us that one of these tables or groups of commandments does necessarily and from its very nature come before the other, both as to order and importance; and is, consequently, so far the “greater.” On the other hand, it shows us that the second of these is so essentially a sequel of, as to be almost a part of, the former; and, therefore, is, so far, not to be regarded as “less.”
And so, on the whole, therefore, that in these two in combination, we have the greatest of all. And this is the true teaching, moreover—so the Saviour adds in conclusion—of all teachers who have ever been sent from God to teach on this point. Judge for yourselves if either “Moses or the prophets” have taught other or more! (Matthew 22:40).
See therefore here, in conclusion:—1. The wisdom of Moses as a teacher.—Was there over such a summary
of duty as that given through him? 2. The wisdom of Christ as a Teacher.—Was there ever any one who fathomed that summary as it was fathomed by Him? 3. The perfection of Christ as a Saviour.—“By the obedience of One many were made righteous” (Romans 5:19).
See here how well that “One” understood what He undertook to obey. We may well believe, therefore, that He honoured it in practice to an equal degree. Could He, indeed, have understood it so perfectly if He had not obeyed it in full?
HOMILIES ON THE VERSES: Matthew 22:36. The law of love a natural force of humanity.—It will help us to understand this principle if we first distinguish it from some other principles of our nature. I. It is to be distinguished from the principle of will, and in some regards is indeed to be opposed to it. All human lives that are following the law of will, of self, of individualism, are breaking life’s true law, and missing life’s true aim.
II. The law of love is to be distinguished from the principle of knowledge. Knowledge is not a primary fact, and can never become an ultimate law, of life. “Knowledge shall vanish away, but love never faileth.”
III. The law of love is wholly opposed to the spirit of fear. Fear is not natural to man. Fear only came to man when tempted by knowledge. He transgressed the obedience of love, and having transgressed he hid himself from the presence of God. And Adam represents us all. We hide from God because we have sinned.
When we kneel at the foot of the cross, and feel that because God loves us we must love God, we learn again the law of life, the law of being: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,” etc. God has made you to love Him, to have communion with Him. And in that perfect communion the law of God is not broken.
And that law is, that with all your heart, with all your being, with all the powers that you have, shall you love God. Then reason shall be linked to heaven, and affection linked to heaven, and conscience linked to heaven, and idea and imagination and all the powers of mind and soul linked to heaven by the eternal principle of love.—Archdeacon Watkins.
Matthew 22:37-40. Love to God and man.— I. These two principles from which our Lord tells us all religion flows, must be consistent with one another; otherwise they could not both be principles of the same religion.
II. Nothing is, or ought to be, esteemed religion that is not reducible to one or other of these principles.—Bishop Sherlock.
Matthew 22:37-38. The first and great commandment.—Our Lord having to do with a proud hypocrite, puffed up with a conceit of his own righteousness, doth so answer him, as He layeth out the spiritual meaning of the law, that the man might see how short he came in the obedience thereof, and so doth teach us:
1. That the commandments are not obeyed except the obedience spring from love. 2. The commandments are not satisfied except the whole man, wholly, in all things, obey with his whole mind, affections, and the strength of all the powers of soul and body.
3. To love God is the greatest commandment, because it is the fountain of the obedience of all the commands, and also because all the commands of the first table are but branches, and evidences in part of our love to God.
4. The great commandment is not fulfilled except a man in the sense of his shortcoming in love to God, seek for reconciliation with Him, enter into a covenant of grace with Him, and make use of His friendship, as of a reconciled God.
5. The commandment of loving God with all our might and adhering to Him as reconciled unto us and made ours by covenant, is first to be looked unto, as being of greatest consequence (Matthew 22:38).—David Dickson.
Let's move on, now, to review and examine the other relevant verse cited in the introduction: Romans 13:8-10: “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: 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 if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Alexander MacLaren comments on this: “The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. The first inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the second begins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty, the near approach of ‘the day.’ The light of that dawn draws Paul’s eyes and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian purity as befitting the children of light.
I. Romans 13:8-10 sets forth the obligation of a love which embraces all men, and comprehends all duties to them. The Apostle has just been laying down the general exhortation, ‘Pay every man his due’ and applying it especially to the Christian’s relation to civic rulers. He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it the obligation of loving every man.
That love is further represented as the sum and substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together two thoughts which are often dealt with as mutually exclusive,-namely, love and law. He does not talk sentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the like, but lays it down, as a ‘hard and fast rule,’ that we are bound to love every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has it, ‘the other.’
That is the first plain truth taught here. Love is not an emotion which we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select its objects according to our estimate of their lovableness or goodness. But we are bound to love, and that all round, without distinction of beautiful or ugly, good or bad. ‘A hard saying; who can hear it?’ Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not get his due from us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the debt of love is never discharged. After all payments it still remains owing.
There is no paying in full of all demands, and, as Bengel says, it is an undying debt. We are apt to weary of expending love, especially on unworthy recipients, and to think that we have wiped off all claims, and it may often be true that our obligations to others compel us to cease helping one; but if we laid Paul’s words to heart, our patience would be longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shut hearts and purses against even unthankful suitors.
Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt (debitum, ‘duty’ ) of love includes all duties. It is the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch as it will secure the conduct which the law prescribes. The Mosaic law itself indicates this, since it recapitulates the various commandments of the second table, in the one precept of love to our neighbour (Lev_19:18). Law enjoins but has no power to get its injunctions executed.
Love enables and inclines to do all that law prescribes, and to avoid all that it prohibits. The multiplicity of duties is melted into unity; and that unity, when it comes into act, unfolds into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. Love is the mother tincture which, variously diluted and manipulated, yields all potent and fragrant draughts. It is the white light which the prism of daily life resolves into its component colours.
But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doing no ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly negative, and that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to us all. But do we love ourselves only negatively, or are we satisfied with doing ourselves no harm?
That stringent pattern of love to others not only prescribes degree, but manner. It teaches that true love to men is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, and thwart, and always must seek their good, and not merely their gratification. Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of working no ill to others, will find it positive enough.
We harm men when we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil. Surely, nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching on the Christian duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christian puts a stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is working ill to his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that is dishonest, shirking payment of a plain debt.”
Finally, I will allow Matthew Henry to add his thoughts to these verses: “Owe no man any thing; that is, do not continue in any one's debt, while you are able to pay it, further than by, at least, the tacit consent of the person to whom you are indebted. Give every one his own. Do not spend that upon yourselves, which you owe to others.” The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again, Psalm 37:21. Many that are very sensible of the trouble think little of the sin of being in debt.
II. Of charity: Owe no man any thing; opheilete - you do owe no man any thing; so some read it: “Whatever you owe to any relation, or to any with whom you have to do, it is eminently summer up and included in this debt of love. But to love one another, this is a debt that must be always in the paying, and yet always owing.”
Love is a debt. The law of God and the interest of mankind make it so. It is not a thing which we are left at liberty about, but it is enjoined us, as the principle and summary of all duty owing one to another; for love is the fulfilling of the law; not perfectly, but it is a good step towards it. It is inclusive of all the duties of the second table, which he specifies, Rom_13:9, and these suppose the love of God. See 1 John 4:20.
If the love be sincere, it is accepted as the fulfilling of the law. Surely we serve a good master, that has summed up all our duty in one word, and that a short word and a sweet word - love, the beauty and harmony of the universe. Loving and being loved is all the pleasure, joy, and happiness, of an intelligent being.
God is love (1 John 4:16), and love is his image upon the soul: where it is, the soul is well moulded, and the heart fitted for every good work. Now, to prove that love is the fulfilling of the law, he gives us, 1. An induction of particular precepts, Romans 13:9.
He specifies the last five of the ten commandments, which he observes to be all summed up in this royal law, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself - with an as of quality, not of equality - “with the same sincerity that thou lovest thyself, though not in the same measure and degree.” He that loves his neighbour as himself will be desirous of the welfare of his neighbour's body, goods, and good name, as of his own.
On this is built that golden rule of doing as we would be done by. Were there no restraints of human laws in these things, no punishments incurred (which the malignity of human nature hath made necessary), the law of love would of itself be effectual to prevent all such wrongs and injuries, and to keep peace and good order among us.
In the enumeration of these commandments, the apostle puts the seventh before the sixth, and mentions this first, Thou shalt not commit adultery; for though this commonly goes under the name of love (pity it is that so good a word should be so abused) yet it is really as great a violation of it as killing and stealing is, which shows that true brotherly love is love to the souls of our brethren in the first place.
He that tempts others to sin, and defiles their minds and consciences, though he may pretend the most passionate love (Proverbs 7:15, Pro_7:18), does really hate them, just as the devil does, who wars against the soul.
2. A general rule concerning the nature of brotherly love: Love worketh no ill (Romans 13:10) - he that walks in love, that is actuated and governed by a principle of love, worketh no ill;
he neither practises nor contrives any ill to his neighbour, to any one that he has any thing to do with. The projecting of evil is in effect the performing of it. Hence devising iniquity is called working evil upon the bed, Mic_2:1. Love intends and designs no ill to any body, is utterly against the doing of that which may turn to the prejudice, offence, or grief of any.
It worketh no ill; that is, it prohibits the working of any ill: more is implied than is expressed; it not only worketh no ill, but it worketh all the good that may be, deviseth liberal things. For it is a sin not only to devise evil against thy neighbour, but to withhold good from those to whom it is due; both are forbidden together, Proverbs 3:27-29.
This proves that love is the fulfilling of the law, answers all the end of it; for what else is that but to restrain us from evil-doing, and to constrain us to well-doing? Love is a living active principle of obedience to the whole law. The whole law is written in the heart, if the law of love be there.”
There is more to consider, review and examine where love, as a characteristic of a Christian, is concerned. God willing, I plan to continue the facet of love as it answers the question this Series poses, “What Is A Christian?” I invite all of you who are hearing my voice or reading my words to join me as we continue at this same place and time next week.
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “What Is A Christian? Part 8”
This Discussion was presented “live” on February 14th, 2024.
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