Romans 13:8-14

Love Fulfills the Law
8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not covet," [a] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." [b] 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The Day Is Near
11 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has already 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 armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing 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.


Dig Deeper
If you know me at all well, you probably know that I just don’t sleep a whole lot. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to sleep more it just doesn’t seem that my body is designed to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. One of the things that this has allowed me to do, though, is to get up very early in the morning and begin my day. I can begin my work day or some Bible study or even go for a nice run. From time to time, I have been able to leave out of the house at about four in the morning to go for a run for a couple of hours which is always a little interesting. Most people are still sleeping at that time and so it’s pretty quiet but occasionally I will see people coming home who have obviously been out all night and are just heading to bed. Admittedly, some people think I’m crazy to be getting up and doing such activity in what they believe is still the middle of the night. But for me, I love it. I can begin my day hours before most people do. And whether you are still sleeping, just coming home from a night of partying, or your up and active, the fact is that the sunlight is coming. Why wait until later in the morning when the sunlight is fully out to start being active? So much more can get accomplished when people get up early and begin to live as though the sun has already come and the day has already started (I will point out that I’m simply making a point not condemning those that prefer to sleep in a little and get their work done at other times of the day).

So is my point with all of that to get other people up and at ‘em and going out for 4 AM runs? No, well maybe that would be good, but that’s not my primary point. The point is that in my mind, if I’m awake, rather than laying around and still trying to cling to the night time, why not get up and start anticipating the coming of the day. This is precisely, in a spiritual manner, what Paul wants Christians to understand. We might still be living in the darkness of the present age, surrounded by evil and acts that belong in the night, but it is high time for Christians to wake up and start living as though the sun has already come, because the Son already has come. Christians need to start living by the reality of the future rather than the shadows of the present. When we do this, we not only prepare ourselves for the age to come but we also demonstrate loud and clear for a world stuck in the dark what it looks like to enter into the present.

As Paul continues to urge the Christian community towards resurrected living he has had two underlying themes about this type of approach to life. One is the cause of this type of living and one is the means. He has already specifically stated the means to this sort of living which is the thread that runs throughout the entire section stretching back to chapter 12 and moving on to 15:22. The means by which Christians live resurrected lives is through being living sacrifices (12:1). Only when we die to ourselves and go through the constant process of transforming our minds can we begin to grab hold to the life of the age to come that is available to us in the Messiah. This is what Paul means in verse 14 when he speaks of clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is when we do this and keep becoming like Christ that we keep our focus on being transformed, then we can leave behind the desire to fulfill the sinful cravings of the flesh. We are transformed in Christ alone. But that is the means. The cause, to which Paul has constantly alluded but only now mentions explicitly, is to realize that the age to come has broken into the present age through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

From the opening verses of this letter, Paul declared that his gospel was the announcement of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was through this gospel that the righteousness, or covenant faithfulness, of God has been revealed. But something else happened as a result of the resurrection. The life of the resurrection age became more than just a future hope like it had been for Old Testament Jews, it could be grasped now in the life of Christ. Christians can escape the clutches of the darkness of the present age and begin to anticipate the life of the resurrection age right now in our lives and our Christians communities. Churches should not be places where people find a bunch of dour and serious souls that do little good in the real world because we’re just waiting to escape from this God-forsaken place and “go home.” What a non-Christian way of thinking. And it should make us think twice about ever calling someplace “God-forsaken” again. Churches should be places of joy and celebration. Places where the light and beauty of the future age are already beginning to take shape. Because the light of the future age is coming just as surely as the sunrise is coming each morning.

This is the connection between resurrection and how we should live now. Resurrection is not just something that Jesus did in the past nor is it just something that will happen for those in him in the future. It is a reality that we are to embrace and live right now. The hour has already come for us to start living out God’s reality in full view of the world. In fact, Paul says that salvation is “nearer now than when we first believed.” Some have looked at Paul’s words here and similar sentiments elsewhere and taken the mistaken impression that he was wrong because he fully expected Christ to return and the resurrection to be completed within his lifetime. Others point to the judgment that God enacted through the Roman army during the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD and say that this was the event in history that Paul was referring to and that all prophecy including the resurrection of believers (which they reduce to simply a spiritual event and nothing more) has already taken place. Certainly that event brought to an the final days of the Old Covenant and it foreshadowed God’s final judgment at the physical return of Christ but it was not in itself that moment. Just because Paul believed the hour for the age to come to appear fully was near doesn’t mean he was wrong. The Old Testament, Isaiah in particular are full of passages that declare that the Lord’s salvation through the Messiah is near yet Isaiah was writing a full seven hundred years before Christ (Isa. 46:13, 51:5; 56:2). When the biblical writers spoke of God’s actions being near or at hand or even coming soon this wasn’t so much a time marker as it was a statement that it was in the bank. If God made a promise it would happen and the the time of that happening was imminent. Paul’s words, then, remind us that we might not know the time of Christ’s return but we know that it will happen and should order our lives and communities in such a way to anticipate and be prepared for that event at any time.

When we clothe ourselves with the new life of Christ through the process of being living sacrifices and begin to live the life of the age to come now, we will begin to yearn for the behaviors that are consistent with the values of that age. We will begin to live as though the sun has risen. Behaviors that are increasingly reserved for the dark will no longer be as appealing as they once were. As the wonderful old hymn declare, “and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” Paul is speaking metaphorically of course when he refers to the deeds of darkness because, although things like drunkenness and carousing are most often done at night, other behaviors such as dissension and jealousy can just as easily be committed during the day. Paul’s imagery here makes the point not that these things are only literally done in the dark but that they are behaviors of the dark and fallen present age. Christians have entered into the door of Jesus Christ and have walked into the glorious light of the age to come. Our task is to begin to take hold of that light in our lives.

Christians, then, should live lives that reflect who they are and in what age they live. They should do their best to not be caught in situations that could bring disrepute to the Christian community. The only debt that they should have, says Paul is the debt to love one another. It is in loving one another that we can finally fulfill the law. It is important to note that the love that we have that fulfills the law comes from God (1 Jn. 4:19) and not from our own effort. Yes, love fulfills the law but we can only connect with God’s love when we die to self and enter into the life of the Messiah. One that is in Christ does not, in a sense, have to be worried about individual aspects of the law. If you love your wife and other people, no adultery will be committed. If you love your neighbor you will not murder him, and so on. It is the love that flows directly from God’s resurrection age that pours into our lives and, as we embrace it through the power of the Spirit, enables us to finally fulfill the law and be the people of God that will shine as a light to the world.


Devotional Thought
Do you view your Christian life as anticipating the age to come and living by the values of that age even though we are surrounded on all sides by the present age. What is the result of living by the values and principles of the age to come when it comes to things like the way you serve others, forgive, love your fellow Christians, etc.?