Published: August 24, 2025 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Romans - Part 78 | Scripture: Romans 13:6-10
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6-10 to read that passage and ask Abe if you pray for the ministry of the word this morning. Romans 13 beginning in verse
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six. For because of this you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God devoting themselves to this very thing. Render to all what is due them, tax to
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whom tax, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. Owe nothing to anyone except to love one
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another. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall
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not covet. And if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a
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neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law. Let us pray. >> Jesus Christ, we are grateful we can be here. We're grateful
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we can leave this world for few minutes and try to focus on you. what you have done for us. God, we have people that have studied
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This uh passage uh has become very important for a certain segment of modern Christianity along with an associated passage in Romans chapter 6 where Paul says we are
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not under law but under grace. Many have pointed to this passage in Romans 13 and have come up with a with a
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simplification. No law but love. This uh it seems to have originated only about a hundred or so years ago from the disciples of Christ denomination
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and it's part of a a broader motto that that church developed and has spread to much of modern at least American Christianity. No creed but Christ, no
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book but the Bible, no law but love.
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No doctrine, no creed, no study, no book but the Bible, no rules, no law but love.
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Can we can we really simplify what the scripture says regarding both law and love into a short little diddy? No law
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but love. Would it have been better if God had appointed a disciples of Christ apostle instead of Saul of Tarsus who speaks a great deal about the law and
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also a great deal about love. It might be nice and it might be convenient to to do just that to simplify things into a little phrase.
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No, no creed but Christ. We we don't we don't go in for any type of learning or study. Just just just Christ. No book but the Bible. We don't need anybody's commentaries or any studies on Old
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Testament archaeology. We we don't need any of that to improve our understanding. We just need the Bible. And and we certainly don't need the law because we're under grace. So, no law
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but love. That kind of just cuts through like a hot knife through butter. Nothing to worry about. Let's just move on. Kind of reminds me of the the other brilliant
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theological statement, why can't we all just get along? You know, it doesn't work that way. And the scriptures pretty much point out
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page after page that it's not simple. It's not something that we boil down to a nice little alliteration and then move on from there. And I'm I'm fairly
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certain that and I've no well actually that's not true. We we did attend a a Christian church disciples in Oklahoma City and then I can assure you that it doesn't work there either.
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Okay. So we have to look at this passage verses 8 and and verse 10 where where he says he who loves his neighbor has
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fulfilled the law and then he begins love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law. Does he mean that the law then is
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abrogated? Is he saying that love replaces the law? Rather odd thing to say since he actually quotes it in this passage. So let's try to to to dig into what Paul
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is saying here. But but I want to start with a fundamental um principle to to get to set things straight. This is not a new idea that Paul is coming up with.
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This is not the law for Gentiles. Just love one another. Okay? This is certainly not out of the 1960s and the love culture. This is as old as
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scripture itself. But within the New Testament, of course, the Old Testament is what he quotes here. Leviticus 19:18, "You shall love your neighbor as
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Jesus says to the scribe who asks him, recorded in Matthew 22, "What is the greatest commandment?" greatest commandment?" Now, notice the scribe asks in the
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And it may seem that Jesus answers in the plural, but he doesn't really. He answers also in the singular, but he gives two laws. He says, "The first is
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that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your might. And the second is like unto it." Now, that word second makes me think
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makes us think that he's he's asked what is the greatest and he comes back with the first and second. That's not what he's doing here. He's asked what is the greatest and he comes back with what is
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the greatest. But the greatest is two-sided, and the second is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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James who is allegedly so contrary to Paul in doctrine says in his letter chapter 2 verse8 he says if you are fulfilling the royal
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law according to the scripture you shall love your neighbor as yourself you are doing well
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notice notice that in James 2 he doesn't mention you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and so on is Is he leaving that out? Is he saying that it doesn't really matter whether you go love God as long as you love each
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other. That's what matters. Many in the name of Christ have gone down that road that road to the point where it doesn't really matter what your attitude toward God is. What really matters what Jesus really
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was teaching is that men should love one another. There should be love among the nations and love among the ethnicities. And that's what that's what God wants.
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Are we leaving out the first when we focus on the second? Well, that then then so is Paul and so is James, but they're not any more than Moses in
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Leviticus 19. They're they're not leaving out the first. What they're actually saying is you're not doing the first if you're not doing the second.
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This is why Jesus was asked, who is my neighbor? They he they understood that scribe understood what Jesus was saying. And he was challenged by that because he
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thought that all he really needed to do is be right with Yahweh. Be right with Torah and then right with Yahweh and everything would be fine. And then this man comes, this rabbi comes and he says,
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"You must love your neighbor as okay. He's a lawyer. The scripture says he's a lawyer." Okay, loophole. Who then is my
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neighbor? So th this is again not two And so Jesus and James and here Paul are are pointing out the necessity of love.
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But do they then just abandon the law? Well again Jesus says I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. He goes on to say that not one jot or tit which was the smallest little marks of
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the Hebrew alphabet none of those no no letter would pass away until all is fulfilled. So the law was was was settled in heaven and earth and
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it was settled with Jesus. So what he said about loving your neighbor as yourself didn't take the place of law. James says, "He who speaks against a brother or judges him
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speaks against the law and judges it." That's going to come up again in Romans 14. Paul and James were not far apart. Not at all. It's easy to misunderstood
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what one says versus the other, but not in this regard. If one speaks against a brother, that's unloving. If one judges him, that is condemning. James says, "You speak against the law
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and you judge the law." So the law remains. Paul says in Romans 7 that the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
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And so Romans 13:es 8 and 10 and the disciples of Christ's motto are they're not a shortcut. They're not cutting the Gordian knot of
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the relationship between law and love. Love has not replaced law. Love does not
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take the place of law as if even redeemed men and women can easily understand what love actually is.
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That's what it really boils down to when you think of it. Okay, I'm just supposed to love. What does that mean? What do we know about love? We even know from the
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scriptures that that if our love is is proper then we love only because God first loved us. We know from Romans 5 that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy
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Spirit whom he has given us. In other words, love does not grow in native fallen human soil. And so when we replace law with love, we
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we act as if we know what love is. And yet Paul seems to think that there is an intimate relationship between law and love.
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and love. And we want to just break that relationship apart and say we don't need law if we love. Love indeed fulfills the law. But law remains the content of
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love. That is what he's saying. He's actually defining for us which that which philosophers have sought to define, poets have sought to define, romance writers have sought to define, and that
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is what is love. What is true love? Okay. Now, he goes on in verse 10 to say that it's doing no wrong.
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But even that's only half the story. And we'll get to that in a moment. It's not merely not doing any harm. It's even more than that. So Paul's layout here,
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his logic is holistic. He he really covers everything as he's moving in to kind of the culmination by the end of chapter 13. He has he has concluded what
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he started at the beginning of chapter 12 when he admonished all of us to be renewed in our minds to present our bodies as living
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sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God. That is what he's been going through all these two chapters. And he's going to bring it he's going to give the why in the in the concluding verses 11 through
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14. And then as he goes into 14 and 15, there's application application to the body of Christ, application to the world in which Christians live.
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And so he he starts out this little section by saying, "Render to everyone what is his due. Tax to whom tax is due. Custom to whom
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custom is due, fear to whom fear is due, honor to whom honor is due." Now what he's doing there is he's
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recognizing the reality of human society. And this is something that has taken a huge hit in the modern era. First from
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the philosophies that that were behind the American Revolution and then even more so those that were behind the French Revolution to we live in a time
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where we don't acknowledge hierarchy in society. We live in a time when we do not acknowledge that anything is due to
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others. Rather, Paul would say, rather than say, what is my right, we should say, what is your due? Imagine what a change that would make in
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the world. the world. He goes on elsewhere to talk about the the the integral hierarchy and structure of human society that only works if that
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which is due is paid. He says, "Children, honor your mother and father. Slaves, obey your masters.
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Let every soul be in subjection to the governing authorities. Wives, submit to your husbands." We've talked about this before in the context of this passage.
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This is a harmonious society. Now, keep in mind, Paul does not neglect the other side. Parents, do not exasperate your
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children. Masters, do not berate your servants, your slaves. Husbands, love your wives as Jesus loves the church. And what he has to say about governments will come
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out, I guess, later at the judgment. But they are to be the ministers of God to you for good. That is their duty. That is what we are due. So it goes both
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ways. But we don't think that way anymore. We think, what is my right? What is my right? What is due me? Paul says, "No, render to everyone what is their due." And he covers the whole
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gamut of our life either in Romans or Ephesians or somewhere. And he's basically saying what Jesus said when challenged about whether to pay tax to Caesar. And he asked for a daenarius. He
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says, "Whose image is on it?" And they said, "Caesar's." Now, keep in mind where he's headed. Whose image is on it? Well, then give it back to the guy.
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Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar and unto God that which is God's, whose image is on you, not Caesars's,
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not Caesars's, God's. And so Jesus says that Paul is simply expanding that. And I do think it it would be much bene much more beneficial to our lives even in an
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unbelieving world unbelieving world if by God's grace we would see some return to asking the question what is your due rather than what is my right
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what is my right is destructive of the harmony of human society it is certainly destructive of the harmony of church society what a different world it would
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be if we rendered to all what was due them. And what is the bottom line? Well, the common denominator of all of these different things as we read already in Romans 13
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Romans 13 is that man is created in the image of God. And God has appointed our neighbor as his recipient for the honor due him for
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the love due him. And so we're we're not necessarily honoring because the person is
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honorable. Wives are not submitting because the husband first loves them as Christ loves the church, the church, nor the other way around. Husbands are not called upon to love their wives only
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when they do submit. The only The only caveat that I can find in those relationships is when Paul says for
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children to obey your parents in the Lord, which again, as we talked about last week, goes back to the the fundamental rule that we must obey God
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rather than man. that while everyone has his due in the structure of society as God has providentially arranged it not
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only in the universal but in every single particular including your parents and your children as God has done that there is still one
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who is owed all and no one else can take his place and that is God but within that we honor God when we honor one
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another according to what is their due there is an order of loves as I said before there are order you could look at it this way there is an order of
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creditors as we look at our life and what we owe it's not all equal this was a common thought in the the kind of the heyday of
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British evangelism British evangelism where men were taught that you are to love the natives of subsaharan Africa more than you love your wife and
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children and many have been honored for abandoning their wives and their children to go off on the mission field. I don't see that. I don't see that there's that kind of a division where
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even the loves and the what we is what is due is even equal among the relationships. I think clearly the husband and wife relationship is supreme among all human relations.
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Second to that is the children and parent relationship. Second to that, there's nowhere that it says that when
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you have a child, the two shall become one. Eventually the child will leave and cleave to a husband or to a wife. And so
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there's this hierarchy. my allegiance to the government does not supersede my allegiance to my wife or to my children. So there is a hierarchy and yet there's
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still that fundamental perspective that each of us whatever state of life we're in owe to others a debt
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and that is fundamentally because we owe to God everything. Now the debts that that Paul mentions in verse 6, tax, custom, fear, honor, we
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can actually discharge. But there's one debt that he points out that is never paid off. And that is the debt to love.
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Robert Haldane says, "Love is beautifully presented here as a debt that is never paid. It is a debt that is ever remains due.
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Now, the title of this sermon might look odd. We're in Romans 13 and and it's titled Leviticus 19. But Leviticus 19:18 is one of the most significant short
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passages. It's actually a clause within that passage of any of certainly of the law and probably of the entire Old Testament. So what Paul does here
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when he says in verse 9, you know, he goes through, he lists most of the second table of the 10 commandments. You shall not commit adultery, you shall
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not commit murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. Now I do think perhaps it's significant that he leaves out honor your father and your mother, but he catches the rest of them and then
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he throws in a catchall. And if there be any other commandment, well, yeah, there are lots of other that's that is one of the greatest understatements in
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scripture. If there be any other commandment, they are all summed up in this saying, and he quotes Leviticus
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yourself. So, it's a summation. We know that from the passage. They're all summed up in this. And if you look at that passage, it is one of those in the holiness code
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where often in the verses you'll have what the people are to do and then the last one is I the Lord am holy. I am the Lord your God or simply in verse 19 I am
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the Lord. So everything we are called upon to do as I said earlier is related to the fact that he is the Lord. He is holy. He is the Lord our God. All of
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those things are a different way of looking at the same thing that we belong to him and he has assigned others to receive the honor that is due him. Now
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we we think we pay God homage directly when we sing when we pray. But the reality of scripture is that if we do not love our neighbor as oursel we do
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not love God. If we do not honor those whom God has placed in positions of honor or fear, then we do not honor or fear God.
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And we're going to get to some verses in John and James that say exactly that. Essentially, if you do not love your brother, don't say that you love God. Because how can you love God whom you do
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not see when you hate your brother whom you do? you do? This is a hard teaching. This is this is difficult. We we have convinced ourselves in the church that
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we can love God and hate our brother and hate our neighbor. And I include myself in that indictment. It just doesn't stand.
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Now, by God's grace, he he knows that. And the blood of Christ covers that, but it doesn't excuse it. His word has been given for our instruction, for our reproof, which is another way of saying
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for our rebuke. And so when we read it and we see, I'm not doing that. Well, we know that God disciplines the son and the daughter whom he loves. And we should receive the discipline and ask
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the Holy Spirit to convict us into the knowledge that we're we're not loving God if we're not loving our neighbor. It is not just a second commandment that we can do with as we please. It is the
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content of the first commandment by divine providence, by divine ordinance. The second commandment is the content of the first. How do you love the Lord your
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God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and strength? By loving your neighbor as yourself. Now, that's a simplification as well, but it's certainly a better one than no
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law but love. There's a lot more that we do to honor and fear and worship God, but we certainly don't do that without this. That's what I'm saying. I'm not
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trying to boil it down into some simplistic formula except to say that as we look at Leviticus 19:18, that is the sinquanon of obeying God. That is the
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without which nothing. No matter what we do on the mission field, no matter what we give, no matter how loud we sing or how much we pray, if we do not love our
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neighbor as ourselves, we are not loving God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. And that is what Paul is saying here.
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Now, in the context of Leviticus 19, you might, this is again, if you're a scribe, if you're a lawyer, you can go back to Leviticus 19, you can say, "Oh, well, Moses is talking about my
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countrymen, my fellow Israelites." Or you might say, "My fellow Christians." Well, okay. If you can do that and love your fellow Christians as yourself, then you're probably doing pretty well. But I
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think the history of the church shows that we're not really good at that either. So it's not much of a loophole. But we can say yes, that's that's actually what Moses was saying. He was he was referring to the children of
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Israel. Although you read further in the Torah and you find out that the Israelites were also commanded to have the exact same attitude toward the alien in their midst as to the fellow
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Israelites. So that little loophole is closed in a whole bunch of other places. But the one who slammed the door on it is Jesus Christ. What did he answer when asked,
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"Who is my neighbor?" He told a story about a good Samaritan. A Samaritan who was willing to help a
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Jew, considering that Jew to be his neighbor, even though the peoples were ineterate enemies of each other. cross-cultural,
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cross faith, cross faith, this Samaritan cared for the Jew and Saul to his recovery. There's your answer.
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As he's already, as Paul has already said earlier in this chapter, yes, we are to have Philadelphia love to the brethren, but also Phoenon,
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love to strangers. So, there's no there's no loophole. Even at four-way stops, there's no loophole.
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And I I really hope that you do not take what I'm saying in a condemning way, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And and I will
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freely admit to you that as Paul says, I have not yet arrived or been made perfect. This is a hard one. This is a hard one
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to preach to preach because the echo of physician heal thyself just resounds in my ears.
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I don't do this either, but I'm not going to going to evade it. I'm not going to try to whitewash it with love. We just need to love one another.
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I'm not going to try to find a loophole in the law that allows me to to hate people of different ethnicity, hate people of different political affiliation, hate people who
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who just aren't like me, who are struggling, who are poor, who are dirty, because, you know, then I read James and I find out the love of God is not in us
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if we have those attitudes. The Bible hits hard and sometimes we struggle with that. We think, why? We're we're in Christ. We're we're not under law. We're under grace. Yeah, but that
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grace means something. We we live in the love of God. We are accepted in the beloved. But Paul is saying, "Yes, but that love has content.
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It means something. It does something." And even as the children of God, we are disciplined by his word. And I hope that that's how you receive
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the word even though it does hit very hard. And so And so he finishes up here in this passage. He says, "Love does no harm to his neighbor
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and therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." the law." Well, that again can easily be misinterpreted as as long as I don't
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murder someone murder someone at the four-way stop, I'm loving them. But I think we know as the reformers and and then later the
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Puritans like to say that when the law forbids it enjoins the opposite. We say, "Oh, thou shalt not." And of
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course, some people's Christianity is full of thou shalt not. But every thou shalt not implies a thou shalt. When you read Exodus 20,
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read with it Matthew 5 and six. Read the the one sermon on the mount and then read the other and you find out that it is not sufficient s merely not to
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murder. You must not even hate in your heart. It it is not sufficient not to steal. You may not even covet in your heart. It
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is not sufficient not to commit adultery. You may not even lust in your heart. Now, of course, on the face of it, we know that the deepening of the meaning of the commandment drives us
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more and more to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. This is not some sort of intensified legalism where somehow by some mantra I end up loving the other
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drivers. Now that's not how it works. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. When I realize that every single occupant of every other car on the road is the imo
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day. And when I curse man, I curse God. That's what James says. That's what John says. That's what Paul is saying. That's what Leviticus 19:18 is saying. That we
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all bear the image of God, believer and unbeliever alike. Whatever our skin color, ethnicity, political or religious affiliation, we are the emoi.
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And we have been constituted in God's place to receive the honor do him. And when we fail to do that, we do dishonor to God.
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And so love is is not just a sweet feeling that we have. In fact, what happens just a just a final thought. What happens when we do adopt a policy
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no law but love? What happens when we separate the connection between law and love that is throughout this is Leviticus we're talking about. So it's
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throughout the Bible. Well, I think the first thing that happens is that love becomes a sentimentality.
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Love becomes separated from any moral framework. Love becomes a an emotion. And as an emotion and a sentimentality,
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the sin that still dwells in us then channels what we call love to those whom we consider lovable. Whether it be our children, whether it
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be our neighbors, people like us at the club. That's what we call love. It's just sentimentality. Thomas Shriner, I think, very wisely writes, "If love is cut from
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any commandment, any commandment, it easily dissolves into sentimentality." And listen to this. Virtually any course of action can be defended as loving.
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Any course of action can be defended as loving, even countenancing
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That's where we are in our culture. It's unloving to say anything mean about somebody. It's unloving to say that the way they're living life is contrary to the will of God and in rebellion to God.
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It is unloving to say that they're living an unholy life. It dishonors God when we honor the dishonorable. And so even the the statement that we
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should love all and owe owe no debt but to love one another, that does not rule out judgment, not condemnation, but judgment. Love is discerning.
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It is not sentimental. And that's why Paul links it to the law here. There is content to love and that content is the law because the law is
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the transcript of the holiness of God who above all is to be loved. First commandment. And so to avoid sentimentality, we must
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know the law. We've been learning about the law and how it is lawful if one uses uses it lawfully. Well, let let me say this is how we use it. At least one way
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we use it lawfully by loving lawfully by loving with content. By loving with moral framework and not arbitrarily or
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sentimentally, we still stand for the truth even in love. And so that's that's a challenge. That is a challenge.
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We are to do the positive of that which is prohibited in the ten commandments and elsewhere any other commandment if there be. But we also realize that what
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we are doing is to God alone. They are the recipients of that love to which we owe God. And we don't judge God
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by judging them. That is going to be the main theme in Romans 14 as we move ahead next time. We don't love God when we judge our brother or sister.
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So our love has content. Our love has moral fiber, but our love also has a positive result. And I think there's no better passage to end this message with than the love chapter. And I'm not going
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to read the whole thing, but just the the passage that really summarizes everything. Paul writes, "Love is patient. Love is kind and is not jealous. Love does not
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brag and is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. Does not take into account a wrong suffered. Does not
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rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Love never fails. Let us pray.
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Father, we confess or I confess an unlovingness
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myself and not so much as I love myself, but as I love you. And that is a sin. I know it to be a sin for which Christ died and yet it is still an offense. He
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grieavves the Holy Spirit that we can look upon one who bears your image and have evil thoughts and speak evil words
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evil words and sometimes even in the name of Christ. We put a religious v veneer on hateful speech and justify it as loving you or loving
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the church or loving our country or our traditions. But we're wrong. We are to love all men because they bear
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your image. your image. And yet we are to ever stand on the truth. Never countenancing sin. never approving of wickedness, never holding
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back on the righteous judgment of your word. And that is a challenge. How to do one and the other without excluding either or diminishing either. May we
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indeed learn to love according to the law and thus fulfill the law with love. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
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Well, please stand for the benediction from Hebrews 13.
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the the benediction that really speaks to the almost insurmountable challenge of loving according to the law. Now to the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of
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the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant even Jesus our Lord equip you in every good thing to do his will working in us that which is
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pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.