I sat down on the sofa to have my quiet time with the Lord. I had finished reading Romans 12, so I read Romans 13, yet I saw parallels between both chapters in relation to this idea of being holy – set apart for God. I prayed, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” And, I read Romans 13:8-14 and then went back and reread Romans 12:9-21:
Love, for the Day Is Near
8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman 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 neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
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 armor 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.
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
My Understanding: As I considered both of these passages of scripture on the subject of love before God in prayer, the Lord directed me that these passages of scripture can be divided into two main categories – 1) Putting aside the deeds of darkness, and 2) Putting on the armor of light. Under the second category, I believe, are two main subcategories, which are 1) Love for God, and 2) Love for mankind. So, that is what I believe God would have me examine today.
Putting aside the deeds of darkness
The “deeds of darkness” are listed for us in these two passages of scripture – adultery (physical, emotional and/or spiritual), murder, stealing, coveting (a strong desire to possess something that belongs to someone else), orgies (multiple sexual partners at once), drunkenness, sexual immorality (any sexual sin or perversion of sex), debauchery (“Indulgence in sensual pleasures; scandalous activities involving sex, alcohol, or drugs without inhibition”), dissension (strong disagreement leading to fighting or arguing), jealousy (“feeling bitter and unhappy because of another’s possessions or advantages”), repaying evil for evil, taking revenge, overtaken by evil, and thinking about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature (i.e. the plotting and planning of evil deeds).
These passages in Romans teach us that we, as believers in Jesus Christ, need to put aside these deeds of darkness and to put on the armor of light. So, I believe the Lord Jesus would have me to look, first of all, at how we can put aside those deeds of darkness in our lives. I believe the first step is to recognize that what we are doing qualifies as “deeds of darkness,” i.e. the Holy Spirit’s convicting power must do its work in our hearts in revealing to us that what we are doing is wrong, it is sinful, it is against God and it hurts our lives and the lives of those we love and who love us. If we have the Holy Spirit of God living within us, as soon as we sin we should be under conviction. The problem lies in that many times we suppress or deny or excuse away our sin or we call it something other than what it is, and so we quench the Spirit’s working in our heart in convicting us of sin. So, we need to listen to the Spirit’s voice, and we need to obey what the Spirit (and God’s word) teaches us to do.
Once we have been convicted of our sin, then we must acknowledge that we have sinned through confession and repentance (turning away from our sin and turning toward God in faith and obedience). And, we must follow what the Bible teaches concerning how to put off the desires of the flesh and how to put on the Spirit of God in our lives. Sometimes our sins are compounded, i.e. we multiply them one on top of the other, sometimes as a means of covering or justifying or as a result or outgrowth of the original sin. For instance, if we have a root of bitterness in our hearts toward someone and we have not repented of that sin, that root of bitterness can lead to other sins, such as doing evil things against that person as a means of “getting even” or “making him pay” for what we wrongly think he or she did against us, in this case, or it could be he or she truly did something against us. So, sometimes we have to dig deeper than just the obvious sins on the surface and we have to ask the Holy Spirit of God to examine our hearts and minds to see what sins lie underneath that need to be reconciled before God and man before we can deal with the more obvious.
Then, we need to have a plan for how we are not going to give in to that sin again. A lot of sin is just our reactions to people and circumstances in our lives that has as its root selfish desires that we feel are not being met. So, we need to see that reality and truth if we are truly going to conquer sin in our flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. So, our plan must begin with this kind of soul searching and recognizing the root of all sin – selfishness. Next in our plan of action has to be recognizing the kinds of things that trigger us to sin. If we are watching movies and TV shows that glorify sin and self and the flesh and that glorify adultery, lying, cheating, stealing, etc., and this is what we are taking into our minds for our “entertainment,” then we can’t expect that we are going to be able to put aside those “deeds of darkness” in our own lives, because we are feeding the very things we are trying to rid our lives of. So, we must examine all influences in our lives against the word of God and see what influences need to be eradicated from our lives. Then, and only then, do we have minds and hearts that are ready to be filled with God and the things of the Spirit. We cannot put new wine in old wine skins. If our lives are filled up with the dirt of this world’s system, then there is no room for the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.
So, once we have acknowledged our sin before God (and man where appropriate) and we have called the sin what it truly is, and we have made that conscious decision to turn from that sin and to walk in faith and obedience before God, and we have done the heart and soul searching to see what needs to go in our lives so that we can walk in faith and obedience, then we can begin the process of the put offs and the put ons (See Ephesians 4). In this chapter in Ephesians 4 it teaches us that if our sin is stealing that we need to get a job, we need to do something useful with our hands, and we need to give to the poor. If it is lying, then we need to begin telling the truth. So, the plan has to be to replace our sinful habits with godly habits. If we don’t plan, and if we don’t purpose in our hearts to become something else, then when life’s disappointments come our way, the easy thing to do will be to just revert back to what we know and what is comfortable to us. If we just stop stealing or we just stop lying, then we are just thieves and liars in between jobs. We have to have a plan of action that not only puts off the deeds of darkness but that puts on the armor of light, i.e. we have to become someone else, not just a cleaned up version of our old self.
Putting on the armor of light - Love for God
This passage in Romans 13 says that we need to “Wake up from our slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” Slumber means sleep and sleep is the opposite of being awake, alert, and watchful. Many Christians continue in sin because spiritually they are still sleeping. They are not spending time with the Lord Jesus each and every day at his feet, hearing from him and then obeying what he tells them to do. They are allowing the influences of the world to crowd their minds and to push Jesus aside or in a back corner to where he is barely noticed or mentioned in their lives or conversations. So, the first thing we need to do is to “wake up” and pay attention to what we are doing with our lives and how that often stands in direct opposition to God and contrast to His Word. And, we do this, in part, by doing all that was mentioned in the section above in putting off the deeds of darkness out of our lives in order to make room for the armor of light.
Ok, then it is essential that we fill our lives with the things of God. Once we have listened to God, we have obeyed, we have put off the deeds of darkness, and we have made our plan (God’s plan), then we can begin to put on the armor of light. Again, this goes back to the teaching in Ephesians 4. We have to become something else. It is not good enough to just stop something bad, because if we don’t replace it with the opposite good, it will come back, because when it leaves it leaves a void in our lives that must be filled with something else, and not just business or activities, but something that stands in direct opposition and that actually replaces the sinful with the godly to where the godly becomes our habit and who we are. The opposite of darkness is light, and that Light is found in the person of Jesus Christ and in the truths of His Word. We must put on this light (holiness, godliness) as we put on a garment that we wear for all to see, for one of the meanings of the word “wear” is to bear, carry, hold, display and show. This is our fruit of the Spirit of God living within us and out through us in how we conduct our daily lives. We must literally hate what is evil and cling (cleave to, retain, hold to, attach) to what is good if we are truly to be able to put aside the deeds of darkness and to put on the armor of light, and the only way this can be done is to see ourselves and our deeds through the eyes of God (as he sees us).
Putting on the armor of light - Love for Mankind
When we are in a right relationship with God, we have put off the deeds of darkness, and we have put on the armor of light, and we are walking in the Spirit and not in the flesh, fulfilling its evil desires, then our lives will truly be transformed, not only in our relationship with God, but with man, because God’s Spirit will now be in control, ruling, in authority, and his love will then be able to flow out through our lives into the lives of others so that we truly love as Jesus loves. The fruit of this kind of godly love (not of the will of man) will be that we will: love our neighbors as ourselves, be devoted to one another, honor one another above ourselves, share with God’s people who are in need, practice hospitality, bless those who persecute us, live in harmony with each other (the kind that is of God), not take revenge, and we will love our enemies by feeding them and giving them something to drink.
We will be able to love others in the manner in which God loves us because his love will then be what rules our hearts instead of our selfish wills ruling and having authority over our lives. Then, we will know what true worship of God is when we love God and others in the way that means we forsake our evil deeds and we instead put on deeds of righteousness and God’s holiness in our lives through the working of the Holy Spirit within us.
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty / Heber / Dykes
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
Which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
Perfect in power, in love and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.
Sources: Romans 13 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2013&version=NIV1984
Romans 12 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2012&version=NIV1984
Web definition “debauchery” - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/debauchery
Web definition of “jealous” - http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=3&search=jealous
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