Let Us Walk Properly

Romans 13:8-10 ESV

 

“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

 

God is love, and love comes from God, therefore love will align with God’s divine character and will for all mankind. This love will prefer what God prefers, which is what is holy, righteous, godly, morally pure, honest, trustworthy, faithful, kind and considerate of others. This love will submit to God as Lord, it will obey him, and it will forsake sin, as God commands that we must do in order to be followers of Jesus Christ (Luke 9:23-26).

 

Therefore, those who love with this love will not murder, hate, commit adultery, be sexually immoral, tell lies, steal from others, and be abusive towards others, in practice. For love does no wrong to a neighbor (all humans). And so this means that if we love with this love we will not laugh at, join in with, approve of, nor stay silent about deliberate and habitual sin among the believers in Jesus Christ, but we will speak the truth, in love.

 

So many people who call themselves Christians have a worldly and not a godly concept of love, and they are even being taught in the church to not talk to anyone about sin, but to stay in their own lane, and to not offend anyone with the truth of the gospel. And they are being encouraged to only say what makes people feel good about themselves, even if they know that they are living in sin while professing faith in Jesus Christ, and this is wrong.

 

Many are teaching that we are not to share the gospel with others verbally, but we are to just “be the gospel.” Now, it is true that we must be living the gospel and not just speaking it, but we need to be speaking it, too, for how else will they hear if we do not speak it? And what they usually mean about “being the gospel” is very worldly, for it has to do with just being “good deed doers” and having people over for movies and popcorn, etc.

 

Now, it is great to do good to others, and it is great to have neighbors over to your house for a meal, but if it excludes us ever talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ out of fear we might offend people with the gospel, then that is wrong. That is the opposite of loving others. For if we know the way of salvation but we keep it to ourselves out of fear of others not liking us, then that is not love. That is utter selfishness, which is the opposite of love.

 

Romans 13:11-14 ESV

 

“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

 

When this says that our salvation is nearer now to us than when we first believed, it is letting us know that our salvation is not a one-time thing in our lives, then we live our lives, and then one day when we die we go to heaven. Salvation is progressive. We are saved (past), we are being saved (present), and we will be saved (future) when Jesus Christ returns and our marriage to him is consummated and our salvation is then complete.

 

And our salvation is conditional on us doing the will of God. But, yes, our salvation is God’s free gift to us, but “free” does not mean that Jesus does it all and that we do nothing. “Free” means he paid the price so that we could have such a great salvation, but our salvation is not just a “get-out-of-jail-free-card.” Our salvation is deliverance from our slavery (addiction) to sin so that we will now be slaves of God and of his righteousness (Romans 6:1-23).

 

Jesus saved us from our sins so we would no longer live in slavery to sin, so we would no longer be under sin’s control, and so we would no longer obey sin’s lustful desires. And he transformed us so we would now be under Holy Spirit control, and so we would now be his servants and slaves to him and to his righteousness, and so we would now walk in obedience to him and to his commands, in surrender of our wills to his will for our lives.

 

For, if we continue living in deliberate and habitual sin, making sin our practice, and if righteousness and obedience to him are not our practice, then we will not be saved in the end, and we will not inherit eternal life with God. For you see our salvation is progressive sanctification and if we do not stay the course, and if we return to living how we lived before we professed faith in Jesus Christ, and if we do not repent, we don’t have salvation.

 

And this is why this is telling us here to wake up from our slumber, for this is talking of a spiritual awakening, a revival. And it is why it is instructing us to cast off the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light (God’s spiritual armor and disciplines). And it is why this is instructing us in the kinds of things that we need to be casting off, such as sexual immorality, sensuality, drunkenness, and the like.

 

And this is why we are being strongly encouraged here to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, to make him Lord of our lives, to walk in his steps, to do what he says, and to apply his godly principles to our everyday lives, etc. We must die with him to sin, not just once, but daily, and daily we must walk with him in accord with his commands. He must truly be King of our lives and we must deny self and choose to follow him in his ways.

 

Then, we will make no provision for the flesh because we are living for the Lord, for if we walk by the Spirit we will not gratify the sinful cravings of the flesh. But if we are still walking in the flesh, still doing things our way, thinking we can manage our own lives, then we are bound to fall. For we can’t walk in sin and in holiness at the same time. We are either slaves of sin or slaves of God but we can’t be both.

 

This is not claiming that we will now be absolutely perfect, though. But what it is saying is that Jesus needs to be our Lord and master, our lives need to be surrendered to him, he needs to be the one ruling our lives, not us, and we must be walking in his ways and in his truth, daily denying self and putting sin to death in the power of God’s Spirit who lives within us. For, if we walk by the flesh, we will not inherit eternal life with God.

 

[Jn 8:31-32,51; Jn 14:15-24; Jn 15:1-12; Rom 2:6-8; Gal 6:7-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14,24; Rom 11:17-24; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; Col 1:21-23; 2 Tim 2:10-13; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb 5:9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:1-5; 2 Pet 1:5-11; 2 Pet 2:20-22; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Matt 7:21-23; 1 Jn 2:3-6,15-17,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10,24; 1 Jn 5:2-3; 2 Jn 1:6; Jas 1:21-25; Eph 4:17-24]

 

Pie Jesu

 

Songwriter: Andrew Lloyd-Webber

 

Merciful Jesus,

Pie Jesu,

 

Who takes away the sins of the world

Qui tollis peccata mundi

 

Give them rest, grant them rest

Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem

 

Lamb of God

Agnus Dei,

 

Who takes away the sins of the world

Qui tollis peccata mundi

 

Grant them eternal rest

Dona eis requiem

 

Forever

Sempiternam

 

Requiem

Requiem

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkVJVgxe4_U

Caution: This link may contain ads