First Baptist Church of El Dorado - Sermons

Transformed Life: Love Your Neighbor Until People See God | Romans 13:8–10

• FBC El Dorado • Season 2025

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We read Romans 13:8–10 and make the case that love is the debt Christians never finish paying, and that love fulfills the law by doing no harm and seeking good. We challenge ourselves to practice a clear, countercultural love that points directly to Jesus, not to our virtue.

• the ongoing debt to love our neighbors
• why Christian love fulfills the law
• who counts as a neighbor, including the least likely
• love that is patient, kind, and not self-seeking
• small acts of love as light in darkness
• benevolence with gospel purpose, not just relief
• clarity in witness and motives
• a practical homework challenge to love someone tangibly

If you’re in our area and don’t have a church home, we would love to see you any Sunday morning at First Baptist El Dorado


SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the FBC El Doredo Sermon Podcast. My name is Taylor Gare, and I have the privilege of being the pastor here at First Baptist. And I want to thank you for listening into our sermon this week. And I want to tell you this if you're in our area and you don't have a church home, we would love to see you any Sunday morning at First Baptist El Doredo. Would you join me now in listening to our sermon from this week? Reopen with me to Romans chapter 13. We're going to be looking at verses 8, 9, and 10. Romans 13, verses 8, 9, and 10. And I'll read those verses for us now. 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. Let's pray with me one more time, please. Lord Jesus, by your Spirit, would you speak to our hearts even now? Show us what it means to love in a counter-cultural way, to love in such a way where people not only feel our love, but that it points to your love through us. We ask this, Lord, in Christ's name. Amen. If you remember growing up, you remember uh a lot of the uh maybe games we would play, certain worksheets that would be given, word search, tic-tac-toe, things like that. Maybe some of our kids have their uh their their bags right now, and you're playing some of these games as we speak. Uh we we would play this one game, and and you remember these on a sheet of paper, you would have uh two pictures that look fairly similar, and your job is to spot the difference. They might tell you there's five, six, uh, eight or nine differences in there, and how many of the differences can you find? A few of them you'd find really quick, a few of them would take a little longer. Uh, but the two uh pictures here and say this spot the difference. I I wonder as we think about this morning, if theoretically we could hold up two pictures. One picture is the picture of you, who you are, how you live, how uh you are defined, whoever you is, uh you're one of those pictures. And the other picture is just uh we'll call it the world, the ways of the world, how the world thinks and how the world operates. So a picture of you, the picture of the world. And I just wonder for every one of us, for you and for me, if we could be honest with ourselves, uh, would we be proud of how many differences we could actually find? Or are there any of us that are a little nervous, if you held those two pictures up, they would look fairly similar. Because the reality is, as we've read in Romans 12 and we'll continue to read in Romans 13, the believer is called to look different from the world. Not for the sake that the believer could show off and say, Aren't I impressive, but for the sake of showing the outside world that Jesus is different from the world, that Jesus offers something that the world can't offer. We saw this in Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, where we read three weeks ago that our job is to present ourselves as a living sacrifice. We take off the old and uh we are transformed by the renewal of our mind. The next week we read about the gifts of the Spirit. We are called not only to look different, but to act different because the Holy Spirit has gifted us for the sake of building up the church and making much of the name of Jesus. Last week we talked about true marks of a Christian. We focused uh on verse uh 13 of contributing to the needs of the saints, showing hospitality, but there's a lot of the true marks of the Christian, the way in which the Christian looks different from the world. Now, I am convinced that 2,000 years ago Paul had in mind uh how he can get the most pastors uh run off from their job in the future. Because one week we're preaching on giving, tithing, and Romans 13, the very next week, is all about politics. Uh that one-two punch can probably get some pastors in trouble. Now, verse third, chapter 13, 1 through 7, we're actually not going to cover today simply because of this. Uh last fall we we looked at it uh a little bit deeper as we were gearing up for an election, but what we looked at, uh, among other things was just the reality for the Christian life, how they look differently from the world, even includes how they think about government and politics. We read in 13, 1 through 7, just a quick summary, that uh we are to submit to those in authority over us, that those have been placed uh by the Lord, and when when uh the authorities are operating right and honoring their uh position, then they exist for the sake of honoring the good and punishing the evildoer, and that is a good thing. Is any elected official perfect? Is any government perfect? We know that absolutely not. But we also talked last fall about the one caveat there that we submit to those in authority over us until those in authority over us go against the word of God. And when that happens, we go with the word of God. And so what Paul wants us to see, even in that brief summary, is that even how we interact with the world looks different. With government and politics, it will look different as a people defined by love. Now we read verse eight. Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. So verse eight begins, Oh, owe no one anything. He's really coming off of really verse six and seven, uh, where at the end of 13, 1 through 7, uh honoring the government, he even talks about pay your taxes, pay what you owe to the authorities. And so then in verse 8, he says, Owe no one anything, that you are a person, that you pay what you owe. But he does say this there is one thing, there is one debt that you do owe, that you will always owe, and you will never catch up to that debt, and it is this to love each other. So the Christian's job, the Christian's duty, it says to love one another. And now we define that as who is that each other? Well, I hope we realize this morning that that means anyone. That means both those in the church, certainly. We talked last week about uh contributing to the needs of those in the church. We talked about loving those uh within the Christian faith, the the church body, but also certainly outside the church, loving one another. Uh, that is a very, very wide net, a wide statement about who we love. We don't get to pick and choose. But then Paul says this that the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Let's talk about the law for a second. You go to the Old Testament and you read some of these commands, and we talked a few weeks ago about them, but uh you read the book of Leviticus, and you probably think what I think as we read that, uh, we think this there's just so many commands. And you start to wonder, were the the people of Israel, were they just spending all their day just thinking about the commands? Like, I don't want to trip up here, I don't want to make this one mistake, and I've I've I've broken, you know, paragraph line, you know, section B, paragraph nine, section B, you know, row 10 of the law. Well, I don't want to do that. But no, think about something. Since you've woken up this morning, you've probably honored somewhere, you know, around 200 different laws, and you didn't think about a single one of them. You think about the things you did do, you probably stopped at your stop signs on the way here. Uh you probably got somewhere close to honoring the speed limit on the way here. You think about what you did not do. You might have passed four or five banks, you didn't rob a single one of them. You honored so many laws today, and you did not even realize it. And what is the job of the laws of our land? What are they trying to accomplish in us? They're trying to make something of us, and what is it? Just a general good citizen. Just to make us, form us into a good citizen who does the good and restrains him or herself from doing the bad. And there are even people among us who help us become better citizens. I remember as I was starting to make the drive between central Arkansas and El Dorado, there was uh there's a point, I forget where, somewhere around Fordyce, where uh 65 miles an hour becomes 60. And I had the kindest man just pull me aside and just have a conversation with me. Just to let me know about that change in the speed limit. And you know what? That made me a better citizen. It grew me more into who I need to be as a citizen of the state of Arkansas, and that's what the law, as we think about it, the law of the land is seeking to do, build us into better citizens. What is the law of God seeking to do? Well, certainly for Israel in the Old Testament, it was seeking to make them a people that were set apart from the world. That in the middle of the world at this time there would be this group of people who had been miraculously saved out of Egypt, brought into the wilderness, received this law, and they are starting to look different. Why? Because they have a God who dwells among them that calls them to look different. And we think about the commands of Scripture that apply to us, we think about uh all of Scripture, certainly the teachings of Jesus, the commands that are placed upon us. What are they desiring to build in us? They are desiring to build us and mold us more into the image of God. Well, who does God tell us he is? God is love, the essence of love. And so, as people who seek to be obedient to the commands of God, we are going to look like more loving people. And so you look at this idea in verse 8 for the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law, the believer who lives this kind of countercultural love in the midst of his or her world, they are fulfilling what the law has been intended to do. He makes this case further in verse 9. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And any other commandment, they're summed up in this word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This makes perfect sense that as we love our neighbor, we fulfill what the law was intended to do. It's obvious, but if if I am busy coveting my neighbor, uh it's gonna be hard to love my neighbor well. And if I love my neighbor well, it's gonna be tougher to covet my neighbor. If I love my neighbor well, I'm gonna have a lot harder time stealing from my neighbor. Um this next one hopefully is extremely obvious. If if I'm loving my neighbor well, murder is gonna be out of the question. I mean, you keep going down the list of the law, and you realize that love really is the fulfillment of all that that the Word of God is trying to build within us. That as believers, we live out this counter-cultural love. Verse 10 love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Once again, Paul wants to make this same point. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, it's the fulfilling of the law. So, this idea of love doing no wrong to a neighbor, we could ask the question that has been asked before in scripture. Well, who is my neighbor? Again, who am I called to love? Again, in Luke chapter 10, this is a question that was asked of Jesus. Uh of all people, uh a lawyer asks this question. Who is my neighbor? Basically, what he was asking is is this who is it that I have to love? And the other side of that, therefore, who do I not have to love? Is the question he really wants to know. Who's my neighbor? And you might remember how Jesus answers. He answers by telling a story, a story of a Samaritan. And who were the Samaritans? They were the outcasts, the rejects. Many hundreds of years before Assyria came, took over, moved many of the Israelites out, repopulated that area with outsiders, and these Samaritans were uh Israelites that intermarried with these outsiders that were brought in. And so for a Jewish individual who had not intermarried, who had not done what they would call a despicable thing to intermarry with an outsider, they just thought Samaritans were the lowest of the low. You've sold out, you've you how could you do this? And they uh the word is this they hated the Samaritans. So Jesus tells a story about a man who's uh a Jewish man who's beaten up on the side of the road, and the senior pastor walks by and does nothing for him, the music minister walks by, does nothing for him, and then this Samaritan shows up. The one we would least expect to do something about it. In fact, the one we might expect to look at this man and be thankful he's beaten up on the side of the road. Maybe say something like this he deserved it. But yet, what does the Samaritan do? He goes, he bandages him up, he takes him to the hospital, and he even offers to pay any of the fees uh that he has for his medical expenses. And then he asks, Well, who is the neighbor? And obviously the answer is clear the one who loved this man well. So who is your neighbor as believers? This is countercultural now. Who are we called to love? Once again, the answer is anyone. In fact, the answer goes further than just anyone, it's uh the person you're most likely not to think about loving. I heard one pastor say this as you're asking Jesus, who is my neighbor? Think about the person in your mind you most hope Jesus doesn't say. And that is your neighbor. That's the one. And as believers, we are called to show this kind of love, love as scripture defines it to those who may least deserve it, to those who we may least want to give it to, and that's the kind of countercultural love that we give. And let's be clear about this uh love is countercultural. This kind of love that Christians show is countercultural. I want to read a few verses just about this kind of love, and you can hear just how counter-cultural this really is as we think about the way of the world and what the world values. First Corinthians 13 is uh spoken a lot at weddings, and rightfully so. It's a beautiful, beautiful passage, but it's it's not simply about uh the the marriage love, it's about any love, and here it is. Here are these countercultural words starting in verse 4. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but it rejoices with the truth. Everything first Corinthians 13 4 through 6 has just described is is truly the the opposite of the ways of our world. The opposite of how our culture and our our world seeks to gain power or gain control or get to the top. Uh love is, as Christians define it, love is countercultural. And I say that it's important that we see how Christians define it. Because there are times within the world that the world can try to love, and I'm not saying the world doesn't love well. There are many who who don't know Jesus that have done many good things. I don't want to discount that in any way, but there's also a way the world can love, where at the end of the day they can love for the sake of wondering, well, what can I still get in return? And what will my love for you mean for me down the road? Sometimes the world loves in that way. Christians, if we're not careful, sometimes we love in that way. But we're called to be countercultural in this. And you might ask this question. As we think about Romans 13, 8 through 10, you say, Pastor, I love the idea of it. I love the truth. I mean, I agree Christians ought to be loving, but I'm just a little nervous or confused at the real difference it makes in this world. Because we could argue this, that the world is as dark as it's ever been. You look around you, we've talked about this many times before. The world is as dark as it's ever been. Well, first of all, I would argue that probably every generation has argued that the world is as dark as it's ever been. Generations from now they will say the same. We live in a dark, sinful place called the world. We love the world, we care for the world, but uh it is a dark place. And we wonder in the darkness that exists, the sinfulness, the brokenness, the again, darkness that exists in our world, does my you know, little bitty act of love uh for the sake of Christ, does that really make a difference? I want to ask a question that I think about. Have you ever uh checked in a hotel and you've you've probably got your system and maybe certain hotel or brand of hotels you like to stay at, and you you you know what you do when you get in. For us in this stage of life right now, it it takes a long time to check in anywhere. We're setting up pack and plays, we're in inflating mattresses, we're doing a lot. But but if you're on your own, you just get in, uh you you put the AC down to about 38 degrees as low as it'll go. You you you fluff the pillow a little bit, you you turn out the light, and and you're just ready to get a good night's sleep. But then something happens, and you've been here, and I've been here, you'll turn the lights off, you'll be ready to get some sleep, and then you notice something that maybe at like the corner of the bottom of the TV, there's like a little green dot of a light. Or if the hotel has like a kitchenette, there's the little green numbers on the microwave that when the lights were on, uh you didn't even notice them. But in the darkness, suddenly it is just a flood of light. That little green dot somehow has lit up the entire room. My wife is an absolute genius for many reasons. She's working in the preschool now, so I'll just brag on her without her being in here. Uh, but she started bringing electrical tape on every trip we have. And she just grabs that and any any little dot of light she finds, and so we get it pitch pitch dark in that room, and you can start bringing electrical tape too. But the reality is this, I'm just giving you just little tips this morning. The reality is this I I think about the darkness of our world right now. And my thought is this that now is not the time to say, what in the world, what kind of difference will you know me shining for Jesus make? It's not the time to say that. It's instead the time to take heart and take encouragement and say this think about the kind of difference this can make. Because if the world really is as dark as we say it is, then if I live out this counter-cultural love for the sake of Jesus, it it can do more now than maybe it ever has. Because that kind of light shining in the darkness of this world, it can make an absolute difference. Now, what an opportunity we have, but let's also remember this this is love that we have that we have to show, but it is love with a purpose. Not just to love so that someone can get their needs met. I pray our love will meet physical needs, but it's about even more than that. It is about showing a countercultural love for the sake of showing those around us that there is a savior that loves them in a way they can never imagine. And so this is love with a purpose. When I think about our benevolence ministry here, I praise God for the amount of physical needs we're able to meet. I mean, it it truly is unbelievable that uh good people from our community can come to us when they have a need, and and more often than not, we can we can meet those needs in full or partially and we can offer these things. But let's be clear, we're always gonna try to meet the physical need, but we're not just gonna stop there. We want to go further to have a conversation with them about why in the world we delight to meet their physical needs, about the Savior that has so transformed our heart that all we can do now is try to love this world in such a way that they would see Jesus. So it's not love just for the sake of love, it's just love for the sake of showing the greatest form of love we can ever imagine. That we are this group of people that aren't all that impressive and left to our own devices. There may maybe, maybe there's not as much to us, but my goodness, a savior has gotten a hold of our hearts. And left to my own devices, I'm not sure I could love the way I can love today, but there's a savior who saw fit to die on the cross for me, that I didn't have a shot at this. And yet Jesus Christ took my sin upon him, your sin upon him, went to the cross, went to the grave, rose from the grave, now I've been forgiven and I have life in him. I have been loved in this kind of way. How can I not then go love those around me? It's a love with a purpose. And when a church like this, we talked about it last week, even through our giving, now just through our being, when a church like this gets a hold of this kind of love, a love with a purpose, there is just no telling what's possible. That the city of El Doredado can know that there is a group of people in this hundred-year-old building, and we just come together every week to worship, and then we leave outside those doors, and we've just got a mission. We just want you to know that you are loved and there's a savior that loves you just like he's loved us. That's the kind of countercultural love we're talking about. Love with a purpose. It's the kind of love the prodigal son found in Luke chapter 15. It's been two or three weeks since I brought up the prodigal son. You've been waiting on it, he's back. But when this son is in the far country and he finds himself in the pig pen covered in mud, what wakes him up to the reality that there could be a homecoming? It's this. It's the fact that there's a home. That there's something ingrained in his mind in the deepest places that he knows there is somewhere where a father's love exists. And it's this kind of love that wakes him up. And he doesn't even know at this point just how loving his father is. In fact, he's saying this my father's servants, they have a place to lay their head and food on the table. Maybe I can just go back and be a servant. And that was enough love to wake him up and send him home. And yet when he gets home, he finds even more gracious love than that, as every believer finds. This is the kind of love that we have been given, and the kind of love as believers that we're able to give. You know, as I think about it, clarity matters. You know this in your own life, in your own interactions, in your own ways, clarity matters. One of my favorite stories. Uh one my my wife tells. My wife lived. They when she was in college, uh, Washed all's baseball team, they were trying to, you know, drum up support, get more people down at the at the games, and so they were trying to get uh social clubs and like the social chairs of the social clubs or uh sororities, fraternities, another word for it, uh, of these social clubs trying to get them down at the game. And so the social club of her of her club uh said, okay, we got to get down there. We want everybody uh to get down to the game on this Saturday at this time. And the social club said this uh to try to get more people from our club there, we're actually gonna have uh Popeyes down at the game. Now, not the usual catering choice for this group of girls, but they said Popeyes down at the game. I'm sure Katie and her friends were all thinking, you know, hey, we it's a nice day, it's a baseball game, we get a little, you know, box of chicken strips, you know, it could be worse. We'll get down to the game. And so uh all these girls, they they don't go to the cafeteria for lunch because they're going down to the game and they're getting their Popeyes, and so they get down to the game, and that social chair who is in charge of it, she pulls up in the car and pulls an ice chest out of the back, and they're thinking this is a great deal. Not only are we getting the food, but maybe a water, a a Coke, a Gatorade, I don't know. She opens this ice chest and it is full of pop ice. Pop ice. You know those popsicles you push up, those cylinders pop ice. And so you had 50 to 60 starving college students trying to fill themselves up on popsicles down at the game. Why? Clarity matters what we say matters, how we say it matters. The way we present ourselves to the world, it matters. For us Christians, clarity matters. Because the reality is there is a world that needs to see clearly who we are. There is a world that needs the clarity to see clearly the accurate representation of who we are, of the reality of the truth of God's word, of the reality of who Jesus is. And my biggest fear for everyone in this room and for Christians in general is that there will be a world that needs to see the kind of love that only Jesus can offer, and yet you and I look so much like the world that they don't see anything different that Christianity has to offer. That's my fear. Because the reality is this the way we love points to how a Savior loves us, and I just promise you, because I've heard story after story, the world is looking for something different. Because you may remember life before Christ Jesus when you were trying to look for anything that could satisfy anything that could give you fulfillment. I love the old, I guess I don't love it. I'm uh saddened by the old Jim Carrey, the actor, his quote that I wish everybody. Could have success and have as much money as they could ever imagine so that they could realize it is not the answer. The old Tom Brady quote after his third Super Bowl, where he said he held up the trophy and he just asked the question, is this all there is? The world is just looking for something, for anything that can fill the longing of their lives, the yearning of their hearts. They're looking for something. And you and I have the answer. And you and I have an opportunity that no one else has to show them through our love, through the way we interact, through the way we think differently, talk differently, act differently, live differently, but really how we point to a savior differently, we have the chance to show them that there is something better out there. And yet, if all they see when they look at Christians is just another picture of the world, they won't want the Jesus we point to. Why? Because they've tried the world and it just hadn't worked for them. And so we do have homework today. It's not a worksheet you'll take home like a few weeks ago, but we do have homework. You know, my job as a preacher is to give good application from God's word. And maybe you've noticed I haven't really done that today. And I'm not, I'm not trying to knock myself. I'm being serious. I haven't done that for you. What do I mean? Practical application. What have I said? It's your job to love one another. Well, Pastor, that can mean 8,000 different things. Here's why you don't have the specifics today, because I know you where you sit in your heart, in your life, in your comings and goings, at your job, uh, at your school, whatever, in your uh sphere of influence, you know what it is for your life. You know the kind of love it looks like for you. And if there are 300 people in this room, there are probably 3,000 different uh manifestations of that love to those around us. But for you in your life today, here is your homework. What does that Christ-centered, uh, Holy Spirit-fueled love look like in your life? Who is the person that needs to see clearly a different kind of love, the Jesus kind of love that only you can show? Who's the person at work or students? Who's that person in your class at school that just needs this kind of love? I I just want to be clear about something. It may be you showing this counter-cultural love that is the difference between this person living a life searching for the next thing, or living a life where they experience the life-changing love of Jesus Christ. It may be what you do even this week. And so your homework is simply this. In my life, what does it look like to live and to love exactly like Jesus has called me to live and to love? I can answer that for me. I can't answer that for you. But you can. And you know even now. And I wonder next Sunday morning if somebody will walk up to me and say, Pastor, I just loved in a countercultural kind of way this week. And let me tell you what happened. You won't believe it. I promise you, if you start loving this kind of way, you'll get those stories. You'll rejoice in those stories. But ultimately, this you'll give God the glory for those stories because it was his love that did the work. Bow your heads with me and let's pray. And after I pray, it may be that you want to respond in some kind of way, that you want to come join a church that is seeking to love like this. That maybe you've heard about the love of Jesus, maybe for the first time, that he died for you to forgive you, and you say, I need that kind of love and forgiveness in my life. You you just may need a pastor or to pray over you or with you, or you may need to come down to the altar and just pray on your own, whatever it looks like, however, you need to respond at the conclusion of this prayer, you are free to do that. I'll be down front. So, Lord Jesus, to love like you, we need you. Lord, without you, we cannot do it. And so, Lord, by your spirit, would you remind us over and over again just how much you've loved us in all kinds of ways, but certainly first and foremost, through the love of Jesus Christ, through his death and resurrection on the cross, through the forgiveness of sins, through eternal life in him. God, as we are reminded of that love, would it lead us out to love others as you've called us to love? And so, Lord, for each one of us this week, Sunday will turn into Monday. Our feet will hit the ground and things get real. Because this type of love is not meant to just exist in this church building, but it's meant to go out. And so, Lord, even this week, would your love go out with us? And would we show that countercultural love to a lost world that needs it? Lord, if there's any that need to respond, would they do so now as we sing in Christ's name? Amen.