8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 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, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
11 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. 12 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. 13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
— Romans 13:8-14, ESV

I will never forget the first time I heard Al Green.  I was just a kid, visiting the Copeland’s, who lived two houses down from my childhood home on Mt. Zion Church Road.  Gary and I were the same age and we were both colorblind.  Ours was the first white person’s home he had ever set foot in, and when I walked into his, I overheard his mother say, “What’s that white boy doing our house?”  But the voice I remember most was Al Green’s.  

“Love and Happiness” was the song playing on their stereo.  Green sings those two words, over and over.  Love will make you do right and happiness will make you do wrong, or something like that, but while I can’t remember the words, I’ll never forget the voice.  

I started buying Al Green records and playing them at our house.  I also remember being very disappointed when he quit making them, for a while, because he became a Christian, and a Pastor to boot.  I was a heathen then, and I wanted him to keep singing about love and happiness.  Instead, he started preaching about love and holiness.  

I don’t know if the Apostle Paul could sing, but he sure could write.  In this text he writes about love and holiness, two of the most important words in the Bible.  Love and holiness are communicable attributes of God.  Love and holiness are indispensable to the genuine Christian life.  Love and holiness are what the world needs to see most in the body of Christ.  And, love and holiness can both be known for what they do not do.

Love Doesn’t Hurt

We all know what love is.  You’ve heard a hundred sermons on “agapē.”  It is the total, sacrificial, unconditional affection one feels for another, binding them in relationship, bringing them blessings.  

God saves us and makes us His own because He loves us (ref. John 3:16).  God’s people love God (ref. Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 12:30), one another (ref. John 13:34), and our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 19:19).  Real love is reciprocal.  

We all know what love does (ref. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13).  It honors the Lord and blesses other people by obeying God’s commandments (ref. John 15:16).  Real love is faithful.  

Now we learn what love does not do.  It “owe[s] no one” (vs. 8) and “does no wrong” (vs. 10).  Real love is restrained.  

Love does not leave a debt unpaid.  This is not a prohibition against borrowing money.  This is a commandment to pay forward the very thing God says we owe to Him, to one another, and to the world, namely, love.  “Love so amazing, so divine,” Isaac Watts wrote, “Demands my soul, my life, my all.”  God’s love demands we love others — family, friends, enemies — all others, especially lost sinners.  For “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (ref. Romans 5:8).  

Love does not break God’s commandments.  Show love by setting a good example for others to see and follow.  Commandment keeping isn’t always love, for it can be done out of legalism.  It can be done by insincere Pharisees, but much better by Spirit-filled Christians.  Obedience without love is hypocrisy, but so is love without obedience.  

Love does not hurt your neighbor.  When you are lovingly keeping God’s commandments, you are helping and not hurting others.  Paul starts with the 7th, then moves on to the 6th, 8th, and 10th of the Ten Commandments, respectively.  In his day as in ours, adultery seems very exciting to the perpetrators, but it most unexciting and destructive to the lives of innocent spouses and children.  Murders and thefts don’t blow up unless some form of covetousness has lit the fuse.  

Love and holiness like to hold hands.  When you love with a godly love, you won’t sleep with someone else’s spouse.  When you cultivate godly holiness, you don’t sleep, period.

Holiness Doesn’t Sleep  

I’ve known a lot of church members in my day, and my current church members are some of the finest I’ve ever known.  None of them sleep during the Sunday morning sermon, at least not any I’ve caught, yet.  This is not the case in other congregations.

I knew a Deacon in another church who sat on the front row and went to sleep before the sermon even started.  Afterward he would compliment me, saying,  “Good sermon, Pastor, just full of the gospel, full of the gospel.”  I wanted to tell him what he was full of, but discretion proved the better part of valor.  

Real Christians are all full of something, or someone.  By God’s grace, were are filled with the Holy Spirit, which is synonymous with Paul’s admonition here to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  We are saved and secured by a holy God who had made us His holy people, and holiness does not sleep.    

Paul is not talking about literal sleep here, of course.  He was warning against Christian hypocrisy, of behaving one way in the “day” and another way in the “night.”  Real Christianity, real love, real holiness is a 24/7 experience, it does not sleep.

Holiness does not stop making progress.  Christians are saved (past), saved (present), and saved (future).  We are justified, sanctified, and guaranteed to be glorified.  We make Pilgrim’s Progress throughout our Christian lives.  Holiness is the hunger for God that craves spiritual food, spiritual exercise, and spiritual rest.  You know it if you have it, as do others.  

Holiness does not persist in sleazy behavior.  I know just about any believer can commit just about any sin just about any time.  Thank you, King David.  We are capable of visiting almost any kind of sinful situation, but we cannot live there.  “Behave” (other translations, “walk”) speaks of persistent behavior.  Christians persistently follow Christ in holiness, while hypocrites follow their own whims and appetites.

Holiness does not put personal happiness first.  More sins are committed by more professing Christians under the moronic notion that “God wants me to be happy” than any other pseudo-philosophy of life.  God wants you to be like Him, supremely loving, seriously holy, a blessing to Him, yourself, and the other people in your life.  

God wants you to live a life of love that helps, not hurts, others.  God wants you to live a life of holiness that leads, not deters, others from coming to know Jesus Christ as Lord.  God wants you to love, and God wants you to be holy, and you really cannot have one without the other.

Love and Holiness

Al Green thought he had love and happiness.  I guess in many ways he did.  He sang love songs, he lived a happy life, he had a beautiful wife, and he enjoyed being with a lot of other women on the side.

One day he was in his kitchen and his wife was making hot soup for supper.  They started arguing about his mistresses.  She demanded he quit them all.  Al refused.  That’s when Mrs. Green, bless her heart, dumped the whole pot of hot soup on Al Green’s head.

The soup burned his skin.  The episode broke his heart.  He got right with God.  He began to love the Lord, his wife, and others the way the Bible teaches.  He even started sharing the gospel with others and eventually became the Pastor of a church in his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.  

I guess the moral of the sermon is, don’t wait for someone to pour hot soup over your head.  Love God, and others, the right way, now.  Live holy, always, consistently, persistently.  Sing in the key of love to the tune of holiness, for all the world to hear.