Debt of love (Romans 13:8)

Sunday Sermon @ Cornerstone Mission Church

Romans 13:8, "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love another for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law."

Back in the days when my wife and I graduated from colleges and when we were paying off our student loans after we were married, we felt this huge burden. When we were paying minimum payment amounts, it was hardly making any dent on the principle amounts. We felt this huge burden that we should pay them off as soon as we can. So, for about four years, we start paying extra hundreds of dollars and kept going at it without missing a single monthly payment. And, within five years of our marriage, we were able to pay them off our student loans and we remained debt free except the mortgage from the condo where we lived in Oak Park.

Many of you know exactly what I am talking about. Debt obligation is huge responsibility to anyone. If you are a responsible person, you have this desire to pay off what you owe to others. That's a good thing. And, the Bible commands it.

Paul likens loving one another to debt obligation. A difference from the financial debt obligations like student loans and mortgages is that this debt obligation to love one another is the continuing debt to love.
Another word, this love debt is something you cannot pay off in your life time.

So, paying towards this love debt becomes a way of life. Loving one another requires sustained and constant effort. Loving one another is not an option just like not paying off your financial debt is not an option. As Christians, loving one another is not something we do if we feel like it. It is something we do because we are Christians. Being Christians is reason we love one another.

Now, let's apply this to our church life. And, see how we are doing with this paying debt of love.  Tim Sanders, former chief solutions officer at Yahoo and author of Love is the Killer App illustrates how to set priorities in life. He said to take your life and all the things are important, and put them in one of three categories, glass, metal and rubber.

• Things of rubber… when you drop them, or I would say you throw them around, they will bounce back. No harms done when these things dropped. i.e.) my grass is getting taller. Now, with fresh rain last night, it will grow another inch or so to ankle deep. But, no sweat here... I will just pull out my trusted Honda lawn mower and I am good to go. No harm done, here.
• Things of metal.. when dropped, they create a lot of noise. But, you can recover from the drop… For example, if you missed a test, you can tried to retake them. If you fail a test, you can try to make up for it with other tests.
• Things of glass… when dropped, shatter into pieces and will never be the same again. You can glue back together, but they are altered forever. Sanders said that you're the only person who knows what those things are that you can't afford to drop. More than likely, they have a lot to do with your relationships with spouse, children, family, and friends.

When I consider relationships in our church, what I see is a lot of brokenness. We are nice and friendly to each other. We ask the routine question, "How are you?" and we give the routine answer, "I am fine." We are very familiar with each other for going to the same church for long time. But, beyond the familiarity, do you feel like you really know the others in CMC.

The reality behind the vague sense of familiarity and closeness is that many of our relationships have gone through quite of bit of stresses. We are more like cups that have been broken several times and someone has tried to repair them as best they could, but they remain fractured with many missing pieces. You pour into them, but the water doesn't hold in the cups because they leak through the cracks and holes. Relationships don't hold much in our church because we've been fractured as a church for too long.
For doing church together for over 3 years, 5 years, 10 years and for some of you for really long time, it saddens me to know that not many of you would think of each other as friends. When things are difficult for you, the first person pops in your mind to talk about your situation is not from this church, rather he or she exists somewhere out there, but not here.
I recently realize how ironic it is to preach about being the light in the world, to bring the gospel of reconciliation that turns enemies into friends, brothers and sisters. To tell you that we must envision making friends with the non-Christians in order to share them the gospel, while we ourselves don't even know how to relate to each other as friends, that's ridiculous. How can we befriend non- Christians when we don't even know how to be friends with each other in this church? It makes no sense, doesn't it? If we cannot even envision the gospel making any difference in our relationship right here in CMC, then how can we envision that the gospel can make any difference out there?

As long as, we remain acquaintances on Sunday, as long as we go through our routines of being nice and friendly each other, as long as we remain non-committal to each other, there is no need for the gospel in our church, and there will be no compelling reason to reach out the world with the gospel.
Tim Keller said that when the gospel penetrates us deeply, the way we look at ourselves change.

"I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe."
"I am more accepted and loved than I ever dared hope."

Now, where in the world are you going to learn that you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe? Where in the world are you going to learn that you are more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope? Where is this safe place where we can let down our guards and be known in our ugliness of being liars, angry and violent, bitter, lustful, addicted, isolated, lonely, messed up people and at the same radically accepted and loved, and be called out with hope for transformation? Isn't church supposed to be that place where you can lose it, but you can still be loved?

But, here is the reality of our church. So many of us are just nice and friendly to each other, we don't even have the opportunity to sin against each other, not alone reasons to forgive each other and grow together. If I were to ask you when the last time was when you received forgiveness from someone in this church or you forgave someone in this church, I bet many of you would have difficult time to remember it. Why is it? It is because our relationship with each other is superficial at best.

I believe that my wife is one of the wisest people that I know. No kidding. Let me share you what she often tells me about her vision for our family. She wants our home to be a safe place where our children can lose their temper completely and receive face consequences like timeouts or even spanking, but come away knowing that they are forgiven, accepted and loved. Believe me in my home, we have six messed up people, dad who lose his cool and gets angry and resorts to shaming children in order get obedience from them, husband who emotionally neglects his wife, a wife who can tell you herself her own sinful behaviors, four growing children who copies the sinful behaviors of their daddy and mommy. And, we have the seventh child in the pipeline who has not yet able to verbalize her sinful will. But, believe me she is well on her way to join to make the family of seven where there is not a day when we don't sin against each other. But, do you know what holds us together? Do you know what hope we have as a family? It is in my family we know we are more sinful than we ever dared believe. And, it is in our family, we know that we are more accepted and loved than we ever dared hope. Another word, my wife's vision for our family is where the gospel makes differences… our sins are exposed like they are in the daylight, but we cover each other with forgiveness. My wife envisions our family to be a place where we experience God. I told you my wife is wisest person I know.

I never thought I would say this, but here I go. In order to love one another, I believe we need to become a church that sins more. What we need is not more of niceness, but more for you and me to sin against each other. Now, I don't mean we go out of our way to hurt each other. What I mean is committing to go beyond superficial niceness, committing not to hide behind fake masks, but be who we really are in all the ugly and the good, that we commit to create the culture where we can be ourselves because we are all sinners needing the gospel on daily base.

Can you imagine church as a safe place where you can be honest with others, where you can be accepted by others, where you can experience forgiveness and transformation? To create the culture of honesty, forgiveness and transformation, we need to freshly hear God's call to renew our commitment to love one another, to let no debt remain except the debt of love.