"Clothed in Love, Armed with Light" Romans 13:11-14 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Romans verse 13.

This morning, let me read for us verses eleven through fourteen.

Paul writes, Besides this, you know the time, that the hour is 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, but in not in quarreling and jealousy.

But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

Author Marie Chapian tells a story of an evangelist in Europe named Yaakov who was witnessing to a man named Simmerman.

And Simmerman hated Christians.

He had always hated Christians, and he hated Yaakov.

Yaakov was no exception to him, and Yaakov took the approach by telling him, You're so filled with hate, you should know that the God of the Bible is a God of love.

And Simmerman rejected that and said, I don't believe that God can be a God of love because the Christians that I have met have all been hateful.

In fact, there are so many priests running around in clerical robes claiming the name of Christ, yet living a life filled with abuse and corruption.

So I refuse to believe that God can be a God of love.

And Yaakov responded by telling him, Imagine that a man had his jacket and pants and boots all robbed from him.

And the thief robed himself in the other man's clothes and then went and robbed a bank.

And the police couldn't capture the thief, but they watched the footage of the robbery and recognized the jacket as belonging to the victim.

And so they went over to the victim's house and arrested him because the person wearing his jacket and his pants and his boots committed a robbery.

Would that be fair?

And of course, Simarin said no, and Yaakov's response was then understand this, people who robe themselves in the garb of Christianity and go out and do wicked things no more represents God than that person robbed the bank because somebody did it wearing his clothes.

What matters is what's on the inside of a person.

And Simmerman rejected that and threw Yaakov out of his house.

But the point still stands that what is robed on the outside ought match what is on the inside.

What you dress on the outside, how you live on the outside ought to match the inside.

But we recognize that the world is filled with hypocrites, people who can take the external appearances of Christianity.

They can take the external appearances.

And yet without the changed inside, they lead hypocritical lives.

Putting on a Redskins jersey doesn't make you a Redskins fan.

That takes a supernatural work of God.

The Bible describes the Christian life as a life of love.

And love comes from God.

And we've been looking at this the past uh month or so, and just to recap, we began with Psalm 36, which described God as the fountain of love.

God is the source of love.

All love comes from God.

There is no other fount of love.

Everything that is truly love comes from God.

And God has always loved Himself.

We looked at 1 Corinthians 13, that true love is always focused on God.

True love wants what is best for the other person, and what is best for every single person in the world is that they would grow in the knowledge of God.

And so true love comes from God, and true love has its object in God.

The husband best loves his wife when he causes her love to grow for the Lord more than him.

Parents best love their children when they cause their children to grow in their love for the Lord.

This is the point that love makes much of God, not of self.

And of course, because God is the fountain of love, his love makes much of him.

And we looked at John 3.16.

That kind of supernatural love, that kind of divine Trinitarian love, breaks into the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

God loved the world in this way that he sent his son.

So the love that you see within the Trinity that makes much of God comes to the world as an expression of God's love for the world, he would change people's hearts and have people in the world make much of Jesus Christ.

And last week we looked at Romans 13, verses 8 through 10, and we see that that's not where the story of love ends, that the love from heaven and eternity past breaks into this world in Jesus Christ on the cross, and then it comes to individual hearts.

Romans 13:8–10

When people give their lives to Christ, they turn from their sin, they receive Christ by faith, the spirit of love then seals their heart.

We don't stand before God for judgment when we die, as pertaining to how well we have kept the law, because God's love has fulfilled the law.

Jesus Christ literally fulfilled the law by keeping its commandments perfectly, and then the spirit of love, which empowered Jesus Christ, seals our hearts.

As we sang earlier in the song His Robes for Mine, His righteousness, his law-keeping perfections, his love becomes ours.

So we, to keep the analogy going, are robed in the garments of Christ.

We are robed in the love of Christ, but only because he has changed us from the inside.

Behold, the new is come.

Our hearts are regenerated, we have new life, and our new life is a life of love.

That's what we looked at last week.

But that is still not where the story ends.

This morning, as we go through this, we see a couple more principles about how love changes our hearts, how love affects us and motivates us to lead a godly life.

And so let me give you an outline this morning.

I want to give you three critical contrasts in the life of love.

Thank you, Ron.

Three critical contrasts in the life of love.

That'll be your outline because this passage carries through these three different contrasts, and this is a very interesting passage because there's three tensions.

I could use the word tensions there.

There's three.

They're held in opposites of each other.

And they're repeated all throughout this passage.

And so this I think is going to be more of a thinking sermon than the last few weeks have been.

I want you to engage your minds here because I think when you get your mind around these three points, it will have a profound effect on the way that you love, on the way that you obey Christ.

And so the first of these points is the tension between the indicative and the imperative.

Between the indicative and the imperative.

This isn't so much of a grammar lesson as a Christian living lesson, but to get to the Christian living, you have to get through the grammar.

Indicative, just a statement of fact.

Indicative is what is.

An imperative is what you must do.

And this is a massive point in scripture.

If you're not familiar with this phrase, the indicative, imperative tension, you really should learn it because so much of the Bible only really makes sense in light of this distinction.

The Bible is filled with this distinction.

There are some things that just are, and there's some things you're commanded to do.

And they always go in the Bible, they always go in an order.

It's always the indicatives that lead to the imperatives.

And so much bad Christian thinking comes from confusing those two.

The way things are is what motivates you to act in a certain way.

And so, for the example here in verse 11, besides this, Romans 13, verse 11, you know the time, Paul says.

Romans 13:11

Perhaps this morning your wife leaned over to you and said, It's time to wake up.

And you said, get behind me, Satan.

It's time for you to rise.

That's the indicative.

The hour has come.

The imperative is you must wake up.

The indicative is the time is here.

The imperative is you must wake up.

Don't confuse those two.

Don't switch those two.

Don't think that it's time to wake up because you are awake.

You waking up doesn't make it time to wake up.

The right order is reversed.

And the analogy Paul uses here is a soldier off for battle.

The soldier has been trained.

The soldier has been outfitted and equipped.

He has marched off to battle.

The battle is not in his hometown.

He has journeyed somewhere else.

He has gone to sleep.

And now the trumpet blares in the morning.

The sound is announced in the morning.

His commanding officer rouses him up in the morning and says, Get up, because now it is time for battle.

Get up because it is time to go to war.

The indicative, it is time.

It has arrived.

The battle is at hand.

That is the truth.

The imperative is so get up and go fight.

Now that is the tension throughout all of this passage.

The reality of what time it is and then how you're supposed to act in light of it.

And I mentioned that we see this all over the Bible.

Let me give you some other examples.

You know, the indicative is that Jesus died on the cross and resurrected from the grave.

That is the truth.

That is the reality.

That happened.

The imperative is that you must believe in him.

You must call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.

So the indicative, he died in your place for your sins.

He resurrected from the grave.

You respond to that by believing.

You don't confuse the order, of course.

You don't believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so that he did so.

You don't believe that he resurrected from the grave, so that he resurrects.

The truth is established.

The imperative is a response to that.

Or a more immediate example: God is love, and so we are to love.

You loving your neighbor doesn't make God a God of love.

The fact that God is a God of love is what compels you to love your neighbor.

Biblical imperatives only work in light of indicatives.

This is the whole structure of the book of Romans.

Romans 1 through 11 is indicatives.

It's the truth that all people know the truth about God and yet suppress him.

All people are condemned by the knowledge of sin.

They reject God's law.

The Jews reject the written law.

Gentiles reject their conscience.

Every heart is wicked.

Those are all indicatives.

Nevertheless, Jesus saves people by faith in him.

And those who place their faith in him are no longer condemned because of their sin.

Rather, they are justified by virtue of their faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 8, the Holy Spirit works with us, interceding on our behalf, translating our prayers, securing our salvation from eternity past to eternity future, because God has chosen whom he will save.

He will bring his sovereign saving will into the world.

Romans 9.

Romans 10, that salvation will go even to the Gentiles.

It's not confined to the Jews, so that people around the world will be saved as the church is grafted into the branch of God's promises.

That's the first part of the book of Romans, all indicatives.

Then chapter 12, in light of that, present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.

And then you have imperatives in Romans after that.

12, 13, 14, 15.

Bear with one another.

These chapters of imperatives in light of the indicatives.

This is the way the book of Ephesians is.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

Chapters 1 through 3 is about what God has done for us.

4, 5, and 6, our response.

Colossians is structured like that.

The New Testament is structured like that.

The gospels come before the epistles.

Our whole Christian faith is structured like that.

In light of what God has done, you respond in faith.

Now the analogy is here as a soldier, the battle is at hand, and so he ought to wake up.

And all kinds of bad theological thinking comes from confusing the orders of these things.

Those that say you must lead your life a certain way so that you can be saved confuse the order.

They make the imperatives before the indicatives.

They say you will go to heaven if you do this, that, and the other thing.

But of course, you lack the capacity to do this, that, and the other thing.

And so that is a futile expression of salvation.

There's no hope for the person who thinks they can work and earn for their own salvation.

This is the story of the rich young ruler.

What must I do to be saved?

Jesus says, keep the commandments, and he says, I've done that, which is comical.

You can't do that.

You can't keep the imperatives enough to earn the indicative, enough to earn your salvation.

Meanwhile, the other mistake is that lawlessness comes from in denying that there's imperatives.

There's a whole form of Christianity that says Christians aren't, don't have any commands to follow.

They're antinomian, they're against the law.

They have no law on them.

Claim the name of Christ and live how you want to live.

Who cares?

It's the Wild West out there.

It's the days of the judges.

Everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

If you've claimed the name of Christ, it doesn't matter how you live.

That's also an error.

Because that's just indicatives, period.

The indicatives lead to the imperatives.

We respond to the commands of Christ because of what God has done for us.

Remember, the soldier wakes up because the battle is about to start.

How silly would it be for the soldier to wake up and say, I don't need to fight.

It's the hour for the battle, so it will happen one way or the other.

No, we're commanded to go to war.

All of the imperatives in the Bible only make sense in light of the indicatives.

We obey the commands of Christ because of what he has already done for us.

So the first tension in this passage is the indicative imperative tension.

The second tension in this passage is the already not yet tension.

The already not yet.

This is the basic tension of the Christian life that Paul describes here in the end of verse 11.

Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

Now, what does he mean by that?

That he is not really saved yet?

Of course he's really saved.

This is the Apostle Paul we're talking about.

If anybody's really saved, it's the Apostle Paul.

So he's not saying he's not really saved yet.

He's saying that the time of the revelation of the kingdom of God, the return of Jesus Christ, is now closer than it was when he first came to faith.

He restates the same premise in verse 12.

The night is far gone, and far gone is a poetic, we can thank Tyndale for this phrase.

It's a poetic phrase that means it's almost spent.

You know, it's almost dawn.

You can't see the sun coming up yet, but you know, you know, that kind of dawn that it's it's not quite dawn yet, but you know it's right around the corner.

The night has been mostly poured out.

That's the idea.

The day is at hand.

It's not day yet, but day is around the corner.

That's the already not yet tension.

You are already part of God's kingdom.

Jesus Christ is already the inaugurated king in glory.

The day is at hand.

You're a citizen of the kingdom of God.

You have kingdom ethics in your life.

That's already established.

But the kingdom of God is not yet here on earth.

The kingdom of God has not yet arrived.

You're, in a sense, you're the you're the advanced scouts.

You've been sent out, you've arrived in hostile territory, you are a citizen of the kingdom, you have kingdom ethics, you're in a foreign land, but you know it's lands that will fall.

You know it's land that will be ruled by the king, and you know who the king is.

The mystery of the Old Testament: who is the king, where is the king, that's been settled.

We don't have that mystery over us anymore.

We already know who the king is, Jesus Christ.

We already know where he is, enthroned in heaven.

But what we don't know is when he's coming to establish his kingdom on earth.

That's the already not yet tension.

Has the kingdom already arrived?

Well, it hasn't been, it hasn't arrived yet.

But do you already know what the kingdom will be like?

Yes.

Are you already part of that kingdom?

Yes.

But you're not experiencing the full reality of it yet.

You're experiencing part of it in how you live your life.

You're experiencing part of it in how you worship and honor the king.

You're experiencing part of it in how you treat others as kingdom citizens.

So that's shadows of it, but the full effect of it isn't here yet.

And that's what's behind this kind of language that Paul uses here.

The night is almost over.

Just that language.

It's almost been totally spent.

Night, of course, speaking of the sinful reign of mankind on earth.

The day is at hand.

The day is the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Obadiah, verse 15, is where this phrase comes from.

The day of Yahweh is near for all nations.

And then Obadiah says, Your deeds will be returned upon your head.

It's a day of judgment.

The world is in the night.

Jesus is the light.

The world lives in sin, doing the deeds of darkness, deeds that you wouldn't do in the light that you would only do at night.

You don't want your friends and your neighbors to know about those deeds, and so darkness covers them.

Darkness is where sin proliferates.

It's easier to run away when caught.

It is easier to flee at night.

It's harder to be tracked down.

It's harder to be exposed at night.

And so there's a certain kind of sinful actions that accompany the nighttime.

And then you see that language of the night used throughout the Bible.

Sometimes literally, that people literally do their sinful deeds at night.

Sometimes figuratively, that there's the deeds in keeping with darkness.

Meanwhile, Christianity is often compared to the light, that Jesus is the light.

God Himself, of course, is the light.

Psalm 36, verse 9 says that.

Psalms 36:9

The light shines into the world.

Jesus is the light that illumines our hearts and instructs us how to live.

And so there's a contrast between the deeds of darkness and the deeds of the light.

Jesus says we are to long for the day of his coming.

It's always referred to as the day.

But sin reigns at night.

This current world is under the cover of darkness.

This current world is ruled by Satan, who is the prince of the power of the air.

He empowers the deeds of darkness.

Now Jesus, of course, is the ultimate king of this world.

He's reigned, enthroned as king of this world.

He just has not established his kingdom yet.

That's the already not yet tension.

Right now, in this time period, it is the reign of sin, the reign of night.

And when Jesus comes, the sun will rise on that darkness.

And when he does, it will be a day of judgment for those who live in the night, a day of incomparable liberty for those who live in the light.

The day of the Lord, therefore, is a time of judgment and punishment for those who love the deeds of darkness.

It is a time of great liberation and freedom for those who love the light.

That's why the day of the Lord is described both ways all over the Bible.

Is it a good news?

Yeah.

If you love the Lord, if you're part of his kingdom, is it bad news?

Also, yeah.

If you reject the King Jesus Christ, in that day, Jeremiah 30, verses 8 and 9, in that day, declares Yahweh Almighty.

Jeremiah 30:8

Notice again the phrase day.

In day.

In that day, I will break the yoke off their necks, I will tear off their bonds.

No longer will my citizens be enslaved.

Instead, they will serve Yahweh their God and David their king, who I will raise up for them.

That's a the freedom that comes with daytime.

Obadiah said the day of the Lord will come and crush their heads.

Jeremiah says the day of the Lord will come and give freedom.

It depends on if you're in the darkness or the night.

And so there's that graphic image of Christians right on the break of dawn.

Dawn is just around the corner.

Paul's saying this to be encouraging for.

You that the era of sin is almost done.

Now, the word that's used for time here is this can be confusing in English because we have one word for time and another word for seasons or eras, but the Greek word here, it's that second category.

So it doesn't mean the time is almost here, like chronologically.

And some people misread this and say, Well, how come Jesus didn't?

Paul wrote this 2,000 years ago.

Why isn't Jesus back yet?

That's the different Greek word.

That's the time, the chronology, like the next tick on the clock.

That's not this word, though.

He's saying the era of darkness is almost over.

The era of the king is about to break forth.

So the analogy of it's like, you know, it's four in the morning, the sun's about to rise is true, but that doesn't mean in 15 minutes it will be here.

It means the era of darkness is almost over.

And I belabor this point for this reason.

Because a lot of people I'm hearing are using sin in the world and the ongoing existence of racism and riots and evil in the world to say that the gospel doesn't work.

I've heard this objection many, many times.

That how can we say that the gospel is what is powerful?

The gospel is what changes hearts when Christians have been preaching the gospel for 2,000 years and racism is still all over the world.

Do you follow the logic?

How can you say that what the best weapon Christians have is to just preach the gospel when we've just been preaching the gospel for thousands of years and look how evil people still are.

And my response to that is these tensions already.

My response to that is that nowhere does the Bible say that by preaching the gospel you will transform society.

The Bible does not say that.

The Bible does not say that by preaching the gospel you will bring an end to the reign of sinful people.

Listen, sinful people reign on this planet.

That's what they do.

Dogs bark and sinners sin.

Sinful people rule.

And they always will as long as it is nighttime.

There will be sinners in charge, and there will be sinners not just in charge, but all over the world doing horrible things as long as it is the night.

This is why we long for the light.

This is why we long for the king to return, to bring an end to the kind of injustice that happens in this world.

Right now it is the darkness of night, and evil has its sway in the world.

That doesn't mean the gospel doesn't work.

It just means the gospel didn't say it would bring an end to the sinful reign of people on this planet.

The command Jesus gives us is to go into all the world and preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, making disciples of people from every nation, teaching them to obey everything that God has commanded us.

A critical part.

Baptizing them and then teaching them.

Teaching them to live a life of light.

So does the gospel ultimately transform society?

Well, it transforms individuals, and individuals act as salt and light, and so it has an effect on society, but that effect is ultimately not entirely transformative because the way of the gospel is narrow, and there are few that find it.

The path is wide to destruction.

There are many people who are on it.

The path to eternal life is so narrow.

It's so narrow.

That's why people say, you know, if Christians just got together and voted a certain way, we would put an end to Imagine if all the Christians voted a certain way, it would end all this unrighteousness in the world.

How many Christians do you think there are?

The way is narrow.

That's not the way elections work.

It's not like if you press the button really, really hard, it counts six times.

Like the elevator button.

I think that's how elevators work.

That's not how elections work.

It's not a majority people that if only they got together and voted their Christian ethics, things would change.

I mean, that's not this world.

It's nighttime out there.

You're the light, though.

You are the light.

You are the citizen of the kingdom.

So don't say I'm sick of being told just preach the gospel because that doesn't work.

Well, what works about it is it changes people's hearts.

It brings them from darkness to light.

But bringing people from the darkness to the light doesn't end the darkness.

We preach Christ not because we have a social agenda.

We preach Christ not because we're trying to fix society's structures, which need fixing.

We preach Christ for one reason, because he saves sinners' souls.

Our goal is not to change society, our goal is to change hearts.

And that doesn't mean that society doesn't need changing, by the way.

Don't hear me say that and say, oh, Jesse is totally cool with the way the world is right now.

No.

I just know what weapon I have.

I have a supernatural gospel that changes the sinner's heart.

Hearts need changing.

And our goal is to change someone's eternal destiny by the preaching of the gospel.

Not to advance a politician's career or a political platform.

Our goal is to make much of Jesus Christ.

Our goal is to preach Christ and Him crucified, His glorious resurrection from the grave, which humbles the proud and gives comfort to the broken.

Racism is a sin.

And people are racist because they're sinners.

And that's not okay.

And God will judge them.

And when the king comes and the light breaks forward into the world, their evil deeds will be exposed.

God will right every injustice, He will punish every wrongdoer, He will vindicate Himself and glorify Himself, and all the humble people will be strengthened with the faith in Christ, and all the arrogant people will be destroyed, and every sinful thought lifted up against his glorious might will be exposed for the hypocrisy it is.

And that's why we go into all the world preaching the gospel to try to rescue as many of those people as possible before that happens.

Here's an even more simple way to say this.

There's a difference between the way the kingdom will be when Jesus comes to earth and the way it is now.

And you can't bridge that divide at a societal level.

Only Jesus can.

This is why we long for the kingdom.

Do we know who the king is?

Oh yeah.

Are we citizens of the kingdom?

Definitely.

Should that affect the way we live?

Absolutely.

Does that make this the kingdom?

No.

Not yet.

We wait, though.

We wait.

And the third tension in this passage is the put-off, put-on tension.

The put-off put on.

Verse 12 the night is far gone, the day is at hand, so let us cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Let us walk properly as in the daytime.

Notice this transition here.

You're putting off the works and you're putting on.

Notice the way it says is I love Paul's language here.

You put off the works of the darkness.

You don't put on the works of the light.

That would be parallelism.

That's what you would expect it to say.

Put off the works of darkness, put on the works of light.

He says, no, put off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light.

You're going to battle.

You know, the soldier has got to take off his sleeping clothes and put on his fighting clothes.

It's not just that the fighting clothes are warmer, it's that there's a gun involved.

You're armed now.

You're supposed to go into the world and do something.

I remember Clemson University athletic director Frank Howard was asked at a press conference if the school is going to adopt crew, rowing as their new sport.

A committee had recommended it, and he had said no.

And so he was asked, why did you say no?

And he says, I refuse to recognize any sport that tells you to sit down and go backwards.

That's the imagery of the Christian life.

You ought not sit down and go backwards.

You ought not just sleep.

You have to get up and go forward.

You have to go off to battle.

There's an active putting, this is the imperative.

You take off and you put on.

Now, the the real imagery here, once you read through and you see all the sins that are listed here, the sexual immorality and the sensuality and all that, the imagery here is of in the Roman Empire, oftentimes soldiers, when they were marched off to battle, would spend the night before the battle partying and in debauchery and their clothes would be soiled and they would be passed out, and then their officer comes in and wakes them up in the morning, and this is not acceptable.

And so you have to take off those ruined clothes and put on the armor for the battle.

That's the change here.

They've already been trained, they've already been equipped, they've already marched out to the battle.

Now they have to take off the ruined things, the things that sinned ruined and put on the armor.

It's the image of the Christian life here.

That you spent the first part of your life soiling your clothes.

You spent the first part of your life living in sin.

And the command now is because of your faith in Christ, take off those clothes.

Now remember, you've already been saved in this progression here.

You're already a believer.

You've already come to faith in Christ.

So Paul is telling, talking to you about this ongoing sanctification in your life.

Take off your old clothes.

Don't keep wearing them.

They're not fit for you.

You're a different kind of person now.

The night gives way to day, so get dressed for the day.

If you get up at four in the morning, don't put on your pajamas.

Because you know it's going to be daytime next.

Get dressed like it's getting ready for the day.

The works of darkness give way to the armor of light.

You walk properly, Paul says, verse 13, not sinfully, like walk like it's daytime out there.

No, it's not daytime in these verses, correct?

He says, the day is not here, yet you're still supposed to live like it is.

If you understand that, you get the whole life of love thing.

The Lord of love is enthroned in heaven, the spirit of love is in your heart, but the kingdom of love is not yet here, yet you dress like it's here and you live like it's here right now.

And the deeds of darkness have nothing to do with the kingdom of light.

That's why it says no orgies, and the word orgies is not, the Greek word here is not what we would think of in English.

The word in the Greek is just debauched parties.

Drunkenness, not fit for the daytime.

Sexual immorality should have no place in the kingdom of God.

Sensuality, living for the flesh, living for the lust, the desires of the flesh, quarreling, jealousy, those deeds are not fit for this fight.

Don't take those weapons.

Those are, remember the image of the root?

If your root is in love, the tree is built up and the fruit is the fruit of the spirit.

If your root is in sin, then the tree is not going to grow the fruit of the spirit.

It's going to have the deeds that Paul lists here in verse 13.

This is not an exhaustive list in verse 13, of course.

It's not every sin imaginable.

It's just categories of sin.

That shouldn't be what a believer looks like, obviously.

The believer is changed by being rooted in faith, having rooted in love.

And the tree is a tree of fruit and love and joy and faith, and is producing the fruit of the Spirit.

And here's where people are different than trees.

You don't command a tree to grow fruit.

Rather, water it and put it in the sun and put a little blanket around in the winter or whatever you do.

You take care of it, but don't you don't yell at it.

Grow.

Oranges.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't keep some of you from yelling at your trees, I know that, but the yelling doesn't work.

But here is where people are different than trees.

You're supposed to be producing the fruit of the spirit.

If you are rooted in love and faith, you should be producing the fruit of the spirit.

Yet you're not a tree.

You are a person with volition and will, and God commands the will.

That's how God produces fruit in your life, by commanding your will, by telling you grow fruit.

It's of course you're growing fruit by the work of the spirit inside of you.

You're not stapling oranges onto the tree.

You're producing them through a life of love and faith.

But one of the ways God produces them is verses like this that command you to do it.

That's why, verse 14, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

You put off in verse 12 the works of darkness, and you put on in verse 14 the Lord Jesus Christ.

You robe yourself in his clothes.

You dress.

How do you get dressed for the kingdom of God?

By dressing like Jesus, living like him.

You put on his righteousness.

Again, remember the indicative imperative distinction here.

You don't robe yourself in his clothes so that you inherit him.

You don't act and live like him so that you earn your salvation.

Don't confuse cause and effect.

Because he is your Lord, you robe yourself like him.

And this ends, the way this ends, make no provision for the flesh.

Such a common expression, you can easily lose sight of what it means.

Provision is, you know, it's food.

You're gonna go on an all-day hike, you bring a backpack with food in it.

It's your provision.

And Paul says, don't bring provisions for the flesh.

Don't make plans to sin.

Don't pack sin a lunch.

And you know what he means by this, of course.

Sometimes you plan on sinning.

You say, I'm not gonna sin now, but I'll sin tomorrow.

And this is how I'll sin.

I'll sin in this way, which requires me establishing these things and doing this and making sure that person is there, and you've structured a way to sin.

That's making provision for the flesh.

Don't make provision for the flesh.

If you're tempted in certain situations, don't put yourself in those situations.

That's not legalism.

That's making no provision for the flesh.

If you sin when you're around certain people, don't spend time with those people.

Now that obviously doesn't transform the hearts.

Love fulfills the law.

You're not avoiding temptation to be more pleasing to God.

You're robed in Christ.

Love has fulfilled the law.

You're avoiding temptation because you're trying to not make provision for the flesh.

You don't let sin loiter on your doorstep.

You throw it off your doorstep, otherwise, it'll move into your house.

You want sin hanging out around your dining room table?

Then kick it off your doorstep.

Don't make provision for the flesh.

We are children of the light, not children of the night.

And so we don't plan to lead a life of lust.

We plan to lead a life of love.

Earlier I told you about Simran and Yaakov and how Simran finally threw Yaakov out and Simron watched Yaakov for years after that.

And finally came to faith in Christ.

And when Yaakov asked him why, Simmerman told him, I watched how you live, and you wore Jesus' clothes very well.

We are, of course, armed with the life of Christ.

We are clothed in love and we are armed with light.

You are robed in Christ and called to go into the world, armed in light, leading a transformed life.

That's the weapons God has given us to go into the world.

And those weapons, listen, they are very perfect for what they're designed for.

They will tear down enemy strongholds, they will expose the hypocrisy in people's minds.

They will take thoughts, sinful thoughts, captive into obedience of Jesus Christ.

They will change hearts and they will rescue souls.

Those are the weapons we have.

Clothed in love and armed in light.

Lord, we're thankful that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have given us a mandate of love.

A mandate to go into the world, leading a life that will transform hearts.

This is our commission to go into all the world preaching the gospel.

Taking our own thoughts captive, tearing down strongholds.

But leading a life of love.

Help us wear your clothes well.

Help us robe ourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We want to live like you would want us to live.

We want to act like you would want us to act.

We want the godliness that you possess, the holiness that you had through your life.

And we know that's ours through faith.

We know it has become ours, not through our works, our actions.

It's been given to us as a gift.

Just as our salvation through faith in Christ.

Yet, Lord, we want to grow into these clothes.

We want them to fit us.

We don't want to look out of place.

We know that we will leave this place and scatter back into the night.

We long for the soon return of Jesus Christ.

Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

We pray this in your name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the D.C.

area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to IBC.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.