Innumerable are the books and doctrines produced for the direction of man’s conduct. There is still no limit to the making of books and laws. These laws and doctrines would be tolerated and received with more favor, if they were founded upon and administered according to the great law of love. Of love’s higher authority we find many illustrations in the Scriptures. Christ makes particular mention of this matter when he refers to David and his companions eating the holy show-bread. Though a certain law prohibited all but the priests from partaking of this holy food, Love was empress here, and free. Love was over the Law, subjecting it to herself. The Law had to yield for the time being, had to become invalid, when David suffered hunger.
     Had the priest been disposed to refuse David the holy bread, had he blindly insisted on honoring the prohibition of the Law and failed to perceive the authority of Love, had he denied this food to him who hungered, what would have been the result? So far as the priest’s assistance went, David would have had to perish with hunger, and the priest would have been guilty of murder for the sake of the Law. Here, indeed, the most strenuous right would have been the most strenuous wrong. Moreover, on examining the heart of the priest, you would find the abomination of making sin where there is no sin, and a matter of conscience where there is no occasion for it. In connection with this same incident, Christ teaches that we are to do good to our neighbor on the Sabbath, to administer as necessity demands, whatever the Sabbath restrictions of the Law. For when a brother’s need calls, Love is authority and the Law of the Sabbath is void.
     ​Were laws conceived and administered in love, the number of laws would matter little. Though one might not know all of them, he would learn from the one or two, of which he had knowledge, the principle of love taught in all; and though he were to know all laws, he might not discover the principle of love any more readily than he would in one. No greater wrong, calamity and wretchedness is possible on earth than the teaching and enforcing of laws without love. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.”

     Some Christians have used this verse to argue that all debt is wrong and condemned by God. Pay your way as you go. “Let no debt remain outstanding.” The strongest voices argue that it is wrong to take a mortgage for a house or for a church building.
     The flow of the passage, however, argues against such an interpretation. The opening verses exhort Christians to submit to the civil authorities, not only because they are constituted by God, but also because, when they function properly, they enforce what is right and punish what is wrong (13:1–4). So it is important to submit to such authorities, not only so as to avoid punishment, “but also because of conscience” (13:5): Christians want to keep a clear conscience by doing what is right. That is also why we pay taxes. The civil authorities are “God’s servants, who give their full time to governing” (13:6). Like others of God’s servants, they are sometimes disobedient and foolish, but in God’s ordering of society taxes are God’s means of supporting those whose task it is to govern. So we should pay what we owe: “If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue” (13:7).
     More broadly yet, pay whatever is owed: “If respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another” (13:7–8).
     “Debt,” then, in this context, has only a secondary reference to financial obligation. The passage has everything to do with the ongoing obligations of personal relationships in a society ordered by God. Moreover, insofar as finances are concerned, some financial obligations, such as taxes, are paid again and again; as they come due, we pay them. In precisely the same way, in a contracted mortgage, as the payments come due, we pay them. For all kinds of reasons it may be best to avoid fiscal debt of all kinds. But that is scarcely the point the apostle is making here.
     ​The way Paul talks about love as “the continuing debt” reinforces the point. Some “debts,” such as taxes, recur; the debt of love does not so much recur as continue: it is ever with us. The commandments that bear on horizontal relationships (what today we would call social relationships) may be summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (13:9; Lev. 19:18). Love is thus the “fulfillment” of the Law (13:10) - that is, love is that to which the Law points, in this time of eschatological fulfillment (13:11–14), and this we always owe.

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"Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with Him."
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     Lazarus is to be envied. It was well to be Martha and serve Jesus, but better to be Lazarus and commune with Jesus. There are times for each purpose, and each is lovely in its season, but none of the trees of the garden yield such clusters, as the vine of communion with Jesus. To sit with Jesus, to hear His words, to mark His acts, and receive His smiles--was such a favor as must have made Lazarus as happy as the angels!
When it has been our happy lot to feast with our Beloved in His banqueting-hall, we would not have given half a sigh for all the kingdoms of the world, if so much breath could have bought them!
     Lazarus is to be imitated. It would have been a strange thing if he had not been at the table where Jesus was, for he had been dead, and Jesus had raised him. For the risen one to be absent when the Lord who gave him life was at his house, would have been ungrateful indeed.
     We too were once dead! Yes, and like Lazarus--we were stinking in the grave of sin! Jesus raised us, and we live! Can we be content to live at a distance from Him? Do we omit to remember Him at His table, where He deigns to feast with His brethren? Oh, this is cruel! It behooves us to repent, and do as He has bidden us--for His least wish should be law to us.
     ​To have lived without constant fellowship with one of whom the Jews said, "Behold how He loved him," would have been disgraceful to Lazarus! Is it excusable in us, whom Jesus has loved with an everlasting love! To have been cold to Him who wept over his lifeless corpse, would have argued great brutishness in Lazarus. What does it argue in us, over whom the Savior has not only wept, but bled!
 
Come, brethren, who read this portion, let us return unto our heavenly Bridegroom, and ask for His Spirit, that we may be on terms of closer intimacy with Him, and henceforth sit at the table with Him!

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“Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent.”
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     When we talk about the need for revival in our country, we must first individually ask ourselves these questions: Am I personally revived? Am I living as a committed, on-fire follower of Jesus Christ?
     If we are not, then we’re part of the problem, not part of the solution.
     Here’s what Jesus said to the church of Ephesus in the Book of Revelation: “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (2:2–4 NKJV).
     It’s clear they weren’t lazy. They were discerning, persevering believers. And they were making a difference. But Jesus was saying, “That’s all great, but we have a problem here. You have left your first love.”
     What does that mean? It means that in spite of all their activity, they had lost that first passion when Jesus was their highest priority. They still believed. They hadn’t abandoned their faith. But they were spiritually drying up. They were leaving their first love, and they needed to be revived.
     Jesus went on to give them the three Rs of revival: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent” (verse 5 NKJV).
     Remember. Repent. Repeat. Remember from where you have fallen. Repent and do the first works. And repeat. Go back and do what you did before.
     Let’s remember the three Rs of revival and put them into practice, because we need to be revived before God. We need a personal revival.