In Romans 12, we saw the Apostle Paul saying that a genuine Bible-believing Christian is a person who exhibits the love of Christ that has been poured into his and her heart.

And we saw eight different expression of genuine love. Let me remind you, love hates evil,

love gives honor, love is passionate about God, love hopes and perseveres in prayer,

love loves to give. Love feels deeply with others. Love refuses to get

even, and love reverses the cultural norms. Now, he immediately moves from this to Romans 13,

and is really continuing that same theme, the genuine love theme.

And he says, genuine love on part of the believer is going to make him or her willingly obey the law of the land and pay their taxes. And secondly, love for God makes us pay our debts.

Why? Because genuine love fulfills the law and redeems the time.

Look at verses 1 to 7. Paul, he was living under the most horrendous,

horrendous dictatorship of his day. It was the most vile dictatorship. He is saying that part

of the believer's witness is to obey the law of the land and pay taxes.

Jesus in Matthew 2221, he said, give to Caesar's what belongs to Caesar.

That's the taxes.

And give to God what belongs to God.

So here we see that love, genuine love for God, obeys the

law of the land. In fact, the only time it was permissible for the first century believers,

the first church, the only time it was permissible for them to disobey the law of the land and to disobey the government

is when Caesar demanded worship. At that point, they said, no, God above Caesar, and they were willing to pay the consequences.

Versus 1 to 7, Romans 13 tells us that we are basically foreigners in this land. If you're a believer in

the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a foreigner. You are the citizen of where? You see, we are

representing our home country here on earth. Listen to me, beloved. Here's my understanding. Had Paul lived in Western democracy,

he would have said the following. Do you understand what privileged people you are? Do you understand

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