The overflow of your salvation is to be love – love for God and love for your neighbor. This love comes along with a host of all the graces – humility, patience, gentleness, kindness, and every other good and pleasant thing that ties brothers together.
You have one obligation to God, and that is to honor Him as God. As you do so, the only appropriate response is to overflow with gratitude, giving Him all thanks, and obeying Him in that gratitude.
You have one obligation to your neighbor, and that is to stay out of his debt, and to keep him out of yours – with the exception, Paul says, of the debt of love. This is the one thing we do for one another, this is the new commandment. Love one another.
But this teaching is too deep for us. The carnal heart turns immediately at this point to every form of logic-chopping. Who is my neighbor? was the classic response that Jesus dealt with, but the sinful heart is exceedingly creative, and comes up with endless ways to do the same thing. The carnal hearts turns readily to manipulate, deceive, twist, explain, excuse, evade, turn away, and then explain some more.
There are always a thousand ways to stiffen the neck. And excuses for doing so always breed like mosquitoes in the humid swamp of self. But there is only one way to bow. There is only one way to soften. There is only one way to lift up holy hands to the Lord. Repent therefore.
You are now in the presence of the hot sun of God’s Word. But the heat from that sun does two very different things – the clay of every rebellious heart is baked and hardened. The wax of every submissive heart is melted by that same sun. Take heed to yourselves therefore as you worship Him now.