Love Fulfills The Law

Alba 5-22-2022

LOVE FULFILLS THE LAW

Romans 13:8-10

A woman and her husband came to their minister and said, “We're going to get a divorce, but we wanted to come to make sure that you approve of it.”

There are those who they feel that if they have lost their love for each other they hope the minister will say, “Well, if there's no feeling left, then, the only thing you can do is split.”

Instead, this minister says to the husband, “The Bible says you're to love your wife as Jesus Christ loved the church.” He says, “Oh, I can't do that.”

The minister says, “If you can't begin at that level, then begin on a lower level. You're supposed to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can you at least love her as you would love a neighbor?”

The husband says, “No. That's still too high a level.” Then the minister says, “Well, the Bible says, ‘Love your enemies.' Why don’t you start there.”

The minister kept referring to biblical commands to try to help the couple deal with their issues. But each one seemed difficult to do. That is why Scripture gives one command that covers them all.

There are the Ten Commandments, and the rabbis counted 613 other commandments in the Old Testament. But Romans 13:8-10 tells how doing just one thing makes it possible to obey them all.

Let's find out what it is. Turn to Roman 13:8-10.

8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

You know, there are a couple of ways you can go through life. You can go through life trying to keep all of God’s commandments. You could make you a list of all 623 commandments, write them down, check them off every day.

Try that and you would have to say, “Let’s see. I didn’t do this today, I didn’t do that. Uh-oh, I did do that one. Too bad.” It is hard to keep the list. Or the other way, the better way, is to throw your list away and say, “Hey, all the commandments are fulfilled if I love.”

Love is a theme found throughout Scripture. It is the theme of countless hymns and secular poetry; literature and music are permeated with its message.

They say, "Love makes the world go round," and these verses Romans 13 tell us that it does even more. All the commandments that keep us in a right relationship with God and others are fulfilled in one word: “Love”. Love satisfies all of God’s commandments.

Of the Ten Commandments, the first four deal with our personal relationship with God. And Jesus basically said, “You want to keep the first four Commandments? Love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your being.”

And if you do that, then you don’t have to worry about taking His name in vain. You don’t have to worry about worshiping graven images or having other Gods before Him. Not if you love Him.

Someone has said that if we love God with all our heart, and other people with all our heart, we can do as we please, because we will only do that which pleases God and benefits others.

The last six of the Ten Commandments have to do with our human relationships. In these verses in Romans 13, Paul is saying, “Listen, forget the list. Just love people. Because when you love them, you won’t hurt them.”

To illustrate this fact, several commandments are listed in our text. When love is active, each one is fulfilled, the obvious ones, and even some of the more difficult ones.

Just five of the commandments are listed here, and not in the order found in the Old Testament. The first is “You shall not commit adultery,” the seventh commandment.

There are people guilty of committing adultery who will say, “You know, we just couldn’t help it. We loved each other too much.” They didn’t love each other too much; they loved God too little, or they loved their mate too little. Don’t blame love for that.

You can't call adultery “love” even if someone says, "I fell in love with someone else." So there's a man who has a faithful wife and kids he brought into this world with her. And then someone at work gets his attention, and he is willing to throw it all away, destroying many lives. And then he wants to call it love? Love does not destroy lives.