ROMANS 13: 8-10 [CHRISTIAN RELATING SERIES]
THE PRIMACY OF LOVE
The previous paragraph dealt with God-invested authority to government, the submission to rulers, the payment of taxes, and respect for those in public office. Having spoken about the Christian obligation to the state, Paul turns his attention to the Christian's obligation to love.
This paragraph again describes the Christian's responsibility toward all men. Our relationship to others can be summarized in one word, namely Love. Love one another is the basic principle of the Christian life (CIT).
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. "Love makes the world go round," we are told, and there is little doubt that people generally hold the idea in high regard. But love seems to reside in peoples' minds as something between a noble ideal and an optional extra. The apostle insists, however, that love is an obligation as real as taxation and personal debt repayment. [Briscoe, D. Stuart. The Preacher's Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1982. S. 237.]
Three times in these three verses the apostle writes of the need to love our neighbor. He points out that love is the key to all godly obedience, because love fulfills God's law.
In these beautiful and challenging verses, our apostle relates the Debt of Love, the Discharge of Love & the Design of Love.
I. THE DEBT OF LOVE, 8.
II. THE DISCHARGE OF LOVE, 9-10a.
III. THE DESIGN OF LOVE, 10b.
What should be the attitude of the justified believer toward others? Verse 8 answers that question. "Owe nothing to any one except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law."
The initial statement is a continuation of the responsibility of Christians to discharge or pay their debts. We are to be on time in paying our bills and meeting our tax demands. Also before entering into a mortgage or hiring someone or purchasing anything, we want to be assured that we can manage the agreed upon repayments punctually. Though we must do what we can to be out of debt there is one debt which will always remain due, because we can never pay it off, and that is our obligation to love. We can never stop loving one another and say "I have loved enough."
Love one another is the basic principle of the Christian life. The new commandment Jesus gave His followers is "that you love one another, even as I have loved you that you love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13:34-35). Love is the theme of John's first letter. He admonishes, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God for God is love" (1 John 4:7-8).
To love one another also applies to our neighbors even if they are unbelievers and not just those who are likeable and friendly (Mt. 5:44). [Paul has just raised that point in Chapter 12. Jesus taught in Luke 10:25-37 that our neighbor includes the person that God places in our path that has a need that they are not capable of handling.] We must love our neighbor as Scripture commands, [even though we will always fall short of the love required of us,] because we can never repay the love Christ showed us on the cross of calvary. Therefore it is a Christian's obligation or debt to express divine love in all interpersonal relationships (John 13:34-35; 1 Cor. 16:14; Eph. 5:2; Col. 3:14; 1 John 3:14, 23; 4:7, 11, 21).
Love is also the fulfillment of the law. "For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law" (Mt. 22:39; Mark 12:31). If we love our neighbor, at least in the sense of wanting God's good for him or her and not doing him or her harm, it may be said that we have fulfilled the law even though we have not fully paid our love obligation. [This loving does not put an end to the law, it is just the only way you can fulfill it as we learned through our study of Romans.] Love is the essence and expression of the Law (Gal. 5:14).
Godly love is a matter of choice and nothing less than a willing voluntary love is pleasing to God and can energize and unify His people. "Beyond all these things put on love which is the perfect bond of unity" (Col. 3:14) Paul says.
II. THE DISCHARGE OF LOVE, 9-10a.
Not only must we grasp the reality that love is an obligation, and that love fulfills the law, but we must awake to the reality of the nature of that love. Though love has its romantic and its sentimental aspects, and certainly today love has sexual connotations, but the agape love spoken of here is a choice to behave in a certain way, [not necessarily because of romantic, sentimental, or sexual feelings, but] simply because it is right. To love means to refuse acts because they are unloving by nature. Various specific commands from the Ten Commandments are quoted in verse 9 to substantiate that loves fulfills the Law. "For this, "YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, YOU SHALL NOT MURDER, YOU SHALL NOT STEAL, YOU SHALL NOT COVET," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF."
After declaring that love fulfills the law the apostle illustrates the point by quoting five specific Old Testament laws, the first four are from the Ten Commandments [though in a the order of the 7th, 6th, 8th, and 10th commandments (Ex. 20:13-15, 17)]. The fifth is from the sacrificial law found in Leviticus 19:18.
You shall love and therefore "not commit adultery," because such sinful defilement of a person shows disregard for another's purity. Love highly values the virtue of others and will do nothing that is morally defiling. Like every other form of sexual immorality, adultery comes from impure, sinful lust, never from pure love.
The same principle applies just as obviously to the person who would commit murder or who would steal. Love does not rob others of their life, their reputation, or their property.
Coveting is an envious desire to possess what belongs to another. Because it does not always have an outward manifestation, when we covet, the Lord may be the only one, besides ourselves, who is aware of that sin. But again, if we are loving, we will not covet. Instead we will be grateful for the gifts, abilities, talents, and blessings another possesses. Love has not part in any unrighteousness (1 Cor. 13:6).
Jesus made it clear that all sin originates in the heart and in the will, whether or not it is expressed outwardly. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders" (Mt. 15:19). [MacArthur, John. The MacArthur N.T. Com. Romans 9-16. Moody. Chicago. 1994. P. 251.] Thus it must be dealt with in the heart through learning to love. Love overcomes sin's place of origin.
The believer who does the positive and loves with God's love does not need to concentrate on the negative or worry about breaking those or any other commandment. There is something about doing the law of love that empowers one to live out a holy life that automatically keeps him or her from the negative. So God asks us to concentrate on the positive of loving our neighbor which fulfills the law rather than on the prohibitions or the negative events which break the law. Are the do nots that break the law your focus of attention or is it on fulfilling the obligations of love? Godly love can control your life and will automatically keep you from breaking God's law.
The entire section of the Law is summed up by quoting Leviticus 19:18. The Jewish Rabbis and the Lord Jesus summarized the social section of the Law in the same words (Mt. 22:39). All of the laws God has given—six hundred thirteen according to the Rabbis—are summed up in a singular word: love.
The expression, "you shall love your neighbor as yourself," merits a word of explanation. Somehow many of us have gotten the idea that self-love is wrong. But if this were the case, it would be pointless to love our neighbors as ourselves. Even if you have low self-esteem, you probably don't willingly let yourself go hungry. You clothe yourself reasonably well. You make sure there's a roof over your head if you can. You try not to let yourself be cheated or injured. You get angry if someone tries to ruin your marriage. This is the kind of love we need to have for our neighbors also.
Do we see that our neighbors are adequately fed, clothed, and housed? Are we concerned about issues of social justice? Loving others as ourselves means to be actively working to see that other people's needs are met and not just our own. Interestingly, people who focus on others rather than on themselves rarely suffer from low self-esteem [The Life Application Bible. Zondervan. Grand Rapids. 1986. p. 2052.].
The first part of verse 10 expresses this same principle in other words. "Love does no wrong to a neighbor."
Agape love is selfless love which will not be turned inward or toward one's self. According to Scripture selfish love is the essence of sin. If we love with a godly love we will seek our neighbors' good, not their harm.
The point is that if our love is godly, concerned for the welfare of others, then we will do no wrong (lit. "not work evil") to them. A Christian who allows God's love to rule his life is divinely protected from doing harm to anyone (Mt. 7:18). Love does good and the doing of good rules out the doing of evil [even if it would do less damage to the majority to do evil to a minority].
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. We are again therefore, admonished to concentrate on love; genuine, unselfish godly love.
III. THE DISCHARGE OF LOVE, (10b).
The major point of the paragraph is then repeated in the last part of verse 10. "Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."
Contrary to what many people think, living by love and living by the law are not mutually exclusive. They are, in fact, inseparably related. God's law cannot be truly obeyed apart from love, because love, and only love, as has already explained (v 8b), "is the fulfillment of the law."
[Early in His ministry, Jesus declared, "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill" (Mt. 5:17, emphasis added).
Later] in the Sermon of the Mount, in what is commonly called the golden rule, Jesus said, "Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Mt. 7:12). James refers to loving our neighbors as ourselves as "fulfilling the royal law, according to the Scripture" (James 2:8). Love fulfills the Lord's golden rule and the Lord's royal law. [MacArthur, 253.] Christians must obey the law of love which supercedes both civil and moral law. Love fulfills what God desires of us.
I have heard a beautiful analogy from the field of music that helps us understand the greatness and completeness of love. THE MUSICAL SCALE has only seven basic notes, which many children can learn in an hour or less. Yet great composers, such as Handel and Beethoven, could not exhaust those notes and their variations in an entire lifetime. Godly love is like that. It uses the basic, and sometimes seemingly insignificant things of daily life, to produce the greatest. Love controls temper and guides reason. It seeks to overcome the worst qualities and develop the best. Under the guidance and in the power of the Holy Spirit, it transforms redeemed men and women more and more into the likeness of Jesus Christ. There is no greatness of character to which love cannot elevate a person. In fact, no greatness of character is possible without it, because love" produces godly character. [MacArthur. p. 253.]
CONCLUSION
Only Spirit-wrought-love in the human heart is sufficiently powerful to cause a person to remove all obstacles and love his neighbor even though perhaps his neighbor is not a pleasant person. It is love that "is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs, always protects and always hopes," (1 Cor. 13:5,7). Does this describe your love? It can and should.
Such human love has its origins in God, for God is love. It taps into the transforming power of the cross and finds God's empowering to fulfill the words of Jesus spoken just a few hours before His crucifixion. "A new commandment I give you, that you keep on loving one another, just as I have loved you, that you keep on loving one another" (Jn. 13:34). Only in Christ can a person meet this or any of the other demand of the Law (8:4).
So Jesus bids you come to Him today and if you will fully receive Him, you will also receive this supernatural capacity to love. Will you come?
