The Permanent Debt of Love Text: Romans 13:8-10
Introduction: Law vs. Love, a False Dichotomy
One of the most persistent and pernicious errors that plagues the modern church is the habit of setting God's love and God's law at odds with one another. We live in a sentimental age, an age that wants a God who is all heart and no backbone. The spirit of the age wants a love that is formless, a shapeless, gooey affection that makes no demands and draws no lines. Consequently, when the church speaks of God's law, the world, and even many within the church, hears the screech of fingernails on a chalkboard. Law is seen as the antithesis of love, the cold, hard, stone tablets set against the warm, beating heart of the gospel.
But this is a profound misunderstanding, not only of the law, but of love itself. The Scriptures present no such conflict. To pit love against the law is to misunderstand both. It is like trying to separate wetness from water. The Lord Jesus Himself told us that the whole law and the prophets hang on two great commandments: love God, and love your neighbor (Matt. 22:37-40). The law is not the enemy of love; it is the trellis on which love grows. The law gives love its shape, its definition, its skeleton. Without the law, our concept of love collapses into a useless puddle of emotionalism. The law tells us what love looks like in shoe leather.
In our text today, the apostle Paul drives this point home with glorious clarity. Far from abolishing the law, love is the very fulfillment of it. He is not setting up a new principle to replace an old one. He is explaining how the old one, the holy law of God, actually works. He shows us that the Christian life is not a life free from obligation, but rather a life constrained by one great, permanent, all-encompassing obligation: the debt of love. This is a debt we are to be constantly paying, yet one we will never pay off. And in the payment of this debt, we find ourselves, wonderfully, keeping the commandments of God from the heart.
The Text
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled 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 word, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” Love does not work evil against a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.
(Romans 13:8-10 LSB)
The Perpetual Obligation (v. 8)
We begin with the foundational command in verse 8:
"Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law." (Romans 13:8)
Now, some have taken the first phrase here, "Owe nothing to anyone," and turned it into an absolute prohibition against all forms of financial debt. This is a classic case of lifting a phrase out of its context and making it walk on all fours. Paul has just finished telling us to pay our taxes and our customs, to give honor and respect to whom it is owed (v. 7). He is assuming a world where obligations exist and must be met. His point is not that Christians must never borrow, for Scripture elsewhere regulates lending and borrowing, assuming its legitimacy (e.g., Matt. 5:42). Rather, his point is that we must be diligent to discharge all our temporary obligations, so that the one permanent obligation might be seen in all its glory. Pay your bills. Settle your accounts. Don't be a deadbeat. And why? So that your life is characterized not by a series of shifting, temporary debts, but by one constant, abiding, glorious debt: the debt of love.
This debt to love one another is a perpetual mortgage. It is a debt we can never fully discharge. There will never be a day when a Christian can say, "There. I have loved enough. My account is settled." No, this is an obligation that remains with us every moment of every day until we see the Lord. It is the very atmosphere we are to breathe. This is not a grim duty, but a glorious privilege. We get to live this way. Because God in Christ has poured His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5), we are now enabled to love like this.
And notice the result: "for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law." This is a staggering statement. Paul is not saying that love sets the law aside. He is saying that love is the very thing the law was aiming at all along. When you are truly loving your neighbor, you are not thinking about the individual statutes. You are simply acting in a way that is consistent with all of them. A man who truly loves his neighbor's wife has no need of a command that says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." His love for his neighbor already prevents him from even considering it. Love is the engine; the law is the track. When the engine is running properly, it naturally follows the track.
Love's Negative Definition (v. 9)
In verse 9, Paul gives us concrete examples of what this love looks like by showing us what it does not do. He draws directly from the second table of the Decalogue.
"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 word, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.'" (Romans 13:9 LSB)
It is highly significant that when Paul wants to illustrate what love looks like, he immediately goes to the Ten Commandments. He doesn't appeal to a vague feeling or a sentimental platitude. He appeals to the concrete, explicit prohibitions of God's holy law. This is the anatomy of love. Love has bones. Love has structure.
He lists the seventh, sixth, eighth, and tenth commandments (in a slightly different order). Love does not take your neighbor's spouse. Love does not take your neighbor's life. Love does not take your neighbor's property. Love does not even desire to take what is your neighbor's. These are the boundary markers. They show us the shape of love by telling us where love will not go. And then, to cover all his bases, he says, "and if there is any other commandment." He is sweeping up the ninth commandment (bearing false witness) and any other application of God's law into his argument.
All of it, he says, is "summed up" in this one word: "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF" (Lev. 19:18). The Greek word for "summed up" here means to bring together under one head. All the particular stipulations of the law concerning our fellow man are brought to a head in this one great command. This is not a reduction, as though the specific commandments no longer matter. It is an explanation. If you want to know how to love your neighbor as yourself, the Ten Commandments are God's inspired commentary on the subject. They are the divinely-given definition of neighbor-love. To reject them is to reject God's definition of love and to substitute our own, which is the essence of all sin.
The Positive Fulfillment (v. 10)
Paul concludes this brief section with a powerful summary statement that brings it all together.
"Love does not work evil against a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law." (Romans 13:10 LSB)
Here we see the negative and positive aspects brought together. "Love does not work evil against a neighbor." This is the flip side of the commandments he just listed. Adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness are all ways of working evil, or harm, against a neighbor. True, biblical love is not passive; it is active. It actively refuses to harm. It builds a fence of protection around the neighbor's life, spouse, property, and reputation.
Because this is true, "therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law." The word for fulfillment here is pleroma. It means the full measure, the substance, that which fills it up to the brim. Love is not the abrogation of the law; it is the point of the law. It is the substance of the law. A Christian who is walking in the Spirit, whose heart is filled with love for his brother, is not walking away from the law. He is walking right down the center of the path that the law laid out. He is doing, from a transformed heart, what the law always commanded.
Think of it this way. The law is like a doctor's diagnosis. It tells you that you are sick with sin. It points out the symptoms: you lie, you steal, you covet. The law can identify the disease, but it cannot cure it. The gospel is the cure. The gospel is the good news that Christ died for your law-breaking and was raised for your justification. When you believe the gospel, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you, and He performs radical heart surgery. He gives you a new heart with new desires. And what is the chief desire of this new heart? It is to love God and to love your neighbor. And so, the regenerated man, filled with the Spirit, begins to produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, and so on (Gal. 5:22-23). And as Paul says right after listing that fruit, "against such there is no law." Of course not. Why would there be a law against the very thing the law requires?
Conclusion: The Debt You Get to Pay
So we must banish from our minds this false war between love and law. The law reveals the character of God, and God is love (1 John 4:8). Therefore, the law is a description of what love does. For the unbeliever, the law is a ministry of death and condemnation, because it reveals his sin and his inability to love rightly. But for the believer, who has been set free from the law's condemnation in Christ, the law becomes a dear friend. It is a lamp to our feet. It is our instructor, teaching us what our new life in the Spirit is supposed to look like.
The Christian life is a life of freedom. But it is not the freedom to do whatever we want. It is the freedom to finally do what we ought. It is the freedom to love. We have been set free from the crushing debt of sin, a debt we could never pay, which Christ paid in full. And in its place, He has given us a new debt, a joyful debt, a debt we get to pay every day. Owe no man anything, except this glorious, unending obligation to love one another. For when you do this, when you love your neighbor, you are not setting aside the law of God. You are fulfilling it.