22. Our relationship to the law: neighbour-love as its fulfilment
Paul turns back now from the ministry of the state (through its official representatives) to the duties of individual Christian people, particularly our responsibility to love. In fact the paragraph about the state is wedged between the two commands to love our enemy (12:20) and to love our neighbour (13:9). The fact that the state is charged with the administration of justice is in no way incompatible with our obligation to love. Three times in these three verses the apostle writes of the need to love our neighbour, and so refers to Leviticus 19:18, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Indeed, he makes three statements about neighbour-love.
1. Love is an unpaid debt
Earlier in his letter Paul has already referred several times to the importance of paying our debts. We are in debt to the unbelieving world to share the gospel with it (1:14); we are in debt to the Holy Spirit to live a holy life (8:12f.); and we are in debt to the state to pay our taxes (13:6f.) It is in fact this reference to debt which forms the transition between verse 7 and verse 8. Let no debt remain outstanding, Paul writes, except the continuing debt to love one another (8a). That is to say, we are to be scrupulous in paying our bills and meeting our tax demands. Also, before entering into a mortgage or loan arrangement, we will want to make certain that we can manage the agreed repayments punctually. But there is one debt which will always remain outstanding, because we can never pay it, and that is our duty to love. We can never stop loving somebody and say, ‘I have loved enough.’ Some commentators resist this interpretation on the ground that it seems to encourage us to accept our lovelessness. For we could then say: ‘I agree that I must pay my debts, but the Bible says I don’t have to pay my love-debt.’ So, as an alternative, it is pointed out that the words ei mē could be translated not ‘except’ but ‘only’. The sentence would then read literally not ‘Owe nobody anything except to love one another’ (the niv’s additional words ‘the continuing debt’ are not in the Greek text) but ‘Owe nobody anything; only love one another.’ The context does not support such a weak anticlimax, however. It is better to understand Paul to mean that of course we must love our neighbour, as the Bible commands, even though we will always fall short of the love required of us.
2. Love is the fulfilment of the law
Paul continues: for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law (8b). The two phrases of verse 8 present a striking contrast. If we love our neighbour, at least in the sense of not doing him or her any harm, we may be said to have fulfilled the law even though we have not fully paid our debt.
We need to read Paul’s statement about having fulfilled the law against the background of chapter 7, in which he argued that we are incapable of fulfilling it by ourselves, on account of our fallen, self-centred nature. He went on to write, however, that God has done for us what the law (weakened by our sinful nature) was unable to do. He has rescued us both from the condemnation of the law through the death of his Son, and from the bondage of the law by the power of his indwelling Spirit. For what God did was ‘in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met [‘fulfilled’ as in 13:8] in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (8:3f.).
Now that Paul repeats in chapter 13 his statement about our fulfilling the law, he changes his emphasis from the means of the fulfilment (the Holy Spirit) to the nature of it (love). Law and love are often thought to be incompatible. And there are significant differences between them, law being often negative (‘you shall not’) and love positive, law relating to particular sins and love being a comprehensive principle.
But there are those who go considerably further than this. They insist that now ‘nothing is prescribed except love’ and that law is no longer needed. Love has its own ‘built-in moral compass’ which discerns intuitively what a true respect for persons will demand in each situation. But this expresses a naïve confidence in love’s infallibility. The truth is that love cannot manage on its own without an objective moral standard. That is why Paul wrote that ‘love is the fulfilment of the law’. For love and law need each other. Love needs law for its direction, while law needs love for its inspiration.
3. Love does no harm to its neighbour
Paul now explains how it is that neighbour-love fulfils the law. He quotes the prohibitions of the second table of the law: You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal and You shall not covet (9a). To these he adds and whatever other command there may be, and then declares that all of them are summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, as Jesus had said before him (9b). Why does love sum up all the commandments? Because love does no harm to a neighbour (10a). Certainly the last five sins forbidden in the Ten Commandments harm people. Murder robs them of their life, adultery of their home and honour, theft of their property, and false witness of their good name, while covetousness robs society of the ideals of simplicity and contentment. All these do harm (kakos, evil) to a neighbour, whereas it is the essence of love to seek and to serve our neighbour’s highest good. That is why love is the fulfilment of the law (10b).
It is sometimes claimed that the command to love our neighbours as ourselves is implicitly a requirement to love ourselves as well as our neighbours. But this is not so. We can say this with certainty, partly because Jesus spoke of the first and second commandment, without mentioning a third; partly because agapē is selfless love which cannot be turned in on the self; and partly because according to the Bible self-love is the essence of sin. Instead, we are to affirm all of ourselves which stems from the creation, while denying all of ourselves which stems from the fall. What the second commandment requires is that we love our neighbours as much as we do in fact (sinners as we are) love ourselves. This means that we will love them with a love ‘as real and sincere as our sinful self-love, about the reality and sincerity of which there is no shadow of doubt’. If then we truly love our neighbours, we will seek their good, not their harm, and we will thereby fulfil the law, even though we will never completely pay our debt.