DEBT OF LOVE
DEBT OF LOVE
ROMANS 13:6-10
“Love fulfills the Law”: how would acting on this change your life?
The taxes levied by both imperial and local government were many, but generally administered and collected with greater justice under the empire than under the earlier republic. But whatever they were, taxes were an obligation, and it is a practical application of Paul’s previous appeal to obedient citizenship that all obligations should be met.
Christian tradition was firmly established long before the four Gospels were written. More than once Paul speaks of having handed on “what he had received” (1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:3). There was a body of apostolic information, carefully conserved and diligently transmitted. Mark’s Gospel is the written account of what Peter gave his young convert. In this chapter it is possible to watch Paul’s mind ranging over the account received, and recalling the memorable reply concerning the tribute money (Matthew 22:21).
The recollection takes his mind to the incident recorded in Matthew 22:35-40, and he echoes the tradition yet to be recorded. Perhaps he also remembers the story of the rich youth, who professed to have kept all the commandments, because the order in which the commandments are listed reflects Luke 18:20, and not the Exodus 20 order. It is interesting to see his thought moving over a firm, clear body of tradition.
There is a debt of love which each person owes to all humanity. If someone honestly endeavors to discharge this debt, they will naturally not harm their neighbor, so need no prohibitions to hedge their path. Sexual sin, for all the weak romanticizing which surrounds it, does not result from love, but from too little love, from introverted selfishness. Love never destroys, so does not harm another’s life, never deprives and so inhibits stealing. Love rejoices in another’s advantage. and so does not covet. This theme is superbly expressed in 1 John. It was the preoccupation of the last of the apostles, what he finally and most vividly remembered of the One with whom he had walked sixty years before.