'Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that
loveth another hath fulfilled the law. 9. For this, Thou
shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt
not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not
covet; and if there be any other commandment it is briefly
comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself. 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour:
therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 11. And that,
knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of
sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us
therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put
on the armour of light, 13. Let us walk honestly, as in
the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering
and wantonness, not in strife and envying: 14. But put ye
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the
flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.'--ROMANS xiii. 8-14.
The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. The
first inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the second
begins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty, the
near approach of 'the day.' The light of that dawn draws Paul's eyes
and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian purity as befitting
the children of light.
I. Verses 8-10 set forth the obligation of a love which embraces all
men, and comprehends all duties to them. The Apostle has just been
laying down the general exhortation, 'Pay every man his due' and
applying it especially to the Christian's relation to civic rulers.
He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it the obligation of
loving every man. That love is further represented as the sum and
substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together two thoughts which
are often dealt with as mutually exclusive,--namely, love and law. He
does not talk sentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the
like, but lays it down, as a 'hard and fast rule,' that we are bound
to love every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has
it, 'the other.'
That is the first plain truth taught here. Love is not an emotion
which we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select its
objects according to our estimate of their lovableness or goodness.
But we are bound to love, and that all round, without distinction of
beautiful or ugly, good or bad. 'A hard saying; who can hear it?'
Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not get his due from
us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the debt of love is never
discharged. After all payments it still remains owing. There is no
paying in full of all demands, and, as Bengel says, it is an undying
debt. We are apt to weary of expending love, especially on unworthy
recipients, and to think that we have wiped off all claims, and it
may often be true that our obligations to others compel us to cease
helping one; but if we laid Paul's words to heart, our patience would
be longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shut hearts
and purses against even unthankful suitors.
Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt (_debitum_, 'duty') of
love includes all duties. It is the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch
as it will secure the conduct which the law prescribes. The Mosaic
law itself indicates this, since it recapitulates the various
commandments of the second table, in the one precept of love to our
neighbour (Lev. xix. 18). Law enjoins but has no power to get its
injunctions executed. Love enables and inclines to do all that law
prescribes, and to avoid all that it prohibits. The multiplicity of
duties is melted into unity; and that unity, when it comes into act,
unfolds into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. Love is
the mother tincture which, variously diluted and manipulated, yields
all potent and fragrant draughts. It is the white light which the
prism of daily life resolves into its component colours.
But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doing no
ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly negative, and
that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to us all.
But do we love ourselves only negatively, or are we satisfied with
doing ourselves no harm? That stringent pattern of love to others not
only prescribes degree, but manner. It teaches that true love to men
is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, and thwart, and
always must seek their good, and not merely their gratification.
Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of working
no ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm men when we
fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do
them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil. Surely, nothing
can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching on the Christian
duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christian puts a
stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is working ill to
his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that is
dishonest, shirking payment of a plain debt.
II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth as
being the near approach--of the day (verses 11-14). 'The day,' in
Paul's writing, has usually the sense of the great day of the Lord's
return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesus has told us,
'it is not for' even inspired Apostles 'to know the times or the
seasons,' and it is no dishonour to apostolic inspiration to assign
to it the limits which the Lord has assigned.
But, whether we take this as the meaning of the phrase, or regard it
simply as pointing to the time of death as the dawning of heaven's
day, the weight of the motive is unaffected. The language is vividly
picturesque. The darkness is thinning, and the blackness turning
grey. Light begins to stir and whisper. A band of soldiers lies
asleep, and, as the twilight begins to dawn, the bugle call summons
them to awake, to throw off their night-gear,--namely, the works
congenial to darkness,--and to brace on their armour of light. Light
may here be regarded as the material of which the glistering armour
is made; but, more probably, the expression means weapons appropriate
to the light.
Such being the general picture, we note the fact which underlies the
whole representation; namely, that every life is a definite whole
which has a fixed end. Jesus said, 'We must work the works of Him
that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.' Paul uses the
opposite metaphors in these verses. But, though the two sayings are
opposite in form, they are identical in substance. In both, the
predominant thought is that of the rapidly diminishing space of
earthly life, and the complete unlikeness to it of the future. We
stand like men on a sandbank with an incoming tide, and every wash of
the waves eats away its edges, and presently it will yield below our
feet. We forget this for the most part, and perhaps it is not well
that it should be ever present; but that it should never be present
is madness and sore loss.
Paul, in his intense moral earnestness, in verse 13, bids us regard
ourselves as already in 'the day,' and shape our conduct as if it
shone around us and all things were made manifest by its light. The
sins to be put off are very gross and palpable. They are for the most
part sins of flesh, such as even these Roman Christians had to be
warned against, and such as need to be manifested by the light even
now among many professing Christian communities.
But Paul has one more word to say. If he stopped without it, he would
have said little to help men who are crying out, 'How am I to strip
off this clinging evil, which seems my skin rather than my clothing?
How am I to put on that flashing panoply?' There is but one way,--put
on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we commit ourselves to Him by faith, and
front our temptations in His strength, and thus, as it were, wrap
ourselves in Him, He will be to us dress and armour, strength and
righteousness. Our old self will fall away, and we shall take no
forethought for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.