Romans 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loves another has fulfilled the law. I. THE AFFECTIONATE EXHORTATION. This calls upon us to endeavour to be always out of debt, while always in debt. Some, indeed, read the text as a doctrinal statement. "Ye owe no man anything but to love one another"; all that I would inculcate is reducible to this: obey the law of love to others, in all its branches, and then you will "render to all their dues." But there is sufficient reason to interpret our text according to our present translation. Thus interpreted — 1. It does not mean — Ye sin if ye ever contract debt, or do not discharge it the moment it is contracted. On this principle, commerce would be almost annihilated; many a conscience would be continually fettered; and the precept itself would be found impracticable. But it insists on the punctual and conscientious payment of all lawful debts, which indeed is required by common honesty. "The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again." "Woe unto him,... that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." 2. But it means more. Ye owe duties to every one, and these you are to fulfil. In every relationship of life you have dues to render, and all your various duties to man result from your supreme duty to God. You are a debtor first and above all to God Himself, owing Him ten thousand talents and more, and having nothing wherewith to pay. That debt Christ has paid for you. Believe ye this? Then God, for Christ's sake, has freely forgiven you. From being His debtors as to guilt, ye become His debtors as to gratitude, and this debt He would have you pay in charity to all mankind. Would ye, then, be honest in the full Christian sense? "Owe no man anything." Be ever discharging the obligations under which God has graciously laid you, to love Him, and to love your brother also. 3. And yet ye must ever be in debt. We can never do enough in serving God and benefiting man. When all pecuniary debts are paid, this debt of love to one another remains, and is still binding. 4. But whence our means of paying this great debt of love? By having the love of God continually shed abroad in the heart. The more we receive, the more we are in debt to God; and hence the more we do, the more we may do in carrying out love to God and man, in all the relationships of life. II. THE COMPREHENSIVE MOTIVE. "For he that loveth another, hath fulfilled the law." "But we are not under the law, but under grace." True, but for what object? "That we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." Thus is the believer not without law to God, but under the law to Christ. All whom the Spirit leads to Christ for pardon, He forgives freely, and then consigns them back to the training of the Holy Spirit, who writes the law of God upon the heart, and enables them to write it out in the life. And that law is love; "love is the fulfilling of the law." None obey the law of God as those who look to Christ as "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (J. Hambleton, M.A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. |
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