Romans 13:8-10: Love Fulfills the Law

Romans 13:8-10: Love Fulfills the Law

Please turn with me in your Bible to Romans 13. If you’re using one of the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 785. We’ve been working our way passage by passage through Paul’s letter to the Romans, and this morning we find ourselves sin Romans 13:8-10. Romans 13:8-10:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. 

Albert Einstein once said that “the definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” You see, it’s really not that hard to take a subject and describe it in a way that makes it seem really complex or complicated. Lots of people can do that. I had some professors in college who liked to do that. They seemed to have the philosophy that the more complicated they could make something, the more brilliant they were. But Einstein says—and I believe he’s right—that true genius is “taking the complex and making it simple.” That’s how you know you’ve truly mastered a subject. Can you explain it in a way that a seven-year-old can understand? 

And I believe our main passage here in Romans 13 is a wonderful example of that. Paul takes the Old Testament law—the law that God gave to Israel through Moses—and sums it up in an amazingly simple way. He says that all 613 commandments of that law are fulfilled by loving the people around you. Love fulfills the law. That’s main idea of the passage before us. Love fulfills the law. 

Now of course that raises the question, “What is love?” And there are certainly no shortage of ideas in our society today about what love is and what love looks like. Different people use that term in many different ways. So what does Paul mean when talks about love here? Well, we find one clue in verse 9, where Paul says that all the commandments are summed up in this one teaching: “You shall love our neighbor as yourself.” That’s a quote from Leviticus 19:18. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, look at how you naturally and instinctively love yourself, and that’s how you should love your neighbor. So how do you love yourself? Well, you generally look out for your own welfare, right? Just look at the way young children behave. Unless we train them differently, children naturally want every toy for themselves, every treat for themselves, and all attention for themselves. And if they don’t get everything they want, they’ll often make their displeasure known, right? We’ve all seen the kid throwing a temper tantrum at the supermarket because his mom won’t buy him what he wants. So children instinctively love themselves. And as they grow up and become adults, they may learn to express their desires in ways that are more socially appropriate, but that same impulse of self-love remains. We all naturally do what we think is best for our welfare. We love ourselves. 

By the way, that flies in the face of the popular notion that we need to learn to love ourselves more. A lot of people will say to certain individuals who seem to be struggling that “You just don’t love yourself enough. You need to learn to love yourself more.” But the Bible says the opposite. The Bible says we actually already love ourselves plenty—probably too much. We already instinctively and many times exclusively look out for our own welfare. So what we need to learn is not to love ourselves more but to love others more and ultimately to love God more. “Love your neighbor as you (already) love yourself.” 

So a good definition of the kind of love Paul teaches here using Leviticus is “taking a genuine interest in the welfare of others.” That’s a practical, street-level definition of love. “Taking a genuine interest in the welfare of others.” And that kind of love, Paul says, fulfills the law. You don’t need to make the law more complicated than that. However, don’t let the simplicity of Paul’s teaching in these verses fool you. The idea that love fulfills the law may be a simple idea, but it has enormous implications for our lives. And so I’d like to spend the rest of our time this morning looking at three of those implications—three ways we should respond to this passage. 

Examine Your Heart

Number one is to examine your heart. Examine your heart. Make sure that you’re not just doing the right things but that you’re doing the right things with the right heart—a heart of love. You see, it’s very easy to go through the motions of outward obedience to God’s commands without truly loving people in your heart. But that falls lamentably short of what God desires.  

Imagine a man taking his wife out on a really nice date. And externally, he does everything right. He drives her to a nice restaurant, opens the restaurant door for her as she walks in, provides enjoyable conversation throughout their meal, and then pays the bill for their food. But imagine that as the two of them are leaving the restaurant, the man’s phone vibrates with a text message. And the wife happens to glance down at the text message preview on the screen and sees that it’s another woman flirting with her husband. So she makes her husband hand over his phone and looks through the text message history and sees that the husband and this other woman have been exchanging numerous flirtatious text messages. How do you think the wife of this man is going to respond to that? I don’t think she’s going to be very happy. Even though the husband did all the right things and went through all the right motions on their date, all of that is now meaningless in the eyes of his wife. She now sees the true condition and the true interests of his heart. 

Now most of us would look at that husband and immediately recognize that he falls far short of what he should be. But how often are we guilty of simply going through the motions when it comes to other things? How often do we do the right things without having the right heart—a heart of love? For example, think about your giving habits. Assuming you give money to the church on a regular basis, are you really giving that money because you love Jesus and because you want to see the mission of Jesus accomplished on this earth? Or are you giving because you feel obligated to give or because you want to feel good about yourself for giving or because you think giving lot of money makes up for a certain sin in your life that you’re not quite ready to let go of? Understand that God’s not after your money; he’s after your heart. And that means he wants your giving to be a genuine expression of love for him. 

And there are many other things this can apply to as well. Usually when someone has a baby in our church, other families from the church will bring them a meal. That’s a very good thing. Hopefully, though, those who bring meals are doing so not because they feel like they have to because perhaps others brought them a meal but because they genuinely want to express love and care for that family. The same goes for serving in a volunteer role on Sunday morning. Hopefully that’s done as an expression of love for others in the church and ultimately love for God. And you can even apply this to your job. Assuming you’re not involved in any illegal or morally questionable activity, your job is a way for you to love the people around you. You’re contributing to general welfare of society through the work that you do. If your job weren’t contributing in some way to the general welfare of society, it wouldn’t exist in our capitalistic society. You wouldn’t be getting money for it. So the very fact that your job exists means that you’re contributing to the welfare of society in some way. So is that how you approach your job? Are you just going through the motions of your job so you can get a paycheck or are you doing your job as a labor of love for the people around you? Are you loving your neighbor? Your obedience to God’s commands isn’t complete apart from that heart of love. 

In fact, we might say that external obedience without a heart of love is one form of legalism. Now, the word “legalism” can be used in several different ways, so we have to be clear about what we mean. One kind of legalism refers to trying to earn our salvation by doing good things. We might call that “Class-One Legalism.” The person thinks that they can actually merit eternal life through the good that they do, which is the exact opposite of what the gospel’s all about. The gospel is a message of salvation by grace and through faith in Jesus, not by the supposedly good things that we do. So, to state it bluntly, the class-one legalist isn’t a true Christian. They’re not truly saved. 

Then, there’s a second type of legalism we might call “Class-Two Legalism.” A class-two legalist may not be trying to get to heaven by keeping God’s commands and may therefore be a true Christian, but they’re adding new commands that go beyond those specifically given in the Bible. For example, saying that Christians are in sin if they don’t homeschool their kids is class-two legalism. Now a Christian may believe that homeschooling is the best option for their family, but it would be wrong for them to say that other Christians who decide to go a different route are outside of God’s will. That would be an example of requiring something more than what the Bible specifically requires. Other examples include saying that it’s always wrong for a wife to work outside the home or for someone to watch “R” rated movies or consume alcohol in moderation. Saying definitively that someone’s in sin for doing one of those things is class-two legalism. 

Then a final kind of legalism is—you guessed it—“Class-Three Legalism.” And this is the kind of legalism our passage in Romans 13 addresses. Class-three legalism refers to doing the right things without the right heart—without a heart of love. And all of the scenarios I listed earlier are examples of this kind of legalism—giving money without love, bringing meals without love, serving on Sundays without love, and doing your job without love. So examine your heart and make sure you’re not a class-three legalist—or any other kind of legalist for that matter.  

Stop Looking for Loopholes

Then, moving on to a second response we should have to the fact that love fulfills the law, we should stop looking for loopholes. The fact that love fulfills the law means that we should stop looking for loopholes. I heard a story not too long ago about a comedian from the early 1900’s named W. C. Fields. And let’s just say W. C. Fields wasn’t a notoriously moral man. So one evening, when a friend came to his hotel room and saw him reading the Bible that the Gideons had placed there, his friend was rather surprised. And the friend said to him, “W.C., are you doing reading that Bible?” To which W. C. responded, “I’m lookin’ for loopholes.”

And it seems as though that’s a part of our nature many times, isn’t it? Many of us, if not all of us, have a tendency to look for those loopholes. Maybe we’ve made a promise to someone and are looking for a way to slip out of that promise. Or maybe we want to do something that many Christians would say isn’t pleasing to God, like smoking marijuana for fun or crossing certain physical boundaries with someone before marriage. So we look for a loophole. Or, to give you an even more serious example, maybe we’re married to someone and don’t want to be married anymore. It’s not that our spouse has been unfaithful or anything—we just don’t want to be married to them. So we look for a loophole that will allow us to get out of that marriage. 

Now I understand that there are some situations that require a close examination of biblical principles. But if you find yourself frequently looking for excuses to do certain things even though something within you tells you that those things aren’t okay, you probably need go back to this passage in Romans 13 and remind yourself that true obedience to God is primarily about your heart. Are you functioning with a heart of love? Is your primary concern in life to love God and love the people around you? If you’re constantly looking for loopholes, I’m not sure your heart passes that test. Looking for loopholes is something a class-three legalist does who’s focusing merely on external behavior and usually something a class-one legalist does who thinks they’re getting to heaven by the good things they do. It’s not something that someone who loves Jesus does. Someone who loves Jesus and loves the people around them doesn’t have a disposition to look for loopholes.

Observe the Moral Boundaries of the Law

Now, so far this morning, we’ve been focusing on the heart—and rightly so. That’s a very important thing to consider from this passage. However, the teachings of the Bible do address our external behavior as well. And even as we think about love and what our main passage says about love fulfilling the law, we see that love isn’t just anything we want it to be. Love may not be reducible to external commands, but it is guided by them. Notice Paul says that love fulfills the law, not that love replaces the law or is somehow at odds with the law. And so, the third response we should have to the fact that love fulfills the law is to observe the moral boundaries of the law. Observe the moral boundaries of the law. 

And by the way, when I talk about the moral boundaries of the law, I’m not saying that Christians in New Testament times are under the law of the Old Testament. That law was intended for Israel, not for the church. However, there are timeless moral principles in the law that are relevant for us not because we’re under the law but because those principles express the unchanging character of God. Let me say that again. There are timeless moral principles in the law that are relevant for us not because we’re under the law but because those principles express the unchanging character of God. So those timeless moral principles are what I believe Paul’s talking about in Romans 13 and what I’m talking about when I speak of the moral boundaries of the law. True love is always in accord with those boundaries. And so, if you’re going to have the love Paul talks about here—the kind of love that fulfills the law—recognize that that love can’t be expressed apart from the law’s moral boundaries. 

And the reason I’m emphasizing this so much is because a good portion of our society views love as something that’s not tied in any way to moral boundaries. We see this particularly in the area of sexuality and people’s opinions about what kinds of things are permissible sexually. If you look at the past 50 years, you can see that America has undergone a very noticeable sexual revolution. All kinds of things are currently considered permissible sexually that weren’t permissible 50 years ago. And that shift has involved a shift in the way people think about love. Most people now believe that love is often expressed in things that transgress traditional moral boundaries. And some will even claim that suggesting someone shouldn’t transgress those boundaries is a form of “hate” rather than love. It’s hate for you to tell someone that a certain desire they have isn’t pleasing to God. So there’s this idea now that love and moral boundaries are set in opposition to each other. 

However, Paul teaches not that love is at odds with God’s moral law but that love fulfills the law. Love fulfills the law. That means there’s a correspondence between love and the law. Genuine love is always in accord with the law’s moral boundaries. Think about it like this. Imagine you’re a college student who’s been given an assignment by your professor to write a paper on “big tech” companies, let’s say. What would you have to do in order to fulfill that assignment? Well, you’d have to write a paper, and that paper would have to deal in some way with “big tech” companies. Now, if you decided that you didn’t want to write about “big tech” companies but instead wanted to write about the Great Wall of China, I’m guessing your paper would probably receive an “F.” Because in order to fulfill the requirements of the assignment, there would have to be a basic correspondence between the paper you turn in and the assignment that was given.  

And likewise with love. To say that love fulfills the law means that there’s a correspondence between love and the law’s requirements. Genuine love is always in accord with those requirements and those boundaries. And so, anything we do outside of the law’s moral boundaries is actually not genuine love at all but rather something less than love and usually something that has much more to do with us seeking our own welfare and satisfying our own lusts than it does with seeking the welfare of people around us. 

And seeking the welfare of people around us is actually—as you may remember from earlier—the very definition of love. Love is about seeking to help others and doing what’s best for them even when what’s best for them may not line up with whatever desires you’re currently feeling. So how do we know what’s best for others? Well, God tells us what’s best for them in the Bible. God’s given us moral requirements in the Bible because that’s actually what’s best for people. He’s not trying to ruin our fun or rain on our parade. He’s lovingly showing us the way to live that will ultimately be the best for us. So when we try to “love” someone outside of those moral boundaries, we’re actually contributing to that person’s harm rather than contributing to their welfare. 

Conclusion

So the fact that love fulfills the law should lead us to do three things: examine your heart, stop looking for loopholes, and observe the moral boundaries of the law. And hopefully our discussion of these three things has helped you see that even though the idea that love fulfills the law may be a relatively simple teaching, it’s not at all a teaching that’s easy to practice. For example, think back to what we said earlier about it not being enough just to do the right things. God requires not only that we do the right things but that we have the right heart in doing them—a heart of love. And I don’t know about you, but I fail at that to some degree every single day. We may often be able to keep many of God’s commandments externally, but who among us is able to keep God’s commandments internally? 

I remember a couple of years ago, I was talking to a guy named Jeff. Jeff was from China and was attending a graduate school somewhere here in Pittsburgh. And since he wanted to use the couple of years he had here in America to learn more about American culture, he was very open to talking with me about Christianity. Since the Communist government of China is officially atheist, Jeff knew almost nothing about Christianity but wanted to at least find out, during his time here, what it was all about. So he let me take him out for coffee and explain Christianity to him. And before I told him about Jesus, I wanted to help him understand why he needed Jesus so badly. So I went through the Ten Commandments with him. And after we read through the Ten Commandments, I asked him how he thought he measured up to those commandments. And he said that even though he wasn’t perfect, he actually thought he measured up pretty well to what those commandments teach. He thought he was doing pretty good with his obedience. But then I explained to him that keeping God’s commandments is ultimately a matter of the heart, and I showed him a few passages in the New Testament about how we can actually break God’s commands in our heart even if we don’t break them externally. And as soon as I told him that, he was like, “Oh, well then I guess I’m actually not that good at all.” And that’s the conclusion I believe we all have to come to if we’re honest with ourselves. None of us is even remotely successful at doing the right things with the right heart. None of us possesses the love that fulfills the law. That’s why we need Jesus so desperately. We need Jesus to forgive us of our failures and give us a new heart.  

You see, the Bible says that Jesus is God in human flesh and was the only one ever in history to fulfill the law’s requirements. He alone meets God’s standard of perfect righteousness and perfect love. And then, as an expression of his love, Jesus died on the cross to take the punishment for our sins. He took the wrath that we deserved by dying on that cross and then rose from the dead three days later. And because of his perfect life and substitutionary death and victorious resurrection, he’s able to offer forgiveness and salvation to everyone who puts their trust in him. That’s the only way you can have the righteousness God requires to enter heaven. There’s no way you can ever achieve it for yourself. You have to receive it as a free gift from God through Jesus. And if you haven’t done that already, I encourage you to do that even this morning.