Romans 13:8-14 Commentary

Once again the RCL’s editors did preachers and our hearers no favors when they omitted some Scripture, in this case, Romans 13:1-7, from an Epistolary Lesson. After all, in severing this Sunday’s Lesson’s verse 8 from verses 1-7, they stripped away its theological and literary context. So preachers might seriously consider including Romans 13:1-7 in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson.

Of course, some preachers (and perhaps RCL editors) think of those verses as a kind of homiletical minefield through which we’d prefer not to walk. Romans 12 begins, after all, with verse 1’s, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities …”

This assertion runs almost headlong into 21^st century North American sensibilities. We, after all, don’t naturally like to submit to anything. What’s more, pollsters suggest that North Americans are increasingly suspicious of governing authorities whose political allegiances differ from ours. It’s almost as if suspicion rather than submission is the default position of liberals in regard to conservative leaders and, of course, vice versa.

So by the time Romans’ readers get around to verse 7’s: “Give everyone what you owe him,” perhaps especially North American Christians are already nervous, if not resentful. However, verse 7 does little to calm frayed nerves. After all, Christians admit that governments can claim we owe taxes. But we can hardly imagine how the Spirit inspired Paul to claim that God insists that we pay taxes. After all, don’t even Jesus’ friends spend time and money trying to figure out how can get out of paying at least some of our taxes?

And don’t even get us started on paying our leaders, among others, “honor” and “respect.” We, after all, naturally assume that governing authorities must somehow earn our honor. Even Jesus’ followers naturally believe that we don’t owe respect to any leader who hasn’t somehow demonstrated that he or she deserves it.

Once preachers have, however briefly, navigated this potential minefield, we can move full speed ahead into this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. Paul continues to use fiduciary language in it. “Let no debt remain outstanding [medeni meden opheilete],” writes the apostle in verse 8, “except the continuing debt to love one another [allelous agapen].”* “Don’t run up debts,” The Message paraphrases Paul as writing here. In other words, pay everyone, including governing officials and institutions, what you owe them.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, as one scholar has written, Paul seems to move “from the language of tax returns to the language of love … No longer is Paul talking about paying bills, but rather than about seeking the neighbor’s highest good.”

Yet the move may from verse 7 to verses 8 and following may not be as drastic as one might suspect. Certainly the apostle is shifting his attention from financial and loyalty matters to the matter of Christian love. But he insists that Jesus’ friends’ posture toward them is no different. Just as Paul insists that we owe governing officials and institutions certain things, he also insists that we our owe our neighbor something: our love.

Yet, candidly, neither apostolic summons is always especially palatable. After all, as Shore goes on to note, corrupt governments and other leaders have sometimes used Romans 13:7’s command to demand complete obedience. They, however, don’t always deserve people’s taxes, respect and honor.

What’s more, Jesus’ friends might say something similar about Paul’s summons to fulfill our obligation to love our neighbor. Our neighbors don’t, after all, always deserve our love any more than our leaders deserve our respect. It’s not just that they all too often fail to love us. It’s also that our neighbors sometimes act toward us in hatred.

And yet Paul vigorously insists that we owe our neighbors our love. That God, in fact, gives them a claim on our love. We love God not because we’re such nice or smart people, but because God first loved us. In a similar way, we love our neighbors not because they necessarily deserve it, but because God not only loves them, but also lovingly calls us to do so.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, Paul bolsters verse 8a’s summons to love with several arguments. In verse 8b he insists that the person who loves others “has fulfilled the law [nomon pleperekon].” The Greek word we generally translate as “fulfilled” has a variety of potential meanings. It can mean to satisfy, finish or even verify, as well as to fulfill.

This cloaks in some mystery just what Paul means when he claims that the person who loves has “fulfilled the law.” He doesn’t offer much clarity when he makes a similar claim in verse 10b: Love is the “fulfillment of the law [pleroma nomou].” The Message paraphrases the apostle as insisting that “When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.”

Jesus, of course, used a form of the Greek word we translate as “fulfilled” in Matthew 5:17 when he claimed that he didn’t come to abolish the law, but to “fulfill” (plerosai) it. Most Christians profess that this means that Jesus perfectly obeyed God’s law. But few of Jesus’ friends would suggest that Christians are able to perfectly obey God’s law by loving others.

So what might Paul mean when he insists that the person who loves others “has fulfilled the law” and that “love is the fulfillment of the law”? Perhaps little more than this: God’s law is summarized by God’s call to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves. When, then, Jesus’ friends love in that way, we obey the beating heart of God’s law.

In fact, Paul says something similar to that in verse 9: “The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet’ and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up [anakephalaioutai]  in this one rule, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’.”

Paul’s reference to three of the Ten Commandments suggests that the law to which he refers here includes the Mosaic law God offered at Sinai. But his addition of “and whatever other commandments there may be” suggests not that he’s somehow forgotten the other seven commandments, but that he’s broadly referring to Torah.

However, the apostle, perhaps surprisingly, omits any invitation to love God above all to his summons to love one’s neighbors. Half of the Ten Commandments refer specifically to loving God. In fact, one might argue that all the commandments are a summons to love God.

So perhaps Paul is saying that when Jesus’ friends are faithful rather than unfaithful in marriage, we aren’t just loving our neighbor. We’re also acting out the heart of God’s entire law, including its call to love God above all. When Christians are patient and gentle with our neighbor instead of harming them, we aren’t just loving our neighbor. We’re also, in a sense, obeying God’s entire law.

God’s dearly beloved people do all of this, Paul adds in verses 11 and following, with an eye to the future. We know that we don’t have much time left to love our neighbors by doing things like keeping our promises, working for their wellness and being content with what we have.

So it’s time, insists the apostle, to wake up from our deathly, deadly and unloving ways. It’s time to prepare ourselves and our neighbor for Jesus’ return through acts of loving service and faithfulness. Jesus’ followers need to awaken to what God is doing and calling us to do with and for God in our world.

Paul summons Jesus’ friends to stop wasting our precious time, in The Message’s words, “sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight” (14). Instead, we need to cultivate God’s good desires for us and stop thinking about our sinful desires for ourselves.

In other words, the apostle Paul insists that it’s time to stop loving ourselves more than anything or one, and, instead, deepen our love for God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. For Jesus’ sake, after all, we owe that not just to God, but also our neighbor.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

A scene in the movie Rocky portrays an argument between Rocky Balboa and Paulie, his friend and brother-in-law. In it Rocky says, “Come on, you act like everybody owes you a livin’ … Nobody owes nobody nothin’. You owe yourself.”