Romans 13:8-14 Commentary

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul continues his extended discourse on God’s call to love not just God above all, but also our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. In fact, while Romans 13:1-7’s treatise on Christians’ relationships with earthly authorities may seem to interrupt that discourse, it’s actually an integral part of it. After all, our love for our neighbor is at least arguably related to our relationship with civil authorities.

What’s more, it might appear that Paul ends his treatise on love in Romans 13:10’s middle of this Sunday’s Lesson. It may seem as if he completely shifts his attention there from Jesus’ friends’ love to our preparations for our Lord and Savior’s return. But preachers might point to the actual continuity of the love-theme throughout this Lesson. Listening for the Spirit’s promptings, we might even prayerfully arrange our message around what we might call love’s urgency.

To approach that theme, preachers might consider telling this or a similar story. A little more than five years ago my dad died quite suddenly and unexpectedly. God and he had gifted my family and me with a relationship whose physical distance only minimally shrunk our closeness.

But after my dad passed from life to Life, I was troubled by questions of whether I’d done all I could to tell and show my dad how much I loved him. I particularly asked myself whether our last interactions, both in person and over the phone, reflected the deep love I had for my dad.

After all, Paul insists I’d owed my dad as well as all of God’s image-bearers my love. “Let no debt remain outstanding [medeni meden opheilete*],” he writes in verse 8, “except the continuing debt to love one another [allelous agapen].”

Of course, indebtedness may seem like a strange way to think about love. After all, we often think of love as a fruit of the Spirit that is marked by things like patience and kindness. Here, however, the apostle reminds Jesus’ followers that love is more than just one virtue among many. The love that is our prayers and time we invest in others’ wellness is something we owe each other.

In fact, as Paul continues in verse 8b, “whoever loves has fulfilled [pepleroken] the law.” The commandments are, he adds in verse 9b, “summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’.” In verse 10b the apostle writes something similar: “Love is the fulfillment [pleroma] of the law.”

Calling love the sum total of an obedience “equation” may seem like yet another odd statement to make. After all, even the saintliest Christians can’t perfectly keep God’s law. But Paul doesn’t seem to be suggesting that those who love obey the law perfectly. Instead we sense he’s reminding us that when we’re, for example, faithful in marriage (9a) and protect others’ lives (9b), we are loving the way God created us to love. In fact, all of the commandments offer concrete ways to show our love for God by loving our neighbors.

All of Jesus’ friends’ acts of obedience are, insists Paul, acts of love. People who honor our parents are loving them. Those who protect the sanctity of others’ lives are loving those people. Jesus’ friends who honor our neighbors’ possessions are loving them. People who are content with what God has given us are loving our fellow image-bearers.

While some of Paul’s love-imagery may seem odd or at least unfamiliar, his message is quite clear, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians who love God love our neighbors by doing God’s will to and for them.

But what on earth could possibly tie that profession to the apostle’s subsequent calls to prepare for Jesus’ second coming? What might link Paul’s call to love to his reflections on “the present time”? While the tie may seem loose to his readers, it seems quite clear to the apostle. After all, in verse 11 he calls Rome’s Christians to love their neighbor “understanding [eidotes] the present time [kairon].”

Might Christians think of that invitation this way? We love, as the New Living Translation (NLT) paraphrases this, precisely because we “know how late it is.” Jesus’ friends love because we don’t just know what time it is according to our clocks or phones. We also love because we know what time it is according to God’s time.

“The hour [hora] has already come [ede],” insists Paul in verse 11a, “for you to wake up [egerthenai] from your slumber [hypnou].” It’s time for God’s dearly beloved people to awaken from our natural spiritual malaise that includes our failure to love. As The Message lyrically paraphrases verse 11, we want to “Make sure that [we] don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all [our] day-by-day obligations that [we] lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God.”

But what if Jesus’ friends also saw this hypnou (“slumber”) as a kind of slacking off in our love for not just God, but also our neighbor? It’s easy, after all, to get so absorbed in our daily lives and their challenges that we make love for our neighbors a lower priority. It’s naturally tempting to sprint through our sometimes busy lives without actively loving people who are in need.

Paul implies Jesus’ followers prioritize loving our neighbors, even our enemies, in part because we realize “Our salvation [soteria] is nearer [engyteron] now than when we first believed [hote episteusamen]. The night [nyx] is nearly over [proekopsen]; the day [hemera] is almost here [engiken]” (11b-12a).

In writing that the apostle insists the countdown to God’s final rescue mission is on. The day of Christ’s return to make all things new is getting closer and closer. The dawn of God’s coming to make God’s home in the new earth and heaven is already streaking the horizon.

As a result, Paul summons Rome’s Christians to be done with what belongs to the spiritual night and behave in ways that can stand Christ’s second coming’s daylight’s scrutiny. In verse 12b he writes, “Let us put aside [apothometha] the deeds of darkness [erga tou skotous] and put on [endysometha] the armor of light [hopla tou photos].” The NLT paraphrase this as “remove your dark deeds like dirty clothes and put on the shining armor of right living.”

After all, our natural “spiritual pajamas” are filthy. We’ve soiled them with what the apostle calls in verse 13 our “carousing [komois] and drunkenness [methais] … sexual immorality [koitais] and debauchery [aselgeiais] … dissension [eridi] and jealousy [zelo].” In verse 14b the apostle summarizes all of this dirt by referring to it as gratifying “the desires of the flesh [epithymias].”

Preachers might note this presents a kind of equation of carousing and drunkness + sexual immorality and debauchery + dissension and  jealousy = not love, but hatred for God and our neighbor. We might also note that while some of verse 13’s dirty clothing is a colossal waste of time and resources, other soiled nightwear represents a selfish failure to love our neighbor.

Those who would love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves “behave [peripatesomen] decently [euschemonos]” (13a). On top of that, Jesus’ followers replace our spiritual filthy clothing with Christ’s righteousness. We “clothe [endysasthe]” ourselves “with the Lord Jesus Christ” (14b). Christians who know Christ could return at any moment seek the Spirit’s help to live in ways that are appropriate to that imminence.

Paul’s imagery is vivid. Since peripatesomen (“behave”) more literally means “walk,” it’s as if he calls us to stop walking around in dirty clothing that’s more appropriate for nighttime and start walking around in clothing that’s suited for wearing during the daytime. Our failure to love our neighbor is more suited for spiritual darkness than the spiritual daytime Christ ushered in through his life, death and resurrection.

So we let the Spirit clothe us in the righteousness with which Christ graces us by his life, death and resurrection. However, Jesus’ followers also let the Spirit dress us in Christ-like words and actions.

Love and eschatology are connected because the imminence of Christ’s return makes our love project even more urgent. After all, even if Jesus doesn’t yet return for all of God’s dearly beloved people, he may return for any individual Christian at any time. Those who know that don’t postpone our love, because someone’s passage from life to Life will leave us with no more time to love them.

What’s more, the Holy Spirit can use God’s adopted children’s love for our unbelieving neighbors to point those neighbors to the God who loves them but may come at any time for them. We seek to genuinely and unconditionally “love into the kingdom” our non-Christian neighbors for whom Jesus’ return to judge the living and the dead may endanger their eternal well-being.

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

Illustration

In his outstanding biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, entitled King, Jonathan Eig notes that not everyone “bought” Dr. King’s non-violent, loving form of protest. “The man is a genuine intellectual,” Grover C. Hall, the editor in chief of the Advertiser, said of King. “But that constant Gandhi business of his, that love-those-who-hate-you routine, is the biggest set of nonsense I’ve ever run into.”