13:8
When talking about governments and taxes our attitudes are not always the best! These are not topics that often fill us with joy, but we need to be careful and watch our attitudes. We should make sure we pay all our dues. Then there is one debt that can never be paid, and that is the debt of loving one another. We have never loved enough. We need to remember that love here does not mean sentimental affection, nor sexual love. This is a very hard lesson to take on board and even harder to apply, but it sums up the heart of God. Paul here says love fulfils the Law. The Law is not a random collection of rules, but expresses the heart of God.
13:9,10
Paul then demonstrates the truth of what he has just said. The latter half of the ten commandments are all concerned with loving our neighbour. Love is a so much more than mere sentiment, it involves positive action, and the genuineness of love is demonstrated by actions. The ones in the ten commandments are largely negative commands, ie things we must not do. Paul recognises this in v10 where he says “love does no harm”. Paul quotes from Lev 19:18, “love your neighbour as yourself”, words that Jesus also quoted. It is worth noting that this comes from the middle of the “holiness code”, Lev 18-20. People advocating abandoning God’s teaching on homosexuality are very keen to denigrate Lev 18-20, forgetting that it also includes things like this.
Love is the fulfilment of the Law. The Jewish Christians experienced difficulties in seeming to abandon the law, Paul assures them that both theologically, as explained in the earlier parts of Romans, and practically they will actually fulfil the Law in a much deeper way than they had ever done before.
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