Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Romans 13:8
Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
8. It is manifest how indispensable to the early growth of the Christian Church these precepts of obedience were. Though their truth is for all generations, whatever may be the phases of political speculation or popular feeling, it was a truth of special and urgent necessity then. But for these principles, humanly speaking, society would have been convulsed, and then left with its evils intensified; and the Church would have perished.
See further, Appendix J.
the higher powers ] Lit. supreme (i.e. ruling) authorities. The word rendered “higher” is the same as that rendered “supreme,” 1Pe 2:13. The context here shews that the idea is not (as in 1Pe 2:13) supremacy over other authorities, but a more general one, superior position as regards the subject.
there is no power but of God: the powers, &c.] More lit. there is no authority except authority derived from God; but the existing authorities have been appointed by God. The first clause emphasizes the absolute inalienable Supremacy of God; the second emphasizes the fact that this Supreme Ruler actually has constituted subordinate authorities on earth, and that these authorities are to be known in each case by their de facto existence, and to be obeyed by Christians as God’s present order. It is instructive to remember that Roman imperialism, under Nero, was God’s present order for St Paul and his first readers.
Whosoever resisteth ] Same word as Jas 5:6; where the possible reference is to the non-resistance of the Just One Himself, when, by an awful abuse of authority, He was “condemned and killed.”
resisteth ] withstandeth; and so just below, they that withstand. The verb is different from that rendered “resist” just above. The difference is noteworthy only as shewing the special reference of the words “they that withstand,” which thus, plainly, must refer to “the ordinance of God; ” and the passage may be thus paraphrased: “those who resist civil authority withstand God’s ordinance; and those who withstand God’s ordinance will (by inevitable consequence) bring on themselves God’s condemnation.”
themselves ] Emphatic in the Gr. They will be their own victims.
damnation ] judgment. Same word as Rom 2:2-3, Rom 3:8, Rom 5:16; 1Co 11:29. Here the reference is to the Divine judgment-seat. See last note but one.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
8 10. Christian practice: Love the best guarantee for the rights and interests of others, in general
8. Owe no man any thing ] The special precept here beautifully expands into the general. Not rulers only but all men, (and here particularly, no doubt, all Christians; see next note;) are to receive “their dues.”
The precept, in its particular application to money-debts, no doubt counsels immediate payment where possible and desirable. Its spirit, however, obliges the Christian only to a watchful avoidance of a state of debt, by careful restriction of expenses within means; and a thoughtful care for the interests of the creditor, to whom deferred payment may be a serious loss. See Pro 3:27-28. But it is obvious that the “owing” here is not of money only but of every kind of “due” from man to man.
but to love one another ] This does not mean that “love” is to be an unpaid debt in the sense in which a repudiated or neglected bill is unpaid. It is to be a perpetual payment; one which in the nature of things can never be paid off, and which will therefore be ever recurring as a new demand for the same happy expenditure. The phrase “love one another ” shews that St Paul has the Christian community specially in view here. They were, indeed, quite as truly bound to “love their enemies;” but the love in the two cases was not exactly of the same quality. The love of benevolence is not to be confused with the love of endearment. For such special entreaties to Christian love see e.g. Joh 13:34; Joh 15:12; Joh 15:17; 1Th 4:9 ; 1Pe 1:22; 1Pe 2:17; 1Jn 3:14; and particularly, as a strictly parallel passage here, Gal 5:13-14.
loveth another ] Lit. loveth the other; the other of the two parties necessary to intercourse.
hath fulfilled ] The perfect tense conveys the thought that such “love” at once attains the fulfilment (as regards principle and will) of the precepts of the “Second Table.” It does not move from one to another by laborious steps, but leaps, as it were, to entire obedience. By its very nature “it has obeyed,” ipso facto, all the demands.
It is obvious that St Paul is not concerned here with the fact of the actual incompleteness of the obedience of even the holiest Christian. He has to state the principle; he takes the ideal, at which all sincere effort will aim.
It is obvious also that by “the Law” here he means only that part of the Divine Law which affects “the neighbour.” The “ first and great commandment” (see Mat 22:37-38,) is not here in view.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Owe no man anything – Be not in debt to anyone. In the previous verse the apostle had been discoursing of the duty which we owe to magistrates. He had particularly enjoined on Christians to pay to them their just dues. From this command to discharge fully this obligation, the transition was natural to the subject of debts in general, and to an injunction not to be indebted to any one. This law is enjoined in this place:
- Because it is a part of our duty as good citizens; and,
- Because it is a part of that law which teaches us to love our neighbor, and to do no injury to him, Rom 13:10.
The interpretation of this command is to be taken with this limitation, that we are not to be indebted to him so as to injure him, or to work ill to him.
This rule, together with the other rules of Christianity, would propose a remedy for all the evils of bad debts in the following manner.
(1) It would teach people to be industrious, and this would commonly prevent the necessity of contracting debts.
(2) It would make them frugal, economical, and humble in their views and manner of life.
(3) It would teach them to bring up their families in habits of industry. The Bible often enjoins that; see the note at Rom 12:11; compare Phi 4:8; Pro 24:30-34; 1Th 4:11; 2Th 3:10; Eph 4:25.
(4) Religion would produce sober, chastened views of the end of life, of the great design of living; and would take off the affections from the splendor, gaiety, and extravagances which lead often to the contraction of debts; 1Th 5:6, 1Th 5:8; 1Pe 1:13; 1Pe 4:7; Tit 2:12; 1Pe 3:3, 1Pe 3:5; 1Ti 2:9.
(5) Religion would put a period to the vices and unlawful desires which now prompt people to contract debts.
(6) It would make them honest in paying them. It would make them conscientious, prompt, friends of truth, and disposed to keep their promises.
But to love one another – Love is a debt which can never be discharged. We should feel that we owe this to all people, and though by acts of kindness we may be constantly discharging it, yet we should feel that it can never be fully met while there is opportunity to do good.
For he that loveth … – In what way this is done is stated in Rom 13:10. The law in relation to our neighbor is there said to be simply that we do no ill to him. Love to him would prompt to no injury. It would seek to do him good, and would thus fulfil all the purposes of justice and truth which we owe to him. In order to illustrate this, the apostle, in the next verse, runs over the laws of the Ten Commandments in relation to our neighbor, and shows that all those laws proceed on the principle that we are to love him, and that love would prompt to them all.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Rom 13:8
Owe no man anything.
Owe no man anything
This precept may signify either to leave not our debts unpaid, or never get into debt. It may be looked to as a repetition of Render unto all their dues (debitum, debt). Be in no mans books. If he be an individual with whom you are dealing, pay when you buy. Or if it be the government, pay the tax when it becomes due. The injunction in this latter or more rigorous meaning of it is far from being generally adhered to. Perhaps it may not at all times suit the conveniences or even the possibilities of business, that each single transaction should be a ready-money transaction. Perhaps even in the matters of family expenditure it might save trouble to pay at certain terms. There can be no doubt, however, that in the first interpretation of it, it is a matter of absolute and universal obligation. Though we cannot just say that a man should never get into debt, we can feel no hesitation in saying that, once in, he should labour most strenuously to get out of it. For–
1. In the world of trade one cannot be insensible to the dire mischief that ensues from the spirit of unwarrantable speculation. The adventurer who trades beyond his means is often actuated by a passion as intense and as criminal as the gamester. But it is not the injury alone which is done to his own character that is to be deprecated, nor the ruin that bankruptcy brings upon his own family. Over and above these evils there is a far heavier disaster to the working classes, gathered in hundreds around the mushroom establishment, and then thrown adrift in utter destitution on society. This frenzy of men hasting to be rich, like fever in the body natural, is a truly sore distemper in the body politic.
2. If they who trade beyond their means thus fall to be denounced, they who spend beyond their means, and so run themselves into debt, merit the same condemnation. We can imagine nothing more glaringly unprincipled and selfish than the conduct of those who, to uphold their place in the fashionable world, build or adorn or entertain at the expense of tradesmen, whom they hurry on to beggary with themselves.
3. But there is another and more interesting application of this precept, one which, if fully carried out, would tell more beneficially than any other on the greatest happiness of the greatest number, viz., that men in humble life should learn to find their way from the pawn office to the savings bank–so that, instead of debtors to the one, they should become depositors in the other. That it is not so is far more due to the want of management than to the want of means; and it needs but the kindness and trouble of a few benevolent attentions to put many on the way of it. (T. Chalmers, D.D.)
Debt
I. Is a common and serious evil.
1. It robs the creditor of his right, and often involves him in serious perplexity and trouble.
2. It robs the debtor of his independence, and not unfrequently of his moral principle.
II. Is, when voluntarily incurred, a breach of Christian consistency. It implies–
1. A defective morality.
2. A want of love to our neighbour.
3. A blinded conscience.
III. Should be carefully avoided.
1. By living within our income.
2. By cutting off all unnecessary expenses.
3. By incurring no liabilities which we have not a reasonable prospect of meeting.
4. By the utmost economy. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
The guilt and folly of being in debt
I. The propriety of the direction in the text.
1. To be in debt will expose us to defraud others of their just due.
2. Is injurious to the general interests of society.
3. Involves whole families in suffering.
4. Subjects us to great sacrifices.
5. Is prejudicial to our improvement in useful knowledge.
6. Is unfavourable to religion.
7. Is in direct opposition to Gods command.
II. Some considerations to aid a strict compliance with it.
1. Debt, however long foreborne, will one day be required.
2. Remember the worth of time.
3. Avoid luxury.
4. Never exceed your income.
5. Never despise honest labour.
6. Avoid depending on speculation and artifice.
7. Never neglect the duties of religion. (J. W. Cannon, M.A.)
Owe no man anything
I. The most likely means of paying what we owe.
1. The first mean is diligence in business. Make no unnecessary delay, nor set about it with a slack or unskilful hand.
2. The second mean is frugality, or the avoiding of expense whenever it can properly be avoided.
3. A third mean is exactness. Put all in writing, says the son of Sirac, that thou givest out or receivest in. Punctual payment is material. The last effect of exactness is to ensure the payment of what we owe at death. It is the concluding evidence of an honest man to leave his affairs in order.
II. The sacrifices which must sometimes be made to justice.
1. One must sometimes bear the reproach of selfishness in order to pay debt or keep out of it.
2. Fashion must often be quitted for the sake of justice. In order to perceive and obey this call, consult your own understanding. What is the consequence of being unfashionable? I am censured, and ridiculed, and despised. But what is the consequence of being unjust? My own heart condemns me.
3. Vainglory must be checked for the sake of justice. The pleasure in sumptuous possessions is slight, beholding them with the eye. If they be unpaid, looking at them calls up the painful remembrance.
4. Generosity must be checked when it would encroach on justice. The parting with money inconsiderately, so far from being approved, is become a proverbial folly. Some make a flash of affected generosity who are not very scrupulous in paying what they owe, nor about fraudulent courses provided they be gainful.
5. Compassion must be bounded by justice. We are required to do justly and to love mercy. Let the love of mercy be cherished, and, when justice permits, let its dictates be obeyed. Still it is the part of a wise man to examine the claims that are made on his compassion. By rejecting false ones he can indulge compassion with more effect, and it partakes more of the nature of virtue.
6. Friendship may prompt a man to involve himself by loan or suretyship.
7. The dictates of natural affection must be checked when they encroach on justice. Let a man reveal to his family his real circumstances, and establish an order conformed to them.
8. Pleasures innocent in themselves may prove too costly. From that moment they cease to be innocent.
9. An immoderate desire of wealth leads to injustice. What is the consequence, for example, of adventuring in trade beyond what your capital admits of and justifies?
10. Sloth must be conquered. It is fatal to justice as well as to every other virtue. The slothful is brother to him that is a great waster. He is equally exposed to poverty, and to all the temptations the poor are under, to be unjust.
11. False shame must be combated.
12. Restitution is the last sacrifice to be made to justice. There are two cases, the case of things found, and of things acquired unjustly.
III. Such are the sacrifices to be made to justice. They are costly; but the blessings are in proportion great.
1. To be out of debt is accounted a part of happiness.
2. Peace at the latter end is the portion of the upright. The pleasures of iniquity are but for a moment. The splendour of extravagance fades. To live and die an honest man is a worthy object of ambition. (S. Charters.)
Avoidance of debt
Owe no man anything. Keep out of debt. Avoid it as you would avoid war, pestilence, and famine. Hate it with a perfect hatred. Dig potatoes, break stones, peddle in tinwares, do anything that is honest and useful, rather than run into debt. As you value comfort, quiet, and independence, keep out of debt. As you value good digestion, a healthy appetite, a placid temper, a smooth pillow, pleasant dreams and happy wakings, keep out of debt. Debt is the hardest of all taskmasters; the most cruel of all oppressors. It is as a millstone about the neck. It is an incumbus on the heart. It spreads a cloud over the whole firmament of mans being. It eclipses the sun; it blots out the stars; it dims and defaces the beautiful blue sky. It breaks the harmony of nature, and turns to dissonance all the voices of its melody. Ii furrows the forehead with premature wrinkles; it plucks the eye of its light. It drags the nobleness and kindness out of the port and bearing of a man; it takes the soul out of his laugh, and all stateliness and freedom from his walk. Come not, then, under its crushing dominion. But to love one another.
Honesty and love
I. Honesty gives every one his due.
II. Love does more, it gives itself, and thus fulfils the whole law. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Honest dealing and mutual love
These two things are closer together than we are wont to imagine. Said a foremost physician not long ago, when asked how far the facility with which American constitutions break down was occasioned by overwork, It is not overwork either on the part of the people who work with their brains, or with their hands. The most fruitful source of physical derangement and mental and nervous disorders are pecuniary embarrassments and family dissensions. The two things lie close together. The father, crowded beyond endurance by the strain to maintain a scale of living long ago pitched too high, the mother consciously degraded by the domestic dishonesty that draws money for marketing and spends it for dress; the sons and daughters taught prodigality by example, and upbraided for it in speech–what can come to such a home but embittered feeling? How can love reign in a household where mutual confidence and sacrifices, where the traits that inspire respect and kindle affection are wanting? Not to pay ones debts is as sure and as short a road as can be found to the extinction of confidence, the destruction of respect, and the death of love. Where now shall we look for a corrective? I answer, in a higher ideal of the true wealth and welfare of the nation, and so of the individuals who severally compose it. It was Epictetus who said, long ago, You will confer the greatest benefit upon your city, not by raising the roofs, but by exalting the souls of your fellow-citizens, for it is better that great souls should live in small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in great houses. Let us then pay every debt but the debt which we can never wholly pay, whether to God or our neighbour, which is the debt of love. But let us gladly own that debt, and be busy every day of our lives in making at least some small payment in account. As we gather about the family board let us remember the homeless and unbefriended, and be sure that we have done something to make sunshine in their hearts, no matter what gloom may reign without. (Bp.H. C. Potter.)
The debt of Christian love
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 neighbours 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 Christs 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.)
The debt of love to our neighbour
I. This is a debt which every man owes. There are relations in which men seem slow to recognise dues and obligations. They recognise the relation between the ordinary creditor and debtor, master and servant, as well as the obligations founded upon it. They forget that the very existence of certain relations involves a corresponding obligation, whether we have voluntarily assumed them or not. The child enters into relations with its parents without any act of its own; and yet the child is bound to render filial honour, obedience, and love. The highest relation man can have is to God. This exists before the act of any recognition on the part of the creature; but it imposes certain obligations which the creature is bound to meet. In the preceding verses Paul speaks of the relation of the subject to the ruler; the citizen to the state. Our birth introduces us to the rights of citizenship, but we are born to duties just as much as to rights; and as long as we remain under the protection of the State, we are bound to render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, just as we are bound to render unto God the things that are Gods; and that, as Paul informs us, for conscience sake. The debts we owe the State are just as binding as any debts we voluntarily contract. And these dues (Rom 13:7) lead Paul to speak of that greatest debt, loving one another. Although you may say with a feeling of independence and superiority, I do not owe a dollar to any man,here is a debt you owe to every man. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; and the same spirit spoke through Cain–Am I my brothers keeper? The atheist denies his relation to God and the obligation which it involves; the spirit of selfishness refuses to recognise its relation to its neighbour; but the Spirit of Christ teaches a different lesson. It is not left to my choice or caprices–it is a debt. I owe it not to a select number of men, but to every man, for every man is my neighbour. According to Paul this debt is love (Mat 22:36-38).
II. What are we to do with this debt?
1. We must pay this debt as every other. The Lord is not satisfied with our recognition of the duty, for He says, Thou shalt love. We must pay it–
(1) By scrupulously abstaining from doing any evil to our neighbour, for love worketh no ill to his neighbour.
(2) By doing all the positive good to him we can.
2. And yet this is the one great debt which we are always to owe. Love is the inexhaustible fountain out of which all words and deeds of kindness flow. That fountain must ever remain open and full. Without such a fountain all the streamlets would fail. Let a man love, and he will strive to render unto all their dues, and to owe no man anything. The absence of love makes cruel creditors and unprincipled debtors. Love is indeed the fulfilment of the law, and the unfulfilled law everywhere reveals the absence of love. By the law is the knowledge of sin, and of this great sin, too, that we owe this great debt of love, and have become great debtors by not paying it. But the law is also our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. We shall never be able to pay this greatest of all debts until we have become the pardoned debtors of our Heavenly Father. The love of God begets our love. He alone can enable us to be diligent in paying a debt that can never be entirely paid off. (G. F. Krotel, D.D.)
The debt of love
1. As private persons, in your mutual traffic with one another, it will necessarily happen that, whatever your stations in life are, you must incur debts, and stand accountable to one another for certain goods and commodities received, for labour done, or for money borrowed. When St. Paul therefore directs you to owe no man anything, he only means that you are not to incur debts wantonly, nor keep in debt needlessly. But there is one debt which, he says, you can never discharge. This debt is the debt of Christian love.
2. Examine into the reasons on which it is founded, and why this exertion of Christian love is a debt of that kind, which can never be paid so fully as to absolve us from any further payment of it.
(1) The first reason is founded on the relation in which we stand to Almighty God. The innumerable benefits which we daily and hourly receive at His hands demand the constant tribute of love and gratitude; but we have no way of expressing this affection so effectually as by acts of kindness to our fellowcreatures.
(2) The force of the next reason depends on the frame and constitution of human nature, which is so replete with wants and weaknesses, consisting indeed of various kinds, yet distributed in pretty equal proportion among the species, that it is, morally speaking, impossible for us to be independent one of another.
(3) The last reason consists in the very nature of the principle itself, and of those intrinsic properties, without which it ceases to be the thing which we mean by the terms we use to define it. Now, were benevolence a passive principle that contented itself with being, what the word imports, only a well-wishing, not a well-doing quality, it might not be required to be in constant use and exertion. But when used to denote Christian love and charity, and to have the same meaning with these terms, it implies a strenuous and unwearied exercise of one of the most active faculties of the human soul, which is better, perhaps, expressed by the term beneficence. Our charity must therefore be commensurate with our life; it must act so long as we act, for if it ever faileth it ceaseth to be charity, because we see that the apostle tells us it is one of its essential properties never to fail or cease from acting.
3. On these three reasons we build this conclusion that the debt of charity or benevolence to our neighbour is a debt which we must take all opportunities of paying him, and of which we must only close the payment when death closes our eyes. May we not assure ourselves that a soul actuated by so Divine a principle here on earth, must, of all other things, be best prepared to participate the joys of heaven? (W. Mason, M.A.)
Heavens cure for the plagues of sin
I. The nature of love. There are two kinds of affection that have this title. One is an approbation and affection for a character that pleases us; the other is an ardent good-will towards beings capable of happiness. Both of these affections are exercises of the Divine mind. And both of them are enjoined upon man. God and angels and all holy beings we are obligated to look upon with complacency, and towards all men we are bound to exercise good-will. We may wish well to all men, and still be willing to see the convict imprisoned and executed. This the good of the civil community demands, and this benevolence assents to, nay, even requires.
II. How this affection will operate. Here the path of our thoughts is plain. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour. It will neither kill, nor steal, nor covet, nor defraud, nor witness falsely. It will lead to the discharge of every debt but one, and that one the debt of love; it will delight to owe and pay, and still owe for ever. Those whom we love we wish happy; and in proportion to the strength of that affection will be the energy exerted to accomplish that object. If to be calm and content will render them happy, we shall be reluctant to ruffle their temper or move their envy. If to be rich, and respected, and wise will make them happy, we shall wish their success in business, their increased respectability, and their advance in knowledge. If health, and ease, and long life, and domestic friendship will add to their enjoyments, we shall wish them all these; and what we wish for them we shall be willing, if in our power, to do for them. But if only the grace of God can make them blessed, it will be our strongest wish and our most ardent prayer that God would sanctify them.
III. The duty of benevolence. And here I would premise that the good-will which I urge is to be exercised toward friend and foe. It is a pure and disinterested affection, hence is the offspring of a heavenly temper. I would urge it upon myself and my fellow-men–
1. By the example of God. How constant and how varied are the operations of the Divine benevolence! Life and health, and food and raiment are His gifts, and are bestowed on His friends and His foes. Now the whole Bible just urges upon every man this same expanded benevolence. You are required to be a worker together with God.
2. We are urged to the same duty by the command of God. God does not exhibit His example before us, and leave it to our option whether we will do like Him. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And the Scriptures teach us what the effect of this love will be. It will lead to an affectionate deportment and a readiness to serve each other. It begets a spirit of forbearance, of truth, of unanimity, of self-denial, of meekness, and forgiveness.
3. Benevolence affords its possessor a permanent and high enjoyment. It is, in its nature, a sweet and calm affection, has its origin in heaven, and exerts a sanctifying influence upon every other exercise of the soul. If I know that I love my fellow-men, I am conscious that I feel as God does, and as He commands me to feel. I see, in that case, the image of my Creator in my heart. Hence it begets joy and hope. But this is not all; a benevolent heart makes all the happiness it sees its own, and thus widens, indefinitely, the sphere of its enjoyment. It has a real pleasure in anothers joy, and still does not diminish the good on which it feeds and thrives.
IV. The happiness it communicates to others. I would then urge all the believers and the unbelievers to love their fellow-men, from the fact that by putting forth this affection you can create a world of happiness. In the first place, look about you and see what need there is of more happiness than at present exists, what abundant opportunity there is for your exertion. You cannot be ignorant that you live in a ruined world, where, if you are disposed to be kind, you can find abundant employment. You can find misery in almost every shape and shade. Would it not be desirable to apply a remedy if you might to this complicated malady? Be willing, then, to practise the benevolence required, and the remedy is applied and the cure effected. Can you quit the world peaceably till what you can do has been done, to fertilise the moral waste over which you expect so soon to cast a lingering, dying look?
V. The dying love of Christ. It was in the cure of this very same distress that He came in the flesh and died on the tree. Enter, then, upon the work of making your fellow-men happy, and you are in the very vineyard where the Lord Jesus laboured. He has already rescued from the ruins of the apostasy a great multitude that no man can number. The work is going on, and He invites your co-operation. Remarks:
1. In the want of this benevolence, how strong is the proof we have that men are wholly depraved!
2. We see the necessity that men should be renewed. Place selfish hearts in heaven and they would there be as fruitful as elsewhere in misery.
3. How pleasant is the prospect of a millennium! Then the benevolence we contemplate will become general. Men will be employed in rendering each other happy. (D. A. Clark.)
Love a debt to our neighbour
I. Exceedingly great. Because–
1. The creditors are so many.
2. Its liabilities are so numerous.
3. It can never be fully discharged.
II. Unspeakably sweet. Because–
1. Not lightly incurred.
2. It helps us to discharge all others.
3. It harmonises with Gods love.
4. Every attempt to discharge it is a source of plea-sure. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Love a debt due to all men
I. A great debt.
1. As due to so many–all men.
2. Requiring so much to pay it–sometimes our life (1Jn 3:16).
II. A lasting debt. Though always being paid, yet never discharged. The more that is paid the more is felt to be due. The principle is deepened and made more active by the practice.
III. A pleasant debt (Php 2:1). Every payment of it gladdens and enlarges the heart.
IV. An honourable debt.
1. Necessary to our moral nature.
2. It makes us Godlike and Christlike (Eph 4:32; Eph 5:1-2; 1Jn 4:8). (T. Robinson, D.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 8. Owe no man any thing, but to love one another] In the preceding verses the apostle has been showing the duty, reverence, and obedience, which all Christians, from the highest to the lowest, owe to the civil magistrate; whether he be emperor, king, proconsul, or other state officer; here he shows them their duty to each other: but this is widely different from that which they owe to the civil government: to the first they owe subjection, reverence, obedience, and tribute; to the latter they owe nothing but mutual love, and those offices which necessarily spring from it. Therefore, the apostle says, Owe no man; as if he had said: Ye owe to your fellow brethren nothing but mutual love, and this is what the law of God requires, and in this the law is fulfilled. Ye are not bound in obedience to them as to the civil magistrate; for to him ye must needs be subject, not merely for fear of punishment, but for conscience sake: but to these ye are bound by love; and by that love especially which utterly prevents you from doing any thing by which a brother may sustain any kind of injury.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Having treated of special duties belonging to superiors, he now comes to that which is more general, and belongs to all.
Owe no man any thing; neither your superiors, nor your equals and inferiors; render and pay to every person what is due to him, let his rank and quality be what it will.
But to love one another: q.d. Only there is one debt that yon can never fully discharge; that you must be ever paying, yet ever owing; and that is love.
For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law: this is a reason why we should love one another, and be still paying that debt; and it is taken from the excellency of love:
he that loveth another (i.e. he that doth it in deed and in truth) hath fullfilled the law; he means, the second table of the law, as the next verse showeth; he hath done what is required therein.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8. Owe no man anything, but to loveone another“Acquit yourselves of all obligations exceptlove, which is a debt that must remain ever due” [HODGE].
for he that loveth anotherhath fulfilled the lawfor the law itself is but love inmanifold action, regarded as matter of duty.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Owe no man anything,…. From the payment of dues to magistrates the apostle proceeds to a general exhortation to discharge all sorts of debts; as not to owe the civil magistrate any thing, but render to him his dues, so to owe nothing to any other man, but make good all obligations whatever, as of a civil, so of a natural kind. There are debts arising from the natural and civil relations subsisting among men, which should be discharged; as of the husband to the wife, the wife to the husband; parents to their children, children to their parents; masters to their servants, servants to their masters; one brother, friend, and neighbour, to another. Moreover, pecuniary debts may be here intended, such as are come into by borrowing, buying, commerce, and contracts; which though they cannot be avoided in carrying on worldly business, yet men ought to make conscience of paying them as soon as they are able: many an honest man may be in debt, and by one providence or another be disabled from payment, which is a grief of mind to him; but for men industriously to run into debt, and take no care to pay, but live upon the property and substance of others, is scandalous to them as men, and greatly unbecoming professors of religion, and brings great reproach upon the Gospel of Christ.
But to love one another. This is the only debt never to be wholly discharged; for though it should be always paying, yet ought always to be looked upon as owing. Saints ought to love one another as such; to this they are obliged by the new commandment of Christ, by the love of God, and Christ unto them, by the relations they stand in to one another, as the children of God, brethren, and members of the same body; and which is necessary to keep them and the churches of Christ together, it being the bond of perfectness by which they are knit to one another; and for their comfort and honour, as well as to show the truth and reality of their profession. This debt should be always paying; saints should be continually serving one another in love, praying for each other, bearing one another’s burdens, forbearing each other, and doing all good offices in things temporal and spiritual that lie in their power, and yet always owing; the obligation to it always remains. Christ’s commandment is a new one, always new, and will never be antiquated; his and his Father’s love always continue, and the relations believers stand in to each other are ever the same; and therefore love will be always paying, and always owing in heaven to all eternity. But what the apostle seems chiefly to respect, is love to one another as men, love to one another, to the neighbour, as the following verses show. Love is a debt we owe to every man, as a man, being all made of one blood, and in the image of God; so that not only such as are of the same family, live in the same neighbourhood, and belong to the same nation, but even all the individuals of mankind, yea, our very enemies are to share in our love; and as we have an opportunity and ability, are to show it by doing them good.
For he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law; that is, not who loves some one particular person, but every other person besides himself, even his neighbour, in the largest sense of the word, including all mankind, and that as himself; such an one has fulfilled the law, the law of the decalogue; that part of it particularly which relates to the neighbour; the second table of the law, as the next verse shows: though since there is no true love of our neighbour without the love of God, nor no true love of God without the love of our neighbour; and since these two involve each other, and include the whole law, it may be understood of fulfilling every part of it, that is, of doing it; for fulfilling the law means doing it, or acting according to it; and so far as a man loves, so far he fulfils, that is, does it: but this is not, nor can it be done perfectly, which is evident, partly from the impotency of man, who is weak and without strength, yea, dead in sin, and unable to do any thing of himself; and partly from the extensiveness of the law, which reaches to the thoughts and desires of the heart, as well as to words and actions; as also from the imperfection of love, for neither love to God, nor love to one another, either as men or Christians, is perfect; and consequently the fulfilling of the law by it is not perfect: hence this passage yields nothing in favour of the doctrine of justification by works; since the best works are imperfect, even those that spring from love, for love itself is imperfect; and are not done as they are, in a man’s own strength, and without the Spirit and grace of God. Christ only has fulfilled the law perfectly, both as to parts and degrees; and to him only should we look for a justifying righteousness.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Save to love one another ( ). “Except the loving one another.” This articular infinitive is in the accusative case the object of and partitive apposition with (nothing). This debt can never be paid off, but we should keep the interest paid up.
His neighbour ( ). “The other man,” “the second man.” “Just as in the relations of man and God has been substituted for , so between man and man takes the place of definite legal relations” (Sanday and Headlam). See Mt 22:37-40 for the words of Jesus on this subject. Love is the only solution of our social relations and national problems.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Another [ ] . Lit., the other, or the different one, the word emphasizing more strongly the distinction between the two parties. Rev., his neighbor.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “Owe no man anything,” (medeni meden opheilete) “You all owe no man anything,” “not even one thing”; Do not be morally or ethically obligated to anyone; under the law one was not to withhold wages from a worker, even over night, Lev 19:13. This does not seem to preclude the making of debts of obligation, but forbids not paying them on or before agreed date of payment, to maintain integrity of character, Pro 22:7.
2) “But to love one another,” (ei me to allelous agapan) “Except to love one another continually”; To love God supremely is ‘to love and treat ones neighbor with honesty and integrity, the duty enjoined on every believer and every member of the church in particular, Col 1:4; 1Pe 1:22.
3) “For he that loveth another,” (ho gar agapon -ton heteron) “For the one loving the other,” the other party, individual, even the one having a different disposition or personality; his neighbor near him, has done what the law of Moses prescribed as a standard of public and private morality and ethics, Mat 22:34-40; Luk 10:27-37.
4) “Hath fulfilled the law,” (nomon peoleroken) “Has fulfilled the moral and ethical principal of the Divine law, Exo 20:1-20; Gal 5:14 asserts that the “law-premise” or principle is fulfilled in this, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” Lev 19:18; Jas 2:8-9.
OWE NO MAN ANYTHING
Let us then pay every debt but the debt which we can never wholly pay, whether to God or our neighbor, which is the debt of love. But let us gladly own that debt, and be busy every day of our lives in making at least some small payment in account. As we gather about the family board let us remember the homeless and unbefriended, and be sure that we have done something to make sunshine in their hearts, no matter what gloom may reign without.
-Bp. Potter
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
8. To no one owe ye, etc. There are those who think that this was not said without a taunt, as though Paul was answering the objection of those who contended that Christians were burdened in having other precepts than that of love enjoined them. And indeed I do not deny, but that it may be taken ironically, as though he conceded to those who allowed no other law but that of love, what they required, but in another sense. And yet I prefer to take the words simply as they are; for I think that Paul meant to refer the precept respecting the power of magistrates to the law of love, lest it should seem to any one too feeble; as though he had said, — “When I require you to obey princes, I require nothing more than what all the faithful ought to do, as demanded by the law of love: for if ye wish well to the good, (and not to wish this is inhuman,) ye ought to strive, that the laws and judgments may prevail, that the administrators of the laws may have an obedient people, so that through them peace may be secured to all.” He then who introduces anarchy, violates love; for what immediately follows anarchy, is the confusion of all things. (408)
For he who loves another, etc. Paul’s design is to reduce all the precepts of the law to love, so that we may know that we then rightly obey the commandments, when we observe the law of love, and when we refuse to undergo no burden in order to keep it. He thus fully confirms what he has commanded respecting obedience to magistrates, in which consists no small portion of love.
But some are here impeded, and they cannot well extricate themselves from this difficulty, — that Paul teaches us that the law is fulfilled when we love our neighbor, for no mention is here made of what is due to God, which ought not by any means to have been omitted. But Paul refers not to the whole law, but speaks only of what the law requires from us as to our neighbor. And it is doubtless true, that the whole law is fulfilled when we love our neighbors; for true love towards man does not flow except from the love of God, and it is its evidence, and as it were its effects. But Paul records here only the precepts of the second table, and of these only he speaks, as though he had said, — “He who loves his neighbor as himself, performs his duty towards the whole world.” Puerile then is the gloss of the Sophists, who attempt to elicit from this passage what may favor justification by works: for Paul declares not what men do or do not, but he speaks hypothetically of that which you will find nowhere accomplished. And when we say, that men are not justified by works, we deny not that the keeping of the law is true righteousness: but as no one performs it, and never has performed it, we say, that all are excluded from it, and that hence the only refuge is in the grace of Christ.
(408) The debt of love is to be always paid, and is always due: for love is ever to be exercised. We are to pay other debts, and we may pay them fully and finally: but the debt of love ever continues, and is to be daily discharged. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
Text
Rom. 13:8-10. Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. Rom. 13:9 For this, thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in this word, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Rom. 13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
REALIZING ROMANS, Rom. 13:8-10
555.
Does verse eight cancel all credit buying?
556.
We all have a great debt. What is it?
557.
If we truly loved our neighbor, would there be any need for law? Explain.
558.
Was there some particular purpose in using part of the ten commandments as examples of law?
559.
Show how the purpose of law is fulfilled in love.
Paraphrase
Rom. 13:8-10. Pay all your debts, and owe no man any thing, unless mutual love; because that debt can never be fully discharged. He who loveth another, hath fulfilled the law respecting his neighbor.
Rom. 13:9 For the precepts, Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet; and if there be an other commandment prescribed in the word of God, or dictated by right reason, which hath others for its object, it is summed up in this precept, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: love him as a part of thyself, on account of his usefulness in promoting thy happiness.
Rom. 13:10 For love restraineth a man from doing evil to his neighbor, and leadeth him to do his neighbor every good office in his power; wherefore love is the fulfilling of the law respecting ones neighbor.
Summary
Christians must pay to all whatever is due them, whether tax, customs, or honor. The only exception is that we must be always owing one another a debt of love, which we are to be constantly paying, yet never able to pay in full. We are never to feel that we have finally discharged the debt. The reason is that he who loves another is sure to keep the whole law towards him. We will not only never injure him whom we love, but will do him whatever good we can.
Comment
Duties of love to all men. Rom. 13:8-10
We must produce a good report from Christians and non-Christians. Here are personal obligations that must be paid. Owe no man anything, would be a good motto to hang on the wall of the preachers study, or on the wall of the elders home. But we do have a debtan obligation of love. Perhaps one is inseparably linked to the other. We cannot love one another if we fail to pay what we owe. We need not worry about moral regulations when we love in deed and in truth. We shall find, to our joy (and that of our neighbor), that we have gone far beyond whatever regulations man has set up for right or wrong.
347.
In what sense are we to owe no man anything?
348.
Show how the debt of love relates to debts of money.
349.
In what way should we go beyond the law man has set up?
The Ten Commandments are all summed up in one wordlove. How could we commit adultery, kill, steal or covet if we love our neighbor?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(8) Owe no man anything.The word for owe in this verse corresponds to that for dues in the last. The transition of the thought is something of this kind. When you have paid all your other debts, taxes, and customs, and reverence, and whatever else you may owe, there will still be one debt unpaidthe universal debt of love. Love must still remain the root and spring of all your actions. No other law is needed besides.
Another.Literally, the otherthat is to say, his neighbour, the person with whom in any given instance he has to deal.
We naturally compare with this passage Mat. 22:39-40; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8. It shows how thoroughly the spirit of the Founder of Christianity descended upon His followers, that the same teaching should appear with equal prominence in such opposite quarters. The focusing, as it were, of all morality in this brief compass is one of the great gifts of Christianity to the world. No doubt similar sayings existed before, and that by our Lord Himself was quoted from the Old Testament, but there it was in effect overlaid with ceremonial rules and regulations, and in other moralists it was put forward rather as a philosophical theorem than as a practical basis of morals. In Christianity it is taken as the lever which is to move the world; nor is it possible to find for human life, amid all the intricate mazes of conduct, any other principle that should be at once as simple, as powerful, and as profound.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
4. Duties to our living contemporaries , Rom 13:8-14 .
All are comprehended under love, (8-10,) under pressure of the most solemn Christian motives requiring of us perfect purity of life, (11-14.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
8. Owe no man From the payment of government dues the apostle makes transition to the universal due of love, required by and lying as basis of the divine law, toward all our fellow men. The emphasis, therefore, does not rest upon this clause as if the apostle forbade the credit system in trade; but it is rather the transit to the duty of ever recognizing and ever paying the debt of love.
Any thing This does not forbid contracts to pay at a future time, but a violation of the contract, or the violation of any obligation to pay when justly due. We must avail ourselves of no technicality of law to avoid what is equitably due. In short, we must obey the golden rule in the moneyed transactions of life. The law of equitable love must underlie our business dealings.
Love This is a debt which though forever paid is forever due. It is a vessel which even though forever full forever needs filling.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Owe no man anything, except to love one another, for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law.’
Having spoken of the Christian’s debt to the state Paul now turns to the question of the Christian’s debt to all men. ‘Owe no man anything’ is not saying that we should not enter into debt on a considered basis, but rather that we should pay our dues. We are not to be dilatory in fulfilling our obligations. But he then points out that there is one debt which we are to owe and which is continual, and that is our debt to love one another. As regards this debt we can never call ‘time’. And the reason for that is that love is the fulfilment of the Law. In other words, if we truly love we will automatically fulfil the requirements of the Law as regards our attitude towards others, for we will desire the very best for them. Note Paul’s indication that we are to fulfil God’s Law in terms of its deepest meaning. But it is as the consequence of our love for Christ and for God, not in order somehow to obtain merit by doing so.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Christian’s Responsibility To Love (13:8-10).
Paul now turns his attention from the Christian’s duty to the authorities, to the Christian’s duty towards the outer world. Jesus Himself stated that the two greatest commandments in the Law (Mat 22:35-40) were to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength (Deu 6:5) and to love our neighbours as ourselves (Lev 19:18), and in the context of Leviticus the latter included loving those who came to live among us (Lev 19:34). Paul now takes up this second commandment and expands on it, because in context he is speaking of Christian responsibility to his fellowman.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Gospel in Relation to the Law – The Church is related to the government of its society. Therefore, it has civil duties in relation to its leaders (Rom 13:1-7). These civil duties do not conflict with the Mosaic Law found within Scripture. In fact, these principles are found within the Law (Rom 13:8-10).
Rom 13:8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Rom 13:8
Deu 15:6, “For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.”
Deu 28:12, “The LORD shall open unto thee his good treasure, the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season, and to bless all the work of thine hand: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow.”
Deu 28:44, “He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.”
Psa 37:21, “The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.”
Pro 22:7, “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
2Ti 2:4, “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”
Rom 13:8 “for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law” – Scripture References – Note:
Lev 19:18, “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.”
Mat 7:12, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”
Gal 5:14, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
Rom 13:8 Comments – Kenneth Hagin tells us that many people take Rom 13:8 out of context by saying that Christians are not supposed to buy anything on credit. [221] He explains a person does not owe anything until the payment is due. If you do not make the payment, then something is due. In fact the previous verse tells us to pay our taxes when they are due. However, this verse is really saying that believers owe it to others to love them, which is a debt that will never be fully paid. One way to walk in love of course is to make good on financial obligations when they are due. The overall statement is to walk in love with others as a matter of obligation to God and our neighbour.
[221] Kenneth Hagin, Following God’s Plan For Your Life (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Faith Library Publications, c1993, 1994), 163.
Rom 13:9 For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Rom 13:10 Rom 13:10
Rom 5:17, “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The obligation of Christian love:
v. 8. Owe no man anything but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law.
v. 9. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
v. 10. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law. The apostle has spoken at length of the duties and obligations resting upon the Christians in their capacity as citizens of the state and country. But he now extends the admonition to cover the relation of a Christian to his fellow-men in general. And there his injunction is: Owe no man anything, keep your affairs in such a shape that no person has a rightful claim upon you, especially as to taxes, custom, fear, and honor. In this external respect be under obligation to no one, no matter who it is in all the wide world; the duties incumbent upon us in every condition of life must be discharged properly, cheerfully, and in time. But one duty, one obligation there is which can never be discharged adequately, namely, the duty of love toward one’s neighbor. It is a duty which can never exhaust its demands; as a matter of fact, the more it is exercised, the more it feels its own obligation. Paul brings evidence to support this demand: For he that loves his neighbor has fulfilled the Law. If a person were actually able to give to his neighbor the fullness of a free and unselfish love under all circumstances of life, he would thereby have fulfilled the Law. For all the commandments which the apostle now quotes, the Sixth, the Fifth, the Seventh, the Eighth, the Ninth, and any other commandment that may be mentioned, they are all included under one heading, in one summary, and that is: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Note that St. Paul here, as the Scriptures elsewhere, Mar 10:19; Luk 18:20; Jas 2:11, does not follow the conventional order of the commandments, as given in the Decalogue; the enumeration and the order of the commandments is of very minor importance, their content is the essential factor. And they all are included and comprehended in that one injunction, namely, to love one’s neighbor, every fellowman, with the same love with which we regard our own interests and guard them against every infringement. And this is further confirmed by the statement: Love works no evil to one’s neighbor; a person that is actually filled with the love that agrees with the will of God will engage in nothing which may cause ill to befall his neighbor, will avoid all the sins that are mentioned in the commandments. The word “neighbor” is here explained in the original text as the one who is near us. Any person in our immediate vicinity with whom we have had dealings, whom the providence of God has placed near us, is our neighbor, and towards such a one, especially if he be of the household of faith, Gal 6:10, our love should exhibit itself in deeds of kindness, according to the will of God. And therefore the fulfilling of the Law is love, the proof and evidence for the completed fulfillment; in love the doing of all the commandments, of both the first and second tables, is included, its essence fills and covers all demands. It is an ideal which the believers strive and work for all their lives, to measure up to this standard, and by the grace of God they always make some little headway toward their goal.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Rom 13:8 . ] negatively the same thing, only generally referred to the relation to everybody and therewith Paul returns to the general duty of Christians which was before said positively in Rom 13:7 : . By this very parallel, and decisively by the subjective negations, is determined to be imperative: “Leave toward no one any obligation unfulfilled, reciprocal love excepted,” wherein you neither can, nor moreover are expected, ever fully to discharge your obligation. The inexhaustibility of the duty of love, the claims of which are not discharged, but renewed and accumulated with fulfilment, is expressed. Comp. Origen, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Augustine, Beza, Grotius, Wetstein, Bengel (“ amare debitum immortale”), and many others, including Tholuck, Rckert, Reithmayr, de Wette, Philippi, Ewald, Umbreit, Hofmann. The point lies in the fact that, while applies to those external performances to which one is bound (“obligatio civilis,” Melanchthon), in the case of the it means the higher moral obligation, in virtue of which with the quotidie solvere is connected the semper debere (Origen). The objections of Reiche to the imperative rendering quite overlook the fact, that with . . the again to be supplied is to be taken not objectively (remain owing mutual love!), but subjectively , namely, from the consciousness of the impossibility of discharging the debt of love. But Reiche’s own view (so also Schrader, following Heumann, Semler, Koppe, Rosenmller, Bhme, Flatt, and by way of suggestion, Erasmus), that . is indicative: “all your obligations come back to love,” is decidedly incorrect, for must then have been used, as e.g. in Plato’s testament (Diogenes Laert. iii. 43): . The passages adduced on the other hand by Reiche from Wetstein are not in point, because they have with a participle or infinitive . Fritzsche (comp. Baumgarten-Crusius and Krehl): Be owing no one anything; only “ mutuum amorem vos hominibus debere censete .” Thereby the whole thoughtfulness, the delicate enamel of the passage, is obliterated, and withal there is imported an idea ( censete ) which is not there.
. . . .] A summons to unceasing compliance with the command of love having been contained in the preceding , Paul now gives the ground of this summons by setting forth the high moral dignity and significance of love, which is nothing less than the fulfilment of the law. Comp. Gal 5:14 ; Mat 22:34 ff.
] belongs to : the other , with whom the loving subject has to do (comp. Rom 2:1 ; Rom 2:21 ; 1Co 4:6 ; 1Co 6:1 ; 1Co 14:17 ; Jas 4:12 , et al .). Incorrectly Hofmann holds that it belongs to : the further , the remaining law. For the usage of and in the sense of otherwise existing (see thereon Krger, Xen. Anab . i. 4. 2; Ngelsbach, z. Ilias , p. 250 f.) is here quite inapplicable; Paul must at least have written (comp. also Luk 23:32 ; Plato, Rep . p. 357 C, and Stallbaum in loc .). But most intelligibly and simply he would have written , as in Gal 5:14 . It is impossible to explain the singular collectively (with an irrelevant appeal to Rost, 98, B. 3. 5); could only be another (second) law (comp. Rom 7:23 ), and ., therefore, the definite other of two; Khner, II. 1, p. 548.
] present of the completed action, as in Rom 2:25 ; in and with the loving there has taken place (comp. on Gal 5:14 ) what the Mosaic law prescribes (namely, in respect of duties towards one’s neighbour, see Rom 13:9-10 ; inasmuch as he who loves does not commit adultery, does not kill, does not steal, does not covet, etc.). But though love is the fulfilment of the law, it is nevertheless not the subjective cause of justification, because all human fulfilment of the law, even love, is incomplete, and only the complete fulfilment of the law would be our righteousness. Rightly Melanchthon: “Dilectio est impletio legis, item est justitia, si id intelligatur de idea , non de tali dilectione, qualis est in hac vita.”
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Rom 13:8-14 . General exhortation, to love (Rom 13:8-10 ), and to a Christian walk generally (Rom 13:11-14 ).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
8 Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Ver. 8. Owe no man, &c. ] The Persians reckoned these two for very great sins: 1. To be in debt. 2. To tell a lie; the latter being often the fruit of the former. (Xenophon, Gell. xii. 1.) By the 12 tables of Rome, he that owed much, and could not pay, was to be cut in pieces, and every creditor was to have a piece of him according to the debt. (Acts and Mon.) When Archbishop Cranmer discerned the storm which afterwards fell upon him in Queen Mary’s days, he took express order for the payment of all his debts; which when it was done, a most joyful man was he; that having set his affairs in order with men, he might consecrate himself more freely to God. (Mr Wilkins’ Debt Book.) Let us therefore (saith a reverend man) be thus far indulgent to ourselves, as to shake off the deadly yoke of bills and obligations, which mancipate the most free and ingenuous spirit, and dry up the very fountains of liberality. Yea, they so put a man out of aim that he cannot set his state in order, but lives and dies entangled and puzzled with cares and snares; and after a tedious and laborious life passed in a circle of fretting thoughts, he leaves at last, instead of better patrimony, a world of intricate troubles to his posterity and to his sureties; which cannot be managed by those who understand them not, but to great disadvantage. We read of a certain Italian gentleman, who being asked how old he was? answered, that he was in health; and to another that asked how rich he was? answered, that he was not in debt: q.d. He is young enough that is in health, and rich enough that is not in debt.
But to love one another ] This is that desperate debt that a man cannot discharge himself from, but must ever be paying, and yet ever owing. As we say of thanks, Gratiae habendae et agendae, thanks must be given, and yet held as still due; so must this debt of love.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
8 10 .] Exhortation to universal love of others .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
8. ] is not indic. (as Koppe, Reiche, al.), which would require , and would be inconsistent with the just mentioned, but imperative: ‘ Pay all other debts: be indebted in the matter of love alone .’ This debt increases the more, the more it is paid: because the practice of love makes the principle of love deeper and more active. Aug [116] , Ep. 192 (62), ad Clest. vol. ii. p. 868, says: “Redditur enim (caritas), cum impenditur, debetur autem etiam si reddita fuerit; quia nullum est tempus quando impendenda jam non sit. Nec cum redditur amittitur, sed potius reddendo multiplicatur.”
[116] Augustine, Bp. of Hippo , 395 430
, hath (in the act) fulfilled : compare the perfects, Joh 3:18 ; ch. Rom 14:23 . is not the Christian law, but the Mosaic law of the decalogue. “This recommendation of Love has, as also the similar one, Gal 5:23 , , an apologetic reference to the upholders of the law, and depends on this evident axiom, ‘He who practises Love, the higher duty , has, even before he does this, fulfilled the law, the lower .’ ” De Wette.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Rom 13:8 . = except mutual love. This is the debitum immortale of Bengel; hoc enim et quotidie solvere et semper debere expedit nobis (Origen). : he who loves his neighbour, the other with whom he has to do. Cf. Rom 2:1 ; Rom 2:21 (Weiss). = has done all that law requires. From what follows it is clear that Paul is thinking of the Mosaic law; it was virtually the only thing in the world to which he could apply the word , or which he could use to illustrate that word. The relation of chaps. 12 and 13 to the Gospels makes it very credible that Paul had here in his mind the words of our Lord in Mat 22:34 ff.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Romans
LOVE AND THE DAY
Rom 13:8 – Rom 13:14
The two paragraphs of this passage are but slightly connected. The first inculcates the obligation of universal love; and the second begins by suggesting, as a motive for the discharge of that duty, the near approach of ‘the day.’ The light of that dawn draws Paul’s eyes and leads him to wider exhortations on Christian purity as befitting the children of light.
I. Rom 13:8 – Rom 13:10 set forth the obligation of a love which embraces all men, and comprehends all duties to them.
That is the first plain truth taught here. Love is not an emotion which we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select its objects according to our estimate of their lovableness or goodness. But we are bound to love, and that all round, without distinction of beautiful or ugly, good or bad. ‘A hard saying; who can hear it?’ Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not get his due from us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the debt of love is never discharged. After all payments it still remains owing. There is no paying in full of all demands, and, as Bengel says, it is an undying debt. We are apt to weary of expending love, especially on unworthy recipients, and to think that we have wiped off all claims, and it may often be true that our obligations to others compel us to cease helping one; but if we laid Paul’s words to heart, our patience would be longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shut hearts and purses against even unthankful suitors.
Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt debitum , ‘duty’ of love includes all duties. It is the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch as it will secure the conduct which the law prescribes. The Mosaic law itself indicates this, since it recapitulates the various commandments of the second table, in the one precept of love to our neighbour Lev 19:18. Law enjoins but has no power to get its injunctions executed. Love enables and inclines to do all that law prescribes, and to avoid all that it prohibits. The multiplicity of duties is melted into unity; and that unity, when it comes into act, unfolds into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. Love is the mother tincture which, variously diluted and manipulated, yields all potent and fragrant draughts. It is the white light which the prism of daily life resolves into its component colours.
But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doing no ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly negative, and that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to us all. But do we love ourselves only negatively, or are we satisfied with doing ourselves no harm? That stringent pattern of love to others not only prescribes degree, but manner. It teaches that true love to men is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, and thwart, and always must seek their good, and not merely their gratification.
Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of working no ill to others, will find it positive enough. We harm men when we fail to help them. If we can do them a kindness, and do it not, we do them ill. Non-activity for good is activity for evil. Surely, nothing can be plainer than the bearing of this teaching on the Christian duty as to intoxicants. If by using these a Christian puts a stumbling-block in the way of a weak will, then he is working ill to his neighbour, and that argues absence of love, and that is dishonest, shirking payment of a plain debt.
II. The great stimulus to love and to all purity is set forth as being the near approach-of the day Rom 13:11 – Rom 13:14.
But, whether we take this as the meaning of the phrase, or regard it simply as pointing to the time of death as the dawning of heaven’s day, the weight of the motive is unaffected. The language is vividly picturesque. The darkness is thinning, and the blackness turning grey. Light begins to stir and whisper. A band of soldiers lies asleep, and, as the twilight begins to dawn, the bugle call summons them to awake, to throw off their night-gear,-namely, the works congenial to darkness,-and to brace on their armour of light. Light may here be regarded as the material of which the glistering armour is made; but, more probably, the expression means weapons appropriate to the light.
Such being the general picture, we note the fact which underlies the whole representation; namely, that every life is a definite whole which has a fixed end. Jesus said, ‘We must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.’ Paul uses the opposite metaphors in these verses. But, though the two sayings are opposite in form, they are identical in substance. In both, the predominant thought is that of the rapidly diminishing space of earthly life, and the complete unlikeness to it of the future. We stand like men on a sandbank with an incoming tide, and every wash of the waves eats away its edges, and presently it will yield below our feet. We forget this for the most part, and perhaps it is not well that it should be ever present; but that it should never be present is madness and sore loss.
Paul, in his intense moral earnestness, in Rom 13:13 , bids us regard ourselves as already in ‘the day,’ and shape our conduct as if it shone around us and all things were made manifest by its light. The sins to be put off are very gross and palpable. They are for the most part sins of flesh, such as even these Roman Christians had to be warned against, and such as need to be manifested by the light even now among many professing Christian communities.
But Paul has one more word to say. If he stopped without it, he would have said little to help men who are crying out, ‘How am I to strip off this clinging evil, which seems my skin rather than my clothing? How am I to put on that flashing panoply?’ There is but one way,-put on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we commit ourselves to Him by faith, and front our temptations in His strength, and thus, as it were, wrap ourselves in Him, He will be to us dress and armour, strength and righteousness. Our old self will fall away, and we shall take no forethought for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Rom 13:8-10
8Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. 9For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Rom 13:8 “Owe nothing to anyone” This is a present active imperative with a negative particle which usually means stop an act already in process. This emphatic phrase has two negatives. This may have related to taxation issues (Rom 13:6-7). Financial debt is always an emotional and potentially spiritual drain. Be careful of worldliness. It robs believers of their ability to support Christian causes and personal charity. However, this verse cannot be used as a proof text for “no consumer credit.” The Bible must be interpreted in light of its own day. It is not an American morning newspaper! Rom 13:8-10 are emphasizing the priority of our loving one another (1) as covenant brothers (Mat 22:39-40; Joh 13:34-35) and (2) as fellow human beings (cf. Mat 5:42; Gal 6:10).
The NIDNTT, vol. 1, p. 668, makes the observation that the verb “owe” has two senses.
1. in the Gospels it is used of a debt
2. in Paul’s Letters it is used of a responsibility
In this text Paul seems to combine these connotations.
“except to love one another” This is the key thought of Rom 13:8-10 (cf. Joh 13:34; Joh 15:12; Rom 12:10; 1 Corinthians 13; Php 2:3-4; 1Th 4:9; Heb 13:1; 2Pe 1:7; 1Jn 3:11; 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 4:11-12).
“he who loves his neighbor” This verb is a present active participle. This does not refer to isolated or seasonal acts of love, but to a lifestyle of Christlike love.
The term “neighbor” is literally, “another of a different kind” (heteros), although the distinction between heteros and allos (another of the same kind) was breaking down in Koine Greek. In context this may refer to one’s neighbor, in the widest possible terms, believer or not (cf. Luk 12:14-21; Luk 10:25-37). However, the quote from Lev 19:18 in context refers to another covenant partner (a fellow Israelite).
Christians should love other Christians as brothers and lost people as potential brothers (cf. Gal 6:10). Christianity is a family. Each member lives and serves for the health and growth of the whole (cf. 1Co 12:7).
NASB, NKJV,
NRSV”has fulfilled the Law”
TEV”has obeyed the Law”
NJB”have carried out your obligations”
This common Greek verb (plero) can be translated in several ways. It is a perfect active indicative, which can be translated as “it has been and continues to be fulfilled.” Robert Hanna, A Grammatical Aid to The Greek New Testament, quotes A. T. Robertson and calls it “a gnomic perfect (referring to a customary truth, well known by the recipients)” (p. 28). It is repeated in Rom 13:10 (cf. Gal 5:14; Gal 6:2).
Rom 13:9 It is not unusual for Paul to use the Mosaic Law (Exo 20:13-17 or Deu 5:17-21 and Lev 19:18) to motivate New Covenant believers. In Eph 6:2-3, Paul also used one of the Ten Commandments as a motivation for Christians (cf. 1Ti 1:9-10). This OT text was not a means of salvation, but it was still God’s revealed will for how humans should treat God and each other (cf. Rom 15:4; 1Co 10:6; 1Co 10:11). Possibly quoting from the OT was Paul’s way of relating to both Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman Church. This use of the term “fulfilled” also related to Jesus’ discussion of the Law in Mat 5:17.
It is possible that this is referring to law in general, law as societal norms, and not the Mosaic Law specifically (cf. JB). However, the fact that Paul quotes from the OT in Rom 13:9 implies a reference to the Mosaic Law. Notice that only love, not human rule-keeping, can truly fulfill the Law! See Special Topics below.
Lev 19:18 is used in two significant ways.
1. Jesus uses it in conjunction with the shema (i.e., Deu 6:4-6) as a summary of the whole Law (cf. Mat 22:37-40; Mar 12:29-31; Luk 10:27).
2. For Paul it functions as a summary of the second half of the decalog (i.e., one’s relationship with covenant partners (cf. Gal 5:14), following Jesus’ comment in Mat 7:12 and Luk 6:31.
SPECIAL TOPIC: PAUL’S VIEWS OF THE MOSAIC LAW
SPECIAL TOPIC: NOTES ON Exodus 20
“For this” This Is a reference to the Ten Commandments or the Decalog. The order of this listing of the second half of the Ten Commandments follows the Greek manuscript B, called Vaticanus. It is slightly different from the Masoretic Hebrew Text of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. The second half of the Decalog dealt with Israel’s relationship to each other based on their relationship to YHWH.
“and if there is any other commandment” This is a first class conditional sentence which is assumed to be true from the author’s perspective or for his literary purposes. There are other commandments. The phrase meant “if there are any other commandments outside the Decalog.” In other words, this sums up all the Mosaic Law or possibly “law” in general.
There is a variant in the Greek manuscript traditions as to how many and in what order these Ten Commandments are listed. Judaism has one numbering; Catholics and Protestants also have different numbering. The meaning of the passage is not affected by this variation, which is true of the vast majority of the manuscript variations.
“it is summed up in this saying” This is a quote from Lev 19:18. It was quoted several times in the Gospels (cf. Mat 5:43; Mat 19:19; Mat 22:39; Mar 12:31 and Luk 10:27). Jesus calls it the second great or foremost commandment. It was also quoted in Gal 5:14 and Jas 2:8. When one loves God then one will love what God loves (i.e., human beings made in His image, cf. Gen 1:26-27).
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” Believers must love themselves as God loves them before they can love and accept others. Appropriate self love is not evil. The major truth of this section is stated clearly-love others (cf. Rom 13:10). Those who have been touched by God’s self-giving, sacrificial love will love others in the same way (cf. 1Jn 3:16). This is the crux of Christlikeness (the restored image of God.) In the presence of this kind of love there is no need for “law.”
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
no man = no one. Greek. medeis.
but = if (App-118) not (App-105).
love. App-135.
another = the other. App-124.
fulfilled. See Rom 1:29. App-125.
the. Omit.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
8-10.] Exhortation to universal love of others.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Rom 13:8. , to no man) From our duties to magistrates, he proceeds to general duties, such as we owe to one another.-, owe) a new part of the exhortation begins here.-, to love) a never-ending debt. Son 8:7, at end of ver. If you will continue to love, you will owe nothing, for love is the fulfilling of the law. To love is liberty.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Rom 13:8
Rom 13:8
Owe no man anything, save to love one another:-This is an extension of the precept to pay taxes and customs and give honor to whom honor is due. He instructs them to pay all debts and obligations, private as well as public, and that they should owe no man anything-should incur no obligations to any one save those which love imposes. This certainly prohibits going in debt and being under pecuniary obligations to our fellow men. The obligations that love to our fellow men incurs are lasting.
for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law.-Love holds man under obligations to do what the law imposes upon him. Love to God requires him to do what the law requires him to do toward God. Love to his fellow man requires him to do to his fellow man just what the law of God requires him to do. James says: If ye fulfil the royal law, according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well. (Jas 2:8). The royal law, as given by Christ, is, Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them (Mat 7:12); and to love enemies is to bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.
Love, then, beyond all doubt, is doing good to a person. When we do him good, we love him, it matters not whether the good we do pleases or displeases him. Do to him what the divine law commands, and we do him good. It frequently will offend him. Be it so, love demands that we should help him, even if he persecutes us for it. That was the love of Christ to man. He loved him, although his love excited the wrath and enmity of man. Love is doing a man good, and the divine law tells us that it is the only way in which we can do him good; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Love Fulfills the Law
Rom 13:8-14
The one debt which can never be discharged is love. Because we can never be out of debt to God, we are called upon to show unending love to man. So long as we love we cannot injure; and therefore the man who is always caring for others as much as, or more than, he does for himself (and this latter is the Christian ideal) is fulfilling that ancient law.
We resemble soldiers slumbering in their tents while dawn is flushing the sky. Presently the bugle rings out its awakening note. The long night of the world is ending, the dawn is on the sky, and all the malignity of men and demons cannot postpone it by a single hour. Let us put off the garments which only befit the darkness, and array ourselves in the armor of the day! What is that armor? In a word, it is Jesus Christ-His character and method, His unselfishness and purity-so that when men see us, they may involuntarily turn to Him.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Owe
See Lev 19:13; Pro 22:7.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Debt
Owe no man anything, save to love one another.Rom 13:8.
1. There are several things in the verse from which the text is taken that are very characteristic of St. Paul. First, there is the tendency to go off upon a word; the mention of the word love seems to suggest to the Apostles mind his favourite thesis, Love is the fulfilling of the law. This he pursues through several verses. Again, he uses the word owe in two different ways: in the familiar signification of owing money, and also in the sense of duty or obligation. As if he said, Owe no man anything but that debt which you must always owe and ought to be always paying, the endless debt of love. Thirdly, there is the tendency which we often observe in the writings of St. Paul to merge the particular in the general, the moral in the spiritual. He is constantly going back to the first principles of the love of God and of man.
2. St. Paul has spoken of the duties and the spirit befitting members of the body of Christ in their association with one another in the intercourse of private life. He now comes by a natural transition to speak of their attitude to the community at large, and especially to the authorities, whether of the city or of the empire, under whom they found themselves. That they were Christians was an additional reason why they should be good citizens. The State, like the family or the Church, is of Divine origin and appointment, with claims not to be set aside, demanding in some form the service, the support, the loyalty of all who belong to it. The persuasion that each individual has a duty to the State, must hear its call and give it his support, is not at liberty to uphold merely what is pleasing to himself, to pay or not to pay according to his own whim and fancy, leads to the further persuasion that each has a duty to each and all around. For this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are Gods ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law. It is a principle of universal application. It covers the vast field of mutual human obligation.
3. How Christians should behave in their relations to one another and to the world around now becomes the burden of the Apostles counsel. Each man in the station in which he is placed is to exercise the gifts with which he has been endowed. And each man is bound to consider the rights of others. No man can live his life without learning that he cannot follow his own inclinations to the uttermost without coming into contact and conflict with inclinations different from his own. He must in some respects yield to others, or others must yield to him. He has to do with kindred, or friends, or strangers, with the sympathetic or the antagonistic, with superiors, inferiors, or equals; and the manner in which he conducts himself towards them has much to do both with the development of his own character and with the public weal.
St. Paul says, Owe no man anything. Let there be no man who has against thee a legitimate claim which thou hast not fulfilled. The subject is Debt. Beginning with that part of it which relates to money, let us proceed to moral debts, and end with the debt of Love.
I
Money Debts
First, in its most prosaically simple form, Owe no man anything means, Have no money duties which thou canst not pay. This is a homely and excellent rule which carries us a long way in daily life. Debt is to be avoided. All money claims are to be honestly and scrupulously met. And this is nearly always possible, as we shall see if we look into the most common causes of running into debt.
Dr. Kidd had a great horror of debt. When parting with a friend whom he did not expect to see for some time, he would exhort him to Fear God, and keep out of debt.1 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 267.]
In addition to the heavy losses Lord Shaftesbury had sustained from his steward, he had incurred enormous expensesamounting to some thousands of poundsin inevitable lawsuits, civil and criminal, and the combination of circumstances against him produced so much anxiety that he felt incapable of any prolonged energy. The dread of debt was a horror of great darkness before him. If I appear to fail in life and vigour, it is not for the want of zeal, he wrote to a friend, but from that kind of Promethean eagle that is ever gnawing my vitals. May God be with you, and keep you out of debt. And in his Diary, among many expressions of sadness and almost despair, he writes: Our Blessed Lord endured all the sorrows of humanity but that of debt. Perhaps it was to exemplify the truth, uttered afterwards by St. Paul, Owe no man anything, but to serve him in the Lord. The subject was ever in his thoughts; it was a dead weight on his back which made him totter in every effort to go forward; it haunted him night and day, and often, in his Diary, he breaks out into a wail of lamentation: My mind returns at every instant to the modus operandi. How meet the demands that must speedily be made? How satisfy the fair and righteous claims of those who only ask for their dues? How can I pursue the many objects I have in view, with this anxiety at my heart? God alone can deliver me.2 [Note: F. Hodder, Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury, 634.]
1. What are the common causes of running into debt, as we commonly understand the phrase?
(1) Carelessness.We all of us too easily slide into carelessness about money matters. In the enjoyment of the present, the hour of reckoning is comparatively distant; almost unconsciously to ourselves a certain amount of debt accumulates. While we are young we are especially open to influence of this kind. And therefore early in life we should acquire the habit of owing no man anything, and we should deal only with those who are willing that we should owe them nothing. It is good to feel somewhat uneasy while a bill remains unpaid. Every one can with a little trouble to himself see how he stands at the end of each month or of each term. He has only to cast up a few figures, to compare what he has received with what he has paid, and to satisfy himself that nothing has been omitted. Unless he wishes to be deceived, as is the case with some persons who refuse to look into their accounts, he can easily know the truth. And he is inexcusable who is careless in a matter of such importance.
There is a power which may be easily acquired, but which some never acquire, and others only by dear experiencethe power of understanding and doing business. It is hardly thought of by young men in comparison with intellectual gifts, and yet there is no power which conduces more to happiness and success in life. It is like a steward keeping the house in order. It is the power of managing and administering, whether in public or in private life. To be called a thorough man of business is really very high praise. It implies a clear head and mastery of details; it requires accuracy and constant attention and sound judgment. Though it begins with figures of arithmetic, it ends with a knowledge of the characters of men. It is that uncommon quality common sense applied to daily life. And it runs up into higher qualities, uprightness, self-denial, self-control; the honourable man of business is one of the noblest forms of English character.1 [Note: B. Jowett.]
Let me tell you a story of one of the greatest heroes of last century. Never did any man fight through a greater fight in the interest of his country and the world than Abraham Lincoln. From his early years great imaginations were in his mind, but he did not neglect plain duties. He was a postmaster in a very out-of-the-way district in Illinois. After a time the central authority found that so little business was done there that the Post Office was closed, and when it was closed, there was owing to the postal authority a sum of seventeen dollars and some odd cents, and they forgot to claim it. The years passed by, one year, two years, three years, and the money was still unclaimed. Meanwhile Abraham Lincoln had been fighting a hard fight against poverty. He had found it very hard to keep his head financially above water. It so happened that the omission was discovered after this period, and the officers of the Post Office arrived and asked Abraham Lincoln for the money which was still owing. A friend was in the room. He knew Abrahams hard circumstances. He supposed, as a matter of course, that the money would have been appropriated. He called him out of the room, and offered to lend it to him; but Abraham Lincoln smiled a little, then went up to his room and came down and produced that money, not merely in the exact amount, but in the very little coin in which it had been paid in by the village people when they bought their stamps. Here is an example of honesty, the honesty which is at the root of a noble life, the simple, central honesty about money without which, in its pure and simple detail, we can build no building that in the sight of God will stand.1 [Note: Bishop Gore.]
(2) The love of display.The craving for luxuries, the passion for physical comforts, the widespread disposition to make life more ornate and less rugged, more smooth and less self-denying, are tendencies and desires concerning which at the present day there can be no dispute or any serious question. In a community this means the growth of a relaxed sense of individual honour and of common honesty. It means a disposition that will have luxuries by paying for them if it can, but which will have them anyhow. To think lightly of debt, and the personal and business discredit which comes or ought to come with it, to be loose in matters of trust, and reckless or unscrupulous in dealing with the interests of others, to maintain a scale of living which is consciously beyond ones means, and yet to go any length and run any risk rather than abridge or relinquish it, these things are so frequent, if not so familiar, as almost to have lost the power to shock us.
(3) Envy.The emulation of richer neighbours and friends, the eagerness to have and wear and eat and drink what ones neighbours have to wear and eat and drink is another potent factor. We know the story. It repeats itself very often; it repeats itself not least among religious people. A young couple begin life with a small competenceenough if they would be modest in their requirements. But they have richer friends, and they think the good things of the world are meant for them too. Why should they not have them? And so they find themselves by the end of the year living beyond their incomethey are in debt. There are bills they cannot pay, and there begins that long period of bondage, of misery, which comes when we are not, and ought not to be, able to look people in the face.
2. The results of this easy running into debt are always grave and often tragic.
(1) One result is loss of independence.Not only are many enjoyments and comforts dependent on the possession of some amount of wealth, but also many of the higher goods of life. Often through extravagance in youth a man may be bound to some inferior or mechanical occupation; he may be deprived of the means of study or education; he may lose one of the best of all Gods giftsindependence.
(2) Over the miseries of debt there have been hearts brokenof parents suddenly awakened out of the fools paradise in which they have been living, of children saddened by the thought of the sorrow to others which their improvidence has caused. Every now and then the community stands aghast at some tragedy of horror in which a poor wretch, daring rather to face his Maker than his creditors, jumps off the dock or blows his brains out. A dozen of his fellows, hastily gathered and as hastily dismissed, register their verdict of suicide occasioned by financial difficulties, and the great wave of human life rolls on and over, and the story is soon forgotten. Whereas, if we fairly realized what such things meant, we would empanel as the jury every youth who is just setting out in life, every husband who has just led home a young wife, every woman who is a mother or a daughter in so many thoughtless house-holds, and cry to them, See! Here is the fruit of extravagant living and chronic debt. Here is the outcome of craving for what you cannot pay for, and of spending what you have not earned. Would you be free and self-respecting and undismayed, no matter how scanty your raiment or bare your larder? Hear the Apostles words to that Rome which had such dire need to heed them: Owe no man anything, save to love one another.
Said a foremost physician in one of our foremost cities not long ago, when asked how far the facility with which American constitutions break down was occasioned by overwork, It is not overwork that is killing the American people; neither the people who work with their brains nor those who work with their hands. I see a great many broken-down men and women. I am called to treat scores of people with shattered brains and nerves, but they are not the fruits of overwork. The most fruitful sources of physical derangement and mental and nervous disorders in America are pecuniary embarrassments and family dissensions.1 [Note: Bishop Potter.]
A question that Dr. Kidd often put to the bridegroom, immediately after the ceremony was over, was, What makes a good husband? The answer expected was, The grace of God, to which the minister sometimes added, Yes, and keeping out of debt. A young man, wanting to be fully primed before he had to submit to the fiery ordeal of the Doctors questioning, got the whole thing up in parrot-like fashion. The usual question being put, What makes a good husband? the young fellow glibly blurted out, The grace of God, sir, and keeping out of debt. The Doctor gave him a curious look, and then, with a comical twinkle, added, I see, sir, you have been ploughing with my heifer.2 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 166.]
II
Moral Debts
Render to all their dues. St. Paul does not disdain to urge upon his friends at Rome the duty of common honesty in all matters of indebtedness to the State to which they belonged. He would have them remember that the powers that be are ordained of God, and that they that resist shall receive to themselves judgment, as in more spiritual things, so in these secular thingsjudgment according to their neglect.
Money-making or money-saving is a great inducement to dishonourthough most persons would indignantly deny that such a thing could be possible in their case. The conferences and discussions of the passengers on an ocean liner about to land at an American port, as they consider the matter of their customs declarations, form an interesting illustration of this. It is so much easier to denounce the outrages of the use of a secret spring by the Sugar Trust to defraud the United States of millions of dollars of dodged duties than to admit that one is considering participation in just such dishonour by interpreting the customs requirements rather broadly as to ones personal effects. The printed circular which is given to every passenger, explaining what is required by law, is so explicit and simple that no intelligent child of twelve could readily misunderstand it. It is plainly stated that every article obtained abroad, whether by purchase or otherwise, and whether used or unused, must be declared, including all the articles upon which an exemption of duty is allowed. Moreover, each person reporting must sign his or her name to a statement declaring that every article brought from abroad, whether on the person, or in the clothing, or in the baggage, is thus mentioned. Yet the majority of otherwise reputable people on an incoming steamer, in the face of all this, will discuss whether to declare this or that article, whether such a garment, having been used, need be declared, whether this ring or pin, if worn, need be mentioned, and the person who, preferring a literal honouring of the law to deliberate, written perjury, declares everything he has, is looked upon with tolerant amusement as a rather weak-minded fanatic. It is easier to condemn public graft than private. But public and general standards of honour in any community will rise no higher than that of the majority of its individuals.1 [Note: Sunday-School Times (Philadelphia).]
1. We owe a debt to society.Not to do something good, not to have an honest trade, and be making or producing something material and spiritual which is worth producing and offering to mankind, is, in itself, a sort of stealing. We owe it to society that we should be doing something worth doing. We may have means enough to be idle, as people say, but that does not exempt us. No man is justified in living who is not performing something for society.
Remember we are debtors to the good by birth, but remember we may become debtors to the bad by life, and both sides of service and allegiance must be paid alike.2 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Life, 76.]
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touchd
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.3 [Note: Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, I. i. 33.]
(1) The employer has a debt to the employed. In society we are members one of another, and every member needs all the rest. As society is now constituted, our wealth may generally command the service of others, but it does not make us independent of that service. Inequality does not cancel obligation. For suppose that the poor and dependent, for some reason or other, should refuse to render us the needful service. What becomes of our independence then? Is the lady housewife less dependent on her cook than the cook is on her?
(2) The employed has a debt to the employer. The responsibility is equally on this side. God expects our best work; if it be only dusting a room, He expects that it shall be done thoroughly. Gods eye sees our work, whether it is thorough, whether it is the best we can give in small things or in great. Our obligation is not only to pass muster and get our wages; our obligation is to do the best we can. That is what our duty is; that is our obligation, whether the business in which we are employed is one which demands a black coat and a smart dress, or one of a much lower kind. Everywhere God expects that as we are receiving so we shall give of our best and to God Owe no man anything.
2. We owe a debt to those whom we can help.The Day of Judgment will be a surprise to us in regard to our relations to our fellow-men. You know how Christ depicts the gathering of all nations before His feet. They are the nations, not the Jews; they are those who had no special revelation from God; but He tests them by their conduct one to another, by their mercifulness. And they are astonished when they find themselves charged with having neglected Christ in His need. Lord, when saw we thee poor, or sick, or in prison, and ministered not to thee in thy necessity? And the reply we know very well: Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. It is the surprise of the not specially enlightened multitude that they were neglecting anything that Christ could care about in neglecting the poor and the oppressed. It is the surprise continually for the enlightened consciences of us upon whom has shone the Sun of Righteousness. It is the continued surprise that we who thought ourselves walking so uprightly in the way of God were neglecting the plain and manifest duties, or duties that ought to have been plain and manifest, towards our fellow-men.
It is no excuse that my conscience did not tell me to do such and such things. We live up to our conscience, but it is a vastly important truth that we are expected to be enlightening our conscience. Our conscience is not furnished without trouble from ourselves any more than our intellect. We have to think, we have to fight out, to open our conscience to the light of God; otherwise, like the Pharisee, like the Priest and the Levite, we are continually passing by on the other side, our conscience making no particular suggestion as to our duty towards this person or that person, our heart not awake to the claims of neighbourliness, because we have been content to take the estimate of duty which prevailed in the society about us. It is our duty not only to obey our conscience, but before that to enlighten our conscience with the light of Christ.
If I can live
To make some pale face brighter, and to give
A second lustre to some tear-dimmed eye,
Or een impart
One throb of comfort to an aching heart,
Or cheer some way worn soul in passing by;
If I can lend
A strong hand to the fallen, or defend
The right against a single envious strain,
My life, though bare
Perhaps of much that seemeth dear and fair
To us on earth, will not have been in vain.
The purest joy,
Most near to heaven, far from earths alloy,
Is bidding clouds give way to sun and shine,
And twill be well
If on that day of days the angels tell
Of me: She did her best for one of Thine.
(1) It is our duty to be charitable, and to be liberal in our charity. We owe it to those who are poorer than we are. Many would tell us that the less we give away in charity the better; and such a maxim naturally falls in with the indolence or selfishness of mankind. The reason is supposed to be that charity tends to destroy independence; men will not do for themselves what others are willing to do for them. If aged persons are supported by the parish they will often be neglected by their children; if education is free, if relief in sickness is given, there will be some corresponding relaxation of duty: the family tie will be weakened and the social state of the country will decline. Such is the argument, and there is a great deal of truth in it. In works of charity I think we might fairly be required to start with some such principle as thisthat we should never relieve physical suffering at the cost of moral degradation. But may there not be modes of charity which increase the spirit of independence instead of diminishing it? A small loan of money given to a person who is engaged in a hard struggle to keep himself or his children out of the workhouse, for a purpose such as education, which is least liable to abuse, can scarcely be imagined to do harm. It would be more satisfactory if the poor were able to manage for themselves, and perhaps, when they have been educated for a generation or two, they may be in a different position, and may no longer require the assistance of others. But at present, and in this country, they must have some help from the classes above them; they have no adequate sense of their own higher wants, of education, of sanitary improvement, of the ordering of family life, and the like. We all know the difference between the lot of a parish in one of our rural districts, which has been cared for by the landlord and looked after by the ministers of religion, and one which has not. And therefore it is that great responsibilities fall upon us who have money or education, nothing short of the care of those who in the social scale are below us. Property has its duties as well as its rights, but the sense of right is apt to be stronger in most of us than the sense of duty. Instead of habitually feeling that the poor are our equals in the sight of God, that there is nothing which we have not received, that our advantages, whatever they may bemoney, talent, social positionare a trust only; instead of rendering to God the things which He has given, we claim and assert them for ourselves.
Let us start fairly with the great truth: for those who possess there is only one certain duty, which is to strip themselves of what they have, so as to bring themselves into the condition of the mass that possesses nothing. It is understood, in every clear-thinking conscience, that no more imperative duty exists; but, at the same time, it is admitted that this duty, for lack of courage, is impossible of accomplishment. For the rest, in the heroic history of the duties, even at the most ardent periods, even at the beginning of Christianity and in the majority of the religious orders that made a special cult of poverty, this is perhaps the only duty that has never been completely fulfilled.1 [Note: Maurice Maeterlinck, Life and Flowers, 65.]
(2) The Apostle commends hospitality; the bringing together of our friends to eat and drink and converse, and not only those whose rank is equal to or higher than our own, and who can ask us again, but those who are a little depressed in life, and who may be said to correspond to the halt and maimed in the parable of the Marriage Supper. Hospitality may do a great deal of good in the world. It binds men together in ties of friendship and kindness; it draws them out of their isolation; it moulds and softens their characters. The pulse seems to beat quicker, and our spirits flow more freely when we are received with a hearty welcome; when the entertainer is obviously thinking not of himself but of his guests, when the conversation has health and life in it, and seems to refresh us after toil and work.
Let a man, then, say, My house is here in the country, for the culture of the country; an eating-house and sleeping-house for travellers it shall be, but it shall be much more. I pray you, O excellent wife, not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed-chamber made ready at too great a cost. These things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar at any village. But let this stranger, if he will, in your looks, in your accent and behaviour, read your heart and earnestness, your thought and will, which he cannot buy at any price, in any village or city, and which he may well travel fifty miles, and dine sparely and sleep hard, in order to behold. Certainly, let the board be spread and let the bed be dressed for the traveller; but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things. Honour to the house where they are simple to the verge of hardship, so that there the intellect is awake and reads the laws of the universe, the soul worships truth and love, honour and courtesy flow into all deeds.2 [Note: Emerson.]
Ye gave me of your broken meat,
And of your lees of wine,
That I should sit and sing for you,
All at your banquet fine.
Ye gave me shelter from the storm,
And straw to make my bed,
And let me sleep through the wild night
With cattle in the shed.
Ye know not from what lordly feast
Hither I came this night,
Nor to what lodging with the stars
From hence I take my flight.1 [Note: Cicely Fox Smith.]
(3) It is our duty to be friendly. Even a single person who has strong affection and principle, and a natural gaiety of soul, may have a great influence for good; without pretending to be wiser or better than others, he may have a form of character which controls them. People hardly consider how much a little kindness may do in this sometimes troubled world. When a man is a stranger in a strange place, a sympathetic word, a silent act of courtesy makes a wonderful impression. The plant that was shrinking into itself brings forth under these genial influences leaves and flowers and fruit. There is probably no one who, if he thought about it, would not contribute much more than he does to the happiness of others.
The Russian reformer, novelist and philanthropist, had an experience that profoundly influenced his career. Famine had wrought great suffering in Russia. One day the good poet passed a beggar on the street corner. Stretching out gaunt hands, with blue lips and watery eyes, the miserable creature asked an alms. Quickly the author felt for a copper. He turned his pockets inside out. He was without purse or ring or any gift. Then the kind man took the beggars hand in both of his and said: Do not be angry with me, brother; I have nothing with me! The gaunt face lighted up; the man lifted his bloodshot eyes; his blue lips parted in a smile. But you called me brotherthat was a great gift. Returning an hour later he found the smile he had kindled still lingered on the beggars face. His body had been cold; kindness had made his heart warm.2 [Note: N. D. Hillis, Investment of Influence, 41.]
In one of my earliest missions we were using the communion rail for seekers, and I was much puzzled by the conduct of a middle-aged man in the second centre pew from the front. I could see he was broken-hearted and sobbing, but he did not come out. When I went to his side he said he wanted to be saved and was willing; but he would not stir. Presently I looked at his boots and saw the reason. He mixed the plaster for some builders, and had come to the service in a pair of big ugly plaster-covered boots, and was ashamed to go to the front in them. I said to him, Are those dirty boots your hindrance? And his answer was, Yes, sir, they are. All right, I said, put mine on to go forward in. When he saw me begin to unloose my boots and realized that I was willing to do this to help a stranger to Christ, he sprang to his feet, boots and all, and was soon kneeling with others seeking the Lord. But my little act of helpfulness so completely moved him that for two or three minutes he could do nothing but laugh and cry at the same time. Ay, and he made a lot of us who were near join him in both.1 [Note: Thomas Waugh, Twenty-Three years a Missioner, 220.]
III
The Debt of Love
Owe no man anything, save to love one another. St. Paul bids us avoid all debt save this. This is a debt which we all owe, which we can never discharge, and which we must always be seeking to pay.
1. It is unavoidable.Owe nothing, do you say? Paid for all? You may pay your tradesman for his wares, you may pay your tailor for your coat, your butcher and your cook for your meals. But what have you paid Arkwright and Watt for your cotton? What have you paid Kepler and Newton and Laplace and Bowditch for your ocean commerce? What have you paid Sir Humphry Davy for your coal? You cannot stir without encountering obligations which no conceivable amount of silver or gold can ever compensate. And now let us mount from worldly and intellectual obligations to spiritualfrom that which is least to that which is highest. Who shall repay the prophets and martyrs of sacred truths for the light they have shed on our mortal path, and for the hope of immortality? Who shall satisfy the debt incurred by their testimonies and sacrifices, the dangers braved, the pains endured in the cause of mankind? Whatever he may think, every son of man is a debtor to his kind for the larger part of all that he possesses, or can by any possibility acquire. A compound and accumulated debt has devolved upon his heada debt of which a fraction of the interest is all that with lifelong effort he can hope to discharge; a debt contracted in part before he saw the light, multiplied by all the years of childish imbecility and childish dependence, and consummated by drafts on years to come. Past, Present, and Future are his creditors. It needs another view than the mercantile, debt-and-credit theory of life and society to free us from the weight of obligation, the overwhelming burden of indebtedness, which the thoughtful and conscientious mind must feel, regarding the subject of benefits received and ability to pay in that light.
Compared with that goodwill I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it has proved an intellectual trickno more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.1 [Note: Emerson, Essays, ii. 122.]
Love, work thy wonted miracle to-day.
Here stand, in jars of manifold design,
Lifes bitter waters, mixed with mire and clay,
And thou canst change them into purest wine.2 [Note: Hannah Parker Kimball.]
2. It is commendable.The more we pay the more we have to contribute, and the greater the capital from which to draw. But the recognition of the debt with the consequent effort to liquidate it, though leaving us with the debt unpaid, fulfils the law of life. St. Paul bids us lead a life of universal love. If we do that we shall not only be good citizens, paying our taxes as law-abiding subjects should, but we shall be good neighbours, good husbands, good parents, good children, good masters, good servants.
I often wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How superabundantly it pays itself backfor there is no debtor in the world so honourable, so superbly honourable, as love.3 [Note: Henry Drummond.]
A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is always the part of prudence to face every claimant and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is baseand that is the one base thing in the universewho receives favours and renders none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying on your hand. It will corrupt and breed worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort.1 [Note: Emerson, Essays, i. 85.]
3. It is unpayable.But the effort to discharge it cancels obligation. Wherever two things are bound to each other by reciprocal, equal, and perfect love, all feeling of obligation or indebtedness one to the other ceases; there is no question of claims or dues between them, though all the giving, the technical, ostensible giving, has been confined to one side of the union and all the apparent receiving to the other. In a case of friendship, fervent and true, between two large-hearted men, if one happens to be in want and borrows and the other happens to abound and lends, although there is a technical and legal indebtedness of the borrower, there is no obligation between them, or if any, it is the lenders quite as much as the borrowers.
The obligation of love to our neighbour can never be so fulfilled that one comes to an end of it, but every fulfilment brings in its train the obligation of a new and yet higher fulfilment of the duty. It is with charity as with a flame. The more the flame burns and blazes, the more need there is of oil to feed it, and the more plentifully the oil is poured upon the flame, so much the more actively it blazes, so much the more it demands fresh nourishment. So they emulate each other, the flame and the oil, to the highest point of light and heat. Even so it is with love of our neighbour. Love begets answering love, and this answering love again demands fresh love, so that for neither is there limit or end. That is the meaning of the apostolic saying: Owe no man anything, save to love one another.
No man becomes independent of his fellow-men excepting in serving his fellow-men.1 [Note: Phillips Brooks, Addresses, 21.]
Dig channels for the streams of Love,
Where they may broadly run;
And Love has overflowing streams
To fill them every one.
But if at any time thou cease
Such channels to provide,
The very founts of Love for thee
Will soon be parched and dried.
For we must share, if we would keep,
That good thing from above;
Ceasing to give, we cease to have
Such is the law of Love.2 [Note: R. C. Trench.]
Debt
Literature
Jowett (B.), College Sermons, ii. 168.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), Year of Salvation, i. 107.
Potter (H. C.), Sermons of the City, 190.
Sauter (B.), The Sunday Epistles, 79.
Scott (M.), Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, 1.
Streatfeild (G. S.), in Sermons for the People, New Ser., i. 23.
Christian World Pulpit, xiii. 131 (Beecher); liii. 36 (Gore); lxx. 372 (Muir).
Church Pulpit Year Book, v. (1908) 162.
Churchmans Pulpit, i. (Pt. 47), 280 (Hedge), 282 (Brent).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Owe: Rom 13:7, Deu 24:14, Deu 24:15, Pro 3:27, Pro 3:28, Mat 7:12, Mat 22:39, Mat 22:40
for: Rom 13:10, Gal 5:14, Col 3:14, 1Ti 1:5, Jam 2:8
Reciprocal: Gen 14:24 – Save Gen 23:9 – much money Gen 23:13 – I will Gen 23:16 – weighed Gen 43:12 – double Gen 43:21 – we have 2Ch 2:10 – I will give Son 8:7 – if a man Mat 5:19 – do Mat 5:43 – Thou Mat 19:18 – Thou shalt do Mar 12:31 – Thou Rom 1:14 – debtor Rom 3:31 – yea 1Co 9:21 – not 1Co 16:14 – General 1Th 3:12 – love 1Jo 2:7 – but 2Jo 1:6 – this is love
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A New Year Message
Rom 13:8-14
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
As one faces the New Year there are usually two dominant things that confront the thoughtful: 1. What about the year that has passed? 2. What about the New Year that is about to dawn? Let us think on these for just a few moments.
1. Are we satisfied with the year gone by? Perhaps all would answer, “No”-not altogether satisfied. There are none of us but wish we might have done more for God, and also for men. Yet, granting all this, are we able to say that we have run a good race, fought a good fight, and kept the faith? Have we lived above the power and dominion of sin? Have we bought up the days as they swept past, and redeemed the time?
Remember, if our own hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. If we are far from satisfied with our own faithfulness and victory in Him, how could He be satisfied? Let us not think that we are boasting in ourselves when we stand before God without self-condemnation. The Apostle Paul said, “I know nothing by (against) myself”; then, should we? The Apostle also said, “Herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.” Should we not, also, so exercise ourselves?
If we do, it is because Christ leads us in the train of His triumph. If we do, it is because we are walking in the Spirit, and not in the flesh.
2. Whether we are or are not satisfied with the past year, what about the New Year now before us? Let us determine now that the New Year shall be met, day by day, in the power of the new life in Christ Jesus. We will lean upon Him, and be led by His Spirit. This means a full surrender; a happy and prompt obedience to the Lord.
I. RESOLUTION NUMBER 1: WE WILL RENDER TO ALL THEIR DUES (Rom 13:7)
Here is a motto we may well follow for the New Year: “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”
This motto covers our obligations to men. There are many things we owe the government, our rulers, our country, our state, our city, and our neighborhood. No Christian should overlook these things. As saints we should always carry a good report among them who are without. We should do good to all men, not alone to those who are of the household of faith.
Christians honor God when they honor the state, because the state is God’s minister unto us for good. It is God’s executor against evildoers. To dishonor the state, therefore, is to resist the ordinances of God; and it will bring upon our selves condemnation.
Christians should pay tribute and custom, such as the law requires. To seek to evade this duty ensures a tendency to disown our obligations toward God.
Christians should be faithful to the individual. Upon the second stone of God’s Law were written six Commandments which no believer dare sidestep, if he would please God.
II. RESOLUTION NUMBER 2: WE WILL PAY OUR DEBT OF LOVE (Rom 13:8)
We are told to owe no man anything, but to love one another. This truly sets aside any refusal to pay any just debt to any man. We are to owe no man anything whatsoever. However, we can never fully pay our debt of love, for this debt lingers with us for aye. It is for this reason that the Word says, “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another”; because this debt of love we always owe, and can never fully pay.
The Apostle said three things in Rom 1:1-32 :
First, he said, “I am debtor.” He was debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise and the unwise.
We, too, are debtors to every man under Heaven. We owe them the love of God as manifested in Christ, and as set forth in the Gospel of His grace.
Secondly, he said, “I am ready.” He was ready to preach the good news which he owed. He was ready, so much as in him lay the power, to proclaim that message of love. He was ready to love and to tell. Are we ready? Have we added our best effort in this great ministry of love?
Thirdly, Paul said, “I am not ashamed.” Surely we can also be ready to pay our debt to all men, unashamed of our message, for we know that it is the power of God, through faith, unto salvation to all who believe.
III. RESOLUTION NUMBER 3: I WILL WORK NO ILL TOWARD MY NEIGHBOR (Rom 13:9-10)
How true is the word, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbour.” Paying this debt, then, works only good to our neighbor. It is love that suffereth long, and is kind. It is love that beareth all things, and endureth all things. No wonder, therefore, that the saint is told to “walk in love.”
Love does not kill, nor steal, nor bear false witness against a neighbor; neither does it covet a neighbor’s goods, nor work shame to a neighbor’s person.
Love is God’s chief gift to His children. It is by love that we are to conquer all evil, and accomplish all good one toward another.
If we walk without love, we walk in sin and harm to those who dwell about us, and we injure our own selves also.
IV. RESOLUTION NUMBER 4: WE WILL FULFILL THE LAW (Rom 13:10, l. c)
The second stone of the Law of God, as expressed in the Commandments, establishes God’s conception of man’s highest good toward his neighbor. We can reach this highest good only by keeping the Law, and we can keep the Law toward our neighbor only by walking in love, for love is the fulfillment of the Law, Our resolution number 4 cannot be kept by a mere determined purpose in our heart. It cannot be kept by dogged effort. The fulfillment of the Law toward God, or toward our neighbor, is not an effort at all; it is a result of being filled with love. This is the fruit of the Spirit. The love that fulfills the Law is not inherent in our human nature, because human nature is corrupt according to deceitful lusts. Human nature is full of envy, murder, deceit, malignity, and of all unclean things. No, the world can never get beyond the sway of hatred, and of malice, and of evil working toward a neighbor, until it acknowledges the sway of love, as made potent through the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
V. RESOLUTION NUMBER 5: WE WILL AWAKE OUT OF SLEEP (Rom 13:11)
There are too many who, like Peter, and James, and John, are sleeping when they should be watching. Too many lounge about when they should be working. Let us adopt for a motto during this year, “Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.” We have slept long enough. We have been inactive, unconcerned, too long. Souls are being lost, and what are we doing to carry to them the Gospel? The Macedonian cry is being heard, but we are slow to go over and help the ones who cry.
Let those of us who have slept, sleep no more. Even now we hear the voice of our Lord, saying, “Go work to day in My vineyard.” We cannot afford to be idle while millions have never heard the message of salvation. We cannot afford to hold back our money while men and women, the choicest of our churches, are ready to go out and proclaim the truth of the Gospel.
It is true that our own salvation is nearer than when we believed. The Lord may come at any moment. Our opportunity to serve may pass at any time; so let us awake.
Shall we not give one last long shout of salvation, giving the lost their opportunity to be saved before our Lord shall appear, and before we shall be taken away from these earthly scenes?
VI. RESOLUTION NUMBER 6: WE WILL CAST OFF THE WORKS OF DARKNESS (Rom 13:12-13)
Our key verses are wonderful. They say: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.” Here are a group of New Year’s mottoes that we may well adopt:
1. We will cast off the works of darkness. We will partake of them no more. We are children of the light and of the day, not of the darkness and of the night. How then can we walk in the darkness? God has said: “What communion hath light with darkness?”
2. We will put on the armor of light. The Christian’s armor is described for us in Eph 6:1-24. Its helmet is salvation; its breastplate is righteousness; its shield is faith; its sword is the Word of God; its feet are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. This is the armor of light; and this, by God’s help, we will wear.
3. We will walk honestly, as in the day. They who work evil, work in the night. The children of darkness crave the darkness to hide their deeds. We, however, who walk honestly. are not afraid of the shadows; yet we love the light, that our deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought of God. They who are drunk, are drunk in the night; they who riot, riot in the night. From such things we have long since turned away.
VII. RESOLUTION NUMBER 7: WE WILL PUT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST (Rom 13:14)
Here is a marvelous possibility. Has it ever occurred to us that we might put Christ on as one puts on a garment? We have often thought of being robed in the righteousness of our Lord. Now we learn that we can even put Him on, that we may be clothed with God.
Putting on Christ makes the putting off of the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts, a necessity.
Putting on Christ means, of necessity, that we shall make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. If we walk in the Spirit we shall not, we cannot, walk in the flesh. No man can serve two masters. Will it not make a wonderful year to us if we put on the Lord Jesus? if we walk in His love? if we work in His power, and fulfill His will?
AN ILLUSTRATION
An English dredger and quarryman having been converted, was assailed by the head of a clan of theological specialists, whose chief delight lay in proving everyone else to be ignorant and wrong. This man was always urging the dredger to a public argument about the Bible, but at last was silenced by a counter challenge from the latter, who said: “I can’t argue about the Bible with you; you are too clever for me, but I’ll have you on works any day, We will hire a hall, and let alt the people come. Then you tell them all you know about me, and I’ll tell them all I know about you, and then let them judge which religion is best-yours or mine.” Needless to say, this challenge was not accepted, “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another” (Joh 13:35). Acts tell more than words.
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
3:8
Rom 13:8. A part of Thayer’s explanation of owe is, “that which is due.” It does not forbid honorable debts such as accounts, for Paul and Philemon conducted such transactions (Phm 1:18), but a man should regard his debts and deal honestly. The debt of love can never be will,” hence ne may always without criticism.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Rom 13:8. Owe no man anything. On the connection of thought, see above. The clause is undoubtedly imperative, and the meaning is very wide, including all possible obligations to every human being, and not to be limited to a caution against pecuniary indebtedness.
Save to love one another. This is an exception which is not an exception. Owe in the first clause refers to external obligations, but from the nature of the case the obligation referred to in the second clause is a moral one, the apprehension of which will grow with exercise. The more we love, the more we will feel the claims of love. This obligation can never be paid; hence here we must owe, but we must here most faithfully attempt to discharge our obligations.
For he that loveth. This clause shows that the previous one was a command to love, irrespective of our inability to discharge the growing sense of obligation.
Another, lit, the other, the other one who is loved, in the given case.
Hath fulfilled the law. In and with the loving there has taken place what the Mosaic law prescribes, namely, in respect of duties towards ones neighbor (Meyer). Love is more than a performance of the single precepts of the law, it is the essence of the law itself. It reaches those lesser courtesies and sympathies which cannot be digested into a code and reduced to rule, it adds the flesh which fills it, and the life which actuates it (Webster and Wilkinson). The context (Rom 13:9-10) plainly shows that the Mosaic law is meant, while the whole Epistle excludes any idea of justification as based on this fulfilment. The Apostle is writing to those who love because they are justified.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Our apostle having finished his exhortation to duty towards our superiors, comes now to enforce the duties which we owe unto our neighbours; the first of which is, to render and pay to every one what is due unto him. Moral duties are mutual debts which we owe one to another; one of which namely, that of love, we can never fully discharge, but must be ever paying, yet always owing: Owe nothing to any man but love, implying that must be always owing.
The truth is, this debt of love is so far from a possibility of being paid on earth, that it is due in heaven to God, angels, and saints; There abideth charity, 1Co 13:13. All other debts may be paid whilst we live; but this of love cannot be satisfied while we live.
Observe next, The argument, reason, or motive, to excite unto this duty, and that is drawn from the excellency of this grace of love: He that loveth, hath fulfilled the law; that is, he that loveth his neighbour as he should and ought to do, in deed and in truth, out of a pure heart fervently, he hath fulfilled the law, that is, the law relating to his neighbour, the duties of the second table are fulfilled by him.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Rom 13:8-10. Here, from our duty to magistrates, he passes on to general duties. Owe no man any thing Endeavour to manage your affairs with that economy and prudent attention that you may, as soon as possible, balance accounts with all who have any demands upon you, except it be with respect to that debt, which, while you pay, you will nevertheless still owe, namely, to love one another; an eternal debt, which can never be sufficiently discharged. But yet, if this be rightly performed, it, in a sense, discharges all the rest. For he that loveth another As he ought; hath fulfilled the law Of the second table. The word , another, here used, is a more general word than , neighbour, in the next verse, and comprehends our very enemies; according to the sublime morality enjoined by Christ. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, &c. All these precepts, prohibiting sins frequently committed, comprehend also the contrary duties, due to our fellow-creatures; and if there be any other more particular commandment Respecting them, as there are many in the law; it is briefly comprehended , it is summed up in this saying In this one general and most excellent precept, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself Thou shalt learn to put thyself, as it were, in his place, and to act toward him as, in a supposed change of circumstances, thou wouldest reasonably desire him to act toward thee. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour Nay, wherever that noble principle governs the heart, it will put men upon doing all they can for the good of others. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law For the same love which restrains a man from doing evil to any, will incite him, as he has ability and opportunity, to do good to all.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Vv. 8. Owe no man anything, save to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
The expression anything and no man clearly indicate a transition to the private sphere. Most commentators think that Paul here returns to the duty of love; Meyer, for example, says at the beginning of Rom 13:8-14 : Exhortation to love and to Christian conduct in general. As if the apostle were in the habit of thus resuming without cause a subject already treated, and as if, wishing to describe the task of love, he could have contented himself with saying, as he does in Rom 13:10 : Love worketh no ill to his neighbor! No, the apostle does not wander from his subject: the duty of justice. Only he is not ignorant that there is no perfectly sure pledge for the exercise of this duty except love. This is what leads him to speak again of love, and what explains at the same time the purely negative form he uses: not to do wrong, an expression which is the formula of justice, much more than that of love. Love is therefore not mentioned here except as the solid support of justice.
The believer should keep no other debt in his life than that which a man can never discharge, the debt which is renewed and even grows in proportion as it is discharged: that of loving. In fact, the task of love is infinite. The more active love is, the more it sees its task enlarge; for, inventive as it is, it is ever discovering new objects for its activity. This debt the believer therefore carries with him throughout all his life (chap. 12). But he can bear no other debt against him; and loving thus, he finds that in the very act he has fulfilled all the obligations belonging to the domain of justice, and which the law could have imposed.
How could it have occurred to the mind of Hofmann to refer the words , the other, to , the law: He that loveth hath fulfilled the other lawthat is to say, the rest of the law, what the law contains other than the commandment of love? Love is not in the law a commandment side by side with all the rest; it is itself the essence of the law.
The perfect , hath fulfilled, denotes that in the one act of loving there is virtually contained the fulfilment of all the duties prescribed by the law. For a man does not offend, or kill, or calumniate, or rob those whom he loves. Such is the idea developed in the two following verses.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
[Having shown that the Christian must recognize the rights of those above him (“the higher powers”), the apostle now proceeds to enjoin upon him the recognition of the just rights of his fellow-beings who are all about him. If the state has a right to demand dutiful conduct of him, his neighbors, fellow-citizens, and the human race generally, may likewise exact of him the ministrations of love.] Owe no man anything, save to love one another [The indebtedness here meant includes, but is not confined to, pecuniary obligations. The precept does not prohibit the contraction of a debt, but it constrains us to be prepared to pay it when due. “Owe no tax, no custom, no fear, no honor, and pay all their dues” (Lard). The obligation to give the gospel to those that have it not is one of the Christian’s greatest debts (Rom 1:14-15). Love also is, as Bengel observes, “an eternal debt.” “This,” says Trapp, “is that desperate debt that a man can not discharge himself of; but must be ever paying, and yet ever owing. As we say of thanks, ‘Thanks must be given, and yet held as still due:’ so must this debt of love.” Moreover, it is an ever-increasing debt, for it is like the payment of interest; only in this case each payment of interest is such an exercise and turning over of the principal as tends to its increase, thereby enlarging in a kind of arithmetical progression the payments of interest]: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. [“The perfect pepleroken (hath fulfilled) denotes that in the one act of loving there is virtually contained the fulfillment of all the duties prescribed by the law. For a man does not offend or kill, or calumniate or rob, those whom he loves. Such is the idea developed in the two following verses”-Godet.]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
KEEP OUT OF DEBT
8. Owe no man anything, except to love one another with divine love, for he that loveth another with divine love bath fulfilled the law. It is bad enough for worldly people to involve themselves in indebtedness, as they make this world their finale, and expect to live here and pay their debts. Gods people having already come out of the world, and when sanctified had the world taken out of them, therefore they should not complicate themselves with worldly business beyond the necessary transaction of the fleeting day, as we are looking for our Lord every hour to call us hence. If you are already in debt, cast your care on the Lord, doing your best in His good providence to pay, but live happy and free as a bird of paradise, assured that if the Lord calls you away before you are able to pay all your debts, if in His sight you are really doing your best, He takes the will for the deed and counts them paid.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Rom 13:8-10. The All-comprising Law.
Rom 13:8. Taxes are debts, and the Christian must owe nothing to anybodyexcept the infinite debt of love! Whoso loves his neighbour, has fulfilled law (mg.), meeting the supreme and comprehensive obligation; see Mat 22:39 f.
Rom 13:9 f. proves this in detail: every command is summed up in the well-known law of Jesus. Love is laws fulfilment: the stress lies on fulfilment; nothing is so dutiful as love.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
SECTION 42 LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR
CH. 13:8-10
Owe nothing to anyone; except to love one another. For he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not murder, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not desire, and if there be any other commandment, it is summed up again in this word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love works no ill to his neighbour. Love therefore is a fulfillment of law.
Rom 13:8. Owe nothing etc.: negative repetition of repay to all what ye owe, in Rom 13:7. Free yourselves from all debts by paying them.
Except to love one another: a debt from which we can never release ourselves by payment. However much we have done for our neighbour, we are still bound to love him. The debt due to the officers of the State suggests another debt due to all our fellow-citizens: cp. Rom 1:14.
For he who loves etc.: reason for paying our debt of universal love.
Law: the general principle of do this and live, which took historic form in the Law of Moses.
Fulfilled: filled up by action what the abstract principle of law delineates in outline. [The Greek perfect calls attention to the abiding result of such fulfilment of law.]
Rom 13:9-10. Proof of Rom 13:8 b, concluding with a restatement of it.
Thou shalt not desire: as in Rom 7:7. The various precepts in Leviticus 19, are summed up again in Lev 19:18 in this one general precept.
Love: not an emotional affection, but, like Gods love, a principle of active benevolence. It is therefore consistent with detestation of whatever is bad in our neighbour: cp. Rom 12:9.
Love works: the principle personified, as in 1 Corinthians 13. It moves us to beneficent activity, and thus keeps us from doing harm. But this is the purpose of the above commands.
Therefore love is a fulfilment of law. It fills-up in action the outline of conduct sketched by the principle of law. Same word as fulness in Rom 11:12; Rom 11:25; Rom 15:29.
Rom 13:9 is in very close agreement with Mat 22:39-40; Mar 12:31; and confirms these Gospels as correct embodiments of the actual teaching of Christ. See under Gal 5:14 : cp. 1Ti 1:5.
These verses imply that, even to believers, the Law is still valid as an abiding rule of conduct: cp. Rom 8:4. But, since this great commandment is altogether beyond our power to obey, it is virtually a promise that God will Himself breathe into us the love He requires: a promise fulfilled in those who believe it. Consequently this commandment, which at once secures the homage of our moral sense, is to us no longer law but a part of the Gospel. It has been buried in the grave of Christ, and with Him has risen into new life.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
13:8 {9} Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: {10} for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the {g} law.
(9) He shows how very few judgments need to be executed, that is, if we so order our life as no man may justly require anything from us, besides only that which we owe one to another, by the perpetual law of charity.
(10) He commends charity as a concise statement of the whole law.
(g) Has not only done one commandment, but performed generally that which the law commands.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. Conduct toward unbelievers 13:8-10
Paul had previously glorified the importance of love among believers (Rom 12:9-10; cf. 1 Corinthians 13). Now he urged this attitude toward all people, though unbelievers are primarily in view in this chapter. The connecting link in the argument is our obligations to government (Rom 13:7) and to our fellow citizens (Rom 13:8; cf. Gal 5:13-15).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The NASB translation "Owe nothing to anyone" is misleading because it contradicts Jesus’ teaching to loan to those who want to borrow from you (Mat 5:42). He implied that borrowing is not always wrong. The New Testament does not forbid borrowing, only the practice of charging exorbitant interest on loans and failing to pay debts (Mat 25:27; Luk 19:23). There are two kinds of debts: those with the lender’s consent and those without his consent. It is the second type to which Paul apparently referred here. The NIV’s "Let no debt remain outstanding" avoids the problem and gives the correct interpretation.
"Christians are to leave no debts, no obligations to their fellowmen, undischarged." [Note: Cranfield, 2:673.]
Some Christians who have trouble controlling their indebtedness have found motivation for cutting up their credit cards in this verse, but Paul did not say that all borrowing is wrong.
We do have a debt that continues forever. It is our obligation to seek the welfare of our fellow human beings (cf. Rom 8:4). The Mosaic Law required the same thing (Lev 19:18, cf. Mat 22:39), but it provided no internal power to love. In Christ we have the indwelling Holy Spirit who produces love within us as a fruit of His life (Gal 5:22-23).
"This is not a prohibition against a proper use of credit; it is an underscoring of a Christian’s obligation to express divine love in all interpersonal relationships." [Note: Witmer, "Romans," p. 491.]