Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other commandments there are, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love doesn’t harm a neighbor. Love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.
Do this, knowing the time, that it is already time for you to awaken out of sleep, for salvation is now nearer to us than when we first believed. The night is far gone, and the day is near. Let’s therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and let’s put on the armor of light. Let’s walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv8–14 8. To no one owe ye, etc. There are…
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.
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.
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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.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 11, 12, 14 He hath not only done one commandment, but performed…
He hath not only done one commandment, but performed generally that which the Law commandeth.
He showeth how very few judgments need to be executed, to wit, if we so order our life, as no man may justly require anything of us, besides that only that we owe one to another, by the perpetual law of charity.
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He commendeth charity, as an abridgement of the whole Law.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv8–14 8 Owe no man any thing, but to love…
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.
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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.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv8–14 Having treated of special duties belonging to superiors, he…
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.
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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.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 11, 12, 14 Our apostle having finished his exhortation to duty towards…
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.
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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.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v11 We are here taught a lesson of sobriety and…
We are here taught a lesson of sobriety and godliness in ourselves. Our main care must be to look to ourselves. Four things we are here taught, as a Christian's directory for his day's work: when to awake, how to dress ourselves, how to walk, and what provision to make.
I. When to awake: Now it is high time to awake (Rom 13:11), to awake out of the sleep of sin (for a sinful condition is a sleeping condition), out of the sleep of carnal security, sloth and negligence, out of the sleep of spiritual death, and out of the sleep of spiritual deadness; both the wise and foolish virgins slumbered and slept, Mat 25:5. We have need to be often excited and stirred up to awake. The word of command to all Christ's disciples is, Watch. "Awake - be concerned about your souls and your eternal interest; take heed of sin, be ready to, and serious in, that which is good, and live in a constant expectation of the coming of our Lord. Considering," 1. "The time we are cast into: Knowing the time. Consider what time of day it is with us, and you will see it is high time to awake. It is gospel time, it is the accepted time, it is working time; it is a time when more is expected than was in the times of that ignorance which God winked at, when people sat in darkness. It is high time to awake; for the sun has been up a great while, and shines in our faces. Have we this light to sleep in? See Th1 5:5, Th1 5:6. It is high time to awake; for others are awake and up about us. Know the time to be a busy time; we have a great deal of work to do, and our Master is calling us to it again and again. Know the time to be a perilous time. We are in the midst of enemies and snares. It is high time to awake, for the Philistines are upon us; our neighbour's house is on fire, and our own in danger. It is time to awake, for we have slept enough (Pe1 4:3), high time indeed, for behold the bridegroom cometh." 2. "The salvation we are upon the brink of: Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed - than when we first believed, and so took upon us the profession of Christianity. The eternal happiness we chose for our portion is now nearer to us than it was when we became Christians. Let us mind our way and mend our pace, for we are now nearer our journey's end than we were when we had our first love. The nearer we are to our centre the quicker should our motion be. Is there but a step between us and heaven, and shall we be so very slow and dull in our Christian course, and move so heavily? The more the days are shortened, and the more grace is increased, the nearer is our salvation, and the more quick and vigorous we should be in our spiritual motions."
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II. How to dress ourselves. This is the next care, when we are awake and up: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand; therefore it is time to dress ourselves. Clearer discoveries will be quickly made of gospel grace than have been yet made, as light gets ground. The night of Jewish rage and cruelty is just at an end; their persecuting power is near a period; the day of our deliverance from them is at hand, that day of redemption which Christ promised, Luk 21:28. And the day of our complete salvation, in the heavenly glory, is at hand. Observe then,"
1. "What we must put off; put off our night-clothes, which it is a shame to appear abroad in: Cast off the works of darkness." Sinful works are works of darkness; they come from the darkness of ignorance and mistake, they covet the darkness of privacy and concealment, and they end in the darkness of hell and destruction. "Let us therefore, who are of the day, cast them off; not only cease from the practice of them, but detest and abhor them, and have no more to do with them. Because eternity is just at the door, let us take heed lest we be found doing that which will then make against us," Pe2 3:11, Pe2 3:14.
2. "What we must put on." Our care must be wherewithal we shall be clothed, how shall we dress our souls? (1.) Put on the armour of light. Christians are soldiers in the midst of enemies, and their life a warfare, therefore their array must be armour, that they may stand upon their defence - the armour of God, to which we are directed, Eph 6:13, etc. A Christian may reckon himself undressed if he be unarmed. The graces of the Spirit are this armour, to secure the soul from Satan's temptations and the assaults of this present evil world. This is called the armour of light, some think alluding to the bright glittering armour which the Roman soldiers used to wear; or such armour as it becomes us to wear in the day-light. The graces of the Spirit are suitable splendid ornaments, are in the sight of God of great price. (2.) Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, Rom 13:14. This stands in opposition to a great many base lusts, mentioned Rom 13:13. Rioting and drunkenness must be cast off: one would think it should follows, but, "Put on sobriety, temperance, chastity," the opposite virtues: no, "Put on Christ, this includes all. Put on the righteousness of Christ for justification; be found in him (Phi 3:9) as a man is found in his clothes; put on the priestly garments of the elder brother, that in them you may obtain the blessing. Put on the spirit and grace of Christ for sanctification; put on the new man (Eph 4:24); get the habit of grace confirmed, the acts of it quickened." Jesus Christ is the best clothing for Christians to adorn themselves with, to arm themselves with; it is decent, distinguishing, dignifying, and defending. Without Christ, we are naked, deformed; all other things are filthy rages, fig-leaves, a sorry shelter. God has provided us coats of skins - large, strong, warm, and durable. By baptism we have in profession put on Christ, Gal 3:27. Let us do it in truth and sincerity. The Lord Jesus Christ. "Put him on as Lord to rule you, as Jesus to save you, and in both as Christ, anointed and appointed by the Father to this ruling saving work."
III. How to walk. When we are up and dressed, we are not to sit still in an affected closeness and privacy, as monks and hermits. What have we good clothes for, but to appear abroad in them? - Let us walk. Christianity teaches us how to walk so as to please God, whose eye is upon us: Th1 4:1, Walk honestly as in the day. Compare Eph 5:8, Walk as children of light. Our conversation must be as becomes the gospel. Walk honestly; euschēmonōs - decently and becomingly, so as to credit your profession, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, and recommend religion in its beauty to others. Christians should be in a special manner careful to conduct themselves well in those things wherein men have an eye upon them, and to study that which is lovely and of good report. Particularly, here are three pairs of sins we are cautioned against: - 1. We must not walk in rioting and drunkenness; we must abstain from all excess in eating and drinking. We must not give the least countenance to revelling, nor indulge our sensual appetite in any private excesses. Christians must not overcharge their hearts with surfeiting and drunkenness, Luk 21:34. This is not walking as in the day; for those that are drunk are drunk in the night, Th1 5:7. 2. Not in chambering and wantonness; not in any of those lusts of the flesh, those works of darkness, which are forbidden in the seventh commandment. Downright adultery and fornication are the chambering forbidden. Lascivious thoughts and affections, lascivious looks, words, books, sons, gestures, dances, dalliances, which lead to, and are degrees of, that uncleanness, are the wantonness here forbidden - whatsoever transgresseth the pure and sacred law of chastity and modesty. 3. Not in strife and envying. These are also works of darkness; for, though the acts and instances of strife and envy are very common, yet none are willing to own the principles, or to acknowledge themselves envious and contentious. it may be the lot of the best saints to be envied and striven with; but to strive and to envy ill becomes the disciples and followers of the peaceable and humble Jesus. Where there are riot and drunkenness, there usually are chambering and wantonness, and strife and envy. Solomon puts them all together, Pro 23:29, etc. Those that tarry long at the wine (Pro 23:30) have contentions and wounds without cause (Pro 23:29) and their eyes behold strange women, Pro 23:33.
IV. What provision to make (Pro 23:14): "Make not provision for the flesh. Be not careful about the body." Our great care must be to provide for our souls; but must we take no care about our bodies? Must we not provide for them, when they need it? Yes, but two things are here forbidden: - 1. Perplexing ourselves with an inordinate care, intimated in these words, pronoian mē poieisthe. "Be not solicitous in forecasting for the body; do not stretch your wits, nor set your thoughts upon the tenter-hooks, in making this provision; be not careful and cumbered about it; do not take thought," Mat 6:31. It forbids an anxious encumbering care. 2. Indulging ourselves in an irregular desire. We are not forbidden barely to provide for the body (it is a lamp that must be supplied with oil), but we are forbidden to fulfil the lusts thereof. The necessities of the body must be considered, but the lusts of it must not be gratified. Natural desires must be answered, but wanton appetites must be checked and denied. To ask meat for our necessities is duty: we are taught to pray for daily bread; but to ask meat for our lusts is provoking, Psa 78:18. Those who profess to walk in the spirit must not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, Gal 5:16.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv8–14 Owe no man anything,.... From the payment of dues…
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.
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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.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14 From our duty to magistrates he passes on to…
From our duty to magistrates he passes on to general duties. To love one another - An eternal debt, which can never be sufficiently discharged; but yet if this be rightly performed, it discharges all the rest. For he that loveth another - As he ought. Hath fulfilled the whole law - Toward his neighbour.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv8–14 Verse 8. Owe no man any thing, but to…
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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv8, 11, 13, 14 Rom 13:8-10. Here, from our duty to magistrates, he…
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 ετερον, another, here used, is a more general word than πλησιον, 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 — Ανακεφαλαιουται, 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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv8–14 Owe no man anything - Be not “in debt”…
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.
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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.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 But that you love one another. This is a…
But that you love one another. This is a debt, says St. John Chrysostom, which we are always to be paying, and yet always remains, and is to be paid again. --- He that loveth his neighbour, hath fulfilled the law. Nay, he that loves his neighbour, as he ought, loves him for God’s sake, and so complies with the other great precept of loving God: and upon these two precepts (as Christ himself taught us, Matthew xxii. 40.) depends the whole law and the prophets. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv8–14 Owe no man anything, but to love one another--"Acquit…
Owe no man anything, but to love one another--"Acquit yourselves of all obligations except love, which is a debt that must remain ever due" [HODGE].
for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law--for the law itself is but love in manifold action, regarded as matter of duty.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv8–14 4. Duties to our living contemporaries, Rom_13:8-14.
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.)
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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.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–14 8. It is manifest how indispensable to the early…
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.
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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.
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.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv8–14 (8) Owe no man anything.—The word for “owe” in…
(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 unpaid—the 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 other—that is to say, his neighbour, the person with whom in any given instance he has to deal.
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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.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv8, 11, 13 Vers. 8-10. From specific admonitions on this subject, the…
Vers. 8-10. From specific admonitions on this subject, the apostle passes naturally to the principle which, in these regards as well as others, should inspire all our dealings with our fellow-men. Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another (literally, the other, meaning the same as his neighbour) hath fulfilled law. Nomon here is anarthrous, denoting law in general, not the Mosaic Law in particular, though the instances of transgression that follow are from the Decalogue. The idea of the passage is but a carrying out of our Lord"s saying, Mat_22:39, Mat_22:40. We find it also in Gal_5:14 more shortly expressed. 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 (or, summed up) in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of law.
Vers. 8-10. Love and law.
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To the unthinking, and at first sight, there seems a contradiction between law, which expresses authority, and is sanctioned by force, and love, which is spontaneous, and is of the heart. Christ himself, however, brought the two into harmony when he said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments;" and the apostle, in this passage, shows that, really and essentially, the two are one.
I THE TRUE PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL LIFE IS LOVE. The new commandment which Christ gave was, Love one another;" and his peculiar canon of conduct was, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Of this principle we may remark that:
1. It is in harmony with our own constitution. Our true nature is to live in mutual affection and confidence; it is the depraved nature that develops hatred, malice, and uncharitableness.
2. It is imposed and sanctioned by the Divine Head of the new humanity, the Lawgiver of the spiritual kingdom.
3. It provides the radical cure for human ills.
4. It has not only a negative, it has also a positive virtue; it is the proper and natural origin of the several virtues, supplying their motive, prompting to their exercise.
II THE APPLICATION OF THIS PRINCIPLE IN PRACTICE. The apostle, whose mind was as thoroughly ethical and practical as it was theological and doctrinal, traced the working of this principle of love, in preserving human nature and protecting human society from the vices, crimes, and sins which have cursed the world. In this passage he teaches us that love must act in keeping Christians from wronging their neighbours. He whose heart is filled with true love will neither covet nor steal his neighbour"s goods, nor take his neighbour"s life, nor make inroads upon his neighbour"s domestic happiness, nor in any way inflict injury upon his neighbour"s interests, or deprive him of his rights. For to love our fellowmen is to count their welfare our own, and to do go them as we would they should do to us.
III THE ACQUISITION OF THIS PRINCIPLE. It may be argued that the counsels of the apostle are unpractical; that whilst love is a cure for human ills, it is not shown how love may be acquired, any more than it is how sin may be avoided. But the fact is that revelation links together the love of man and the love of God, and teaches us that the one way to the cherishing of Divine love is the reception of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Manifestation of Divine love to human hearts. "We love him, because he first loved us;" "He that loveth God loveth his brother also.
Vers. 8-10. Christian righteousness.
We here pass from public to private relations. Still in the civic sphere, viewing men as men, not as Christian brethren. And reminded by thought just advanced, the thought of tribute, custom, etc., as being "due" to those in power, that there are dues also which we owe each one to his neighbour. And it is of the very essence of justice that we "render to all their dues;" or, in the words of the eighth verse, that we "owe no man anything." Here, then, we may consider the justice which binds together human society; and the love by which the justice is fulfilled.
I JUSTICE. Justice is the bond of human society. To do to others as we may reasonably expect them to do to us is indeed the golden rule which conserves all security and peace among men. To be just towards them is to respect their rights, And what are the rights of man? God has set them forth strongly, in their essentials, in that Decalogue which was the Divine code of justice for a barbarous nation. Think of them rights without which life amongst others would be intolerable.
1. The right of life. "Thou shalt not kill." Sacredness of existence; but frailty. So precious, and yet so easily destroyed. And in wantonness, or in malice, man may destroy his brother-man. But the "Thou shalt not kill" sounds in his ears, a spoken law of God: the right of life must be conserved.
2. The right of sacred relationship, dearer than the right of life. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Organic union of men. Relationships interwoven into human nature husband and wife, parent and child, brother and brother. The conjugal relation the foundation of the rest. Any tampering with this relation is, in its degree, adultery, and loosens the whole relational fabric; any violation of the sacrament of this relation, "They twain shall be one flesh," is in the highest degree adultery, and goes far to destroy the whole relational fabric. But the "Thou shalt not commit adultery" sounds in our ears, a spoken law of God: the rights of sacred relationship must be conserved.
3. The right of property. Thou shalt not steal." An instinctive acquisitiveness in man; he lords it over the world. This acquisitiveness sanctioned by God: "have dominion." Same acquisitiveness, perverted from its proper use, may lead us to acquire that to which we have no right, to "steal" the property of our brother. But the "Thou shalt not steal" sounds in our ears: God utters his sanction of the sacredness of property.
4. Fundamental to all these main rights of man is the right to be secure from even the unlawful desire of a brother. "Thou shalt not covet." For "out of the heart proceed," etc. (Mat_15:19) So to covet another"s life, or wife, or property, even in the first faint beginning of desire, is to allow the lust from which all evil flows; and, as against "sin in its beginning," the "Thou shalt not covet" of God is uttered with solemn emphasis as the last commandment.
II LOVE. The last commandment? Nay, for Christ has said, "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another." We have seen how this is the bond of the new brotherhood in Christ; it is set forth here as the Christian"s own safeguard of the rights of man. As a man amongst men you must respect the rights of men, i.e. you must fulfil the law; as a Christian amongst men you must love them for the Lord"s sake, and so you assure your respect for all their rights, for "love is the fulfilment of the Law." Need this be proved? Law says sternly, "No ill to one"s neighbour;" love says, "Give all good." Ah! here is a yet Diviner impulse, and covering a broader ground. And the Christian will be content with nothing less than this Diviner impulse and broader ground. But if there be the higher impulse, the lower shall be secure; if there be the wider range, the narrower shall be covered. Yes; love men, and you will work no ill.
The importance of justice amongst men demands that, as good citizens, we see to it that justice is everywhere advanced; hence our parliaments, our courts. But that justice may be advanced, to say nothing of yet higher ends, let us, as Christians, cherish this principle which constitutes the second great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. T.F.L.
Vers. 8-10. Love, the fulfilment of the Law.
The Lord"s Prayer speaks of forgiving "our debtors." But it is the bounden duty of every man to strive to discharge his pecuniary obligations, otherwise he is guilty of living contentedly on stolen goods. The command, "Owe no man anything," if obeyed, would hinder many a bankruptcy and prevent many a business scandal. The apostle proceeds, with one of his skilful turns of thought, to speak of that debt which never can be entirely liquidated a debt under which we must be content to rest, paying portions of it as opportunity occurs; only to discover, and that with gladness, that the obligation magnifies with every attention to it. Could a man by love so serve his neighbour as not to owe him any more love, then might he feel free to disregard in future the interests of his neighbour, and he would thus sin against the second table of the Law. Love alone fulfils the Law, yet never exhausts the Law"s requirements.
I OFFENCES AGAINST OUR NEIGHBOURS ARE VIOLATIONS OF THE LAW OF LOVE. The ten commandments are mainly prohibitory. The Levitical statutes, however, enjoined many kindly and beneficent acts, these positive precepts filling up the outline thundered forth from the mount. The Saviour educed from the lawyer the statement that the Mosaic Law clearly enunciated the one principle underlying every regulation of social conduct, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." God has committed to each man specially the care of himself, to preserve and develop his various faculties. And just as no sane man voluntarily injures himself, so must he guard against damaging the well-being of his fellows. Cynicism, greed, tyranny, cannot survive the entrance of this humanizing agent, love, which evokes compassion, benevolence, philanthropy, as set forth so beautifully in 1Co 13. Adultery, murder, coveteousness, in all degrees of desire and behaviour, imply that men are careless of another"s happiness if they can secure some additional gratification for themselves.
II CONTRAST LOVE AS A MOTIVE WITH A SENSE OF DUTY. The only answer to the question, "Why should altruism be a regulating principle in my life?" is that God has made us "members one of another;" that he has implanted in our nature, together with the instinct of self-preservation, certain affections towards others; that God"s intention is thus plainly indicated in our constitution; and that experience shows that to make self the sole factor in our consideration is to rend the ties of society, and ultimately to ruin our own welfare and enjoyment. Congregation, not segregation, is the law of human life. Nevertheless, even this conviction, "I ought to pay respect to my neighbour"s interests and needs," may stop far short of that proper care for others which the perfect law expects. The house of duty is a dark temple if unlit by the Shechinah of love. Obligation may lead some citizens to pay the taxes claimed; it never suggests willing offers of further help to the body politic to which they belong. Duty draws rigid lines, examines each article of a bond for fear of excess. Love delights in all extra occasions of service. Duty is cool and calculating; love rises to boiling pitch, and its energy longs for work, like the pressure of steam. Duty moves with measured tread; love runs upon its errands, takes pleasure in obedience, whereas duty is glad when the business is accomplished. The law of obligation is a huge skeleton; love clothes it with flesh and sinew, endues it with life and beauty.
III THE STRENGTH WHICH JESUS CHRIST HAS GIVEN TO THE LAW OF LOVE. He has furnished a unique example of love in his incarnate condescension, in his words and deeds of grace, helping and healing men, and like a good Shepherd yielding up his own life to save his flock. His miracle of love sheds love abroad love to God and man, in the hearts of his disciples. Gratitude to Christ fills the soul with generous emotion. A spark of Divine generosity is sufficient to kindle the inflammable material in the human heart, diffusing light and warmth. Christ has emphasized the worth of humanity. He came to redeem not a particular race or sect, but men. He despised none, taught the salvability of all except wilful rejectors. How can we treat contemptuously the "brother for whom Christ died"? Under the dark skin of the negro, under the barbarous superstition of the African, under the stolid impassiveness of the Chinaman, under the rags of the English beggar, love discerns a possible regenerated member of the Christian family, a child of God, a jewel in the Saviour"s crown. Christ has exalted self-sacrifice into a heroism that charms the beholder, as he realizes the true glory of an intelligent will, that wins life by losing it, and imparts instead of egoistic happiness a Divine blessedness. S.R.A.
Vers. 8-14. Christ-likeness.
From citizenship, which is disposed of in the preceding verses, the apostle passes on to the Christian spirit as manifested in neighbourly relations. He here enters into the very spirit and essence of God"s law, showing it to be love. And here we have
I THE DEBT WHICH CAN NEVER BE DISCHARGED. (Ver. 8) We may pay all other debts, and should owe no man anything; but love is a debt that can never be discharged, an obligation which abides, a blessed law laid on us in perpetuity. All the commandments of the second table are covered by this one law of love. No one in his senses would ever seek discharge from such a law. Could it be a privilege to hate one"s neighbour? "Good haters," as they are pleased to call themselves, are usually public nuisances. We are under this law of love for ever, because we are under grace. It is here that our Divine sonship is realized; it is here that Christ-likeness begins. God is love; and in proportion as we are loving are we like Christ and his Father above.
II WITH THE CHRIST-LIKE LIFE HAS CEASED TO BE A DREAM. (Ver. 11) This is the case with the worldly; they fancy they are "wide awake," and yet they are asleep so far as eternal realities are concerned. How time slips through their fingers, as it does with those in sleep! Life is not in earnest; they have pillowed themselves upon success, and are dead to things Divine. But when Christ comes, then we awake and find ourselves in the morning hours. That Sun of Righteousness arises and our dream and night are over, and the activities of the new day are come. The Christ-like feel that life is earnest, and no time should be lost in dreams. As Feuchtersleben has pointedly said, "Life is no dream. It only becomes so by the fault of man, and when his mind disobeys the summons to awake.
III THE WORKS OF DARKNESS AND THE LUSTS OF THE FLESH ARE OUT OF DATE. (Vers. 12-14) While life is only a dream, while the night of indifference and neglect is around the soul, indulgence will he tolerated and provision made for the lusts of the flesh. Pleasure will be the pole-star of life, and decency will not deter the soul from its satisfactions. Of course, the primitive Church had to deal more with the lusts of the flesh than we have; or perhaps they went more thoroughly into the morals of their members. "The primitive Church," it has been said, "was more under the influence of the "lust of the flesh" than of the "pride of life; "the modern Church is more under the influence of the "pride of life " than of the "lust of the flesh." But pride is as great a sin, in the sight of God, as sensuality. This should be considered in forming an estimate of the modern missionary Church" (Shedd, in loc. ). But the soul which has awaked through the advent of Jesus regards these deeds of darkness as out of date. They would be anachronisms of the day. The light has come and put to flight the darkness.
IV THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT ALONE BEFITS THE DAY. (Vers. 12, 13) Now, it is wonderful what a protection light, even in its physical form, is against pollution. There are deeds which can only be done in darkness. Turn the light upon them, and they are annihilated through sheer shame. In the same way, when the full spiritual light which Jesus Christ, our Sun, embodies, plays upon our life, we are instantly aroused and elevated, and the tone of life improves. This is our panoply in the morning hours. Christ with us, near us, observing us, encircling us with his light, becomes our great protection.
V CHRIST-LIKENESS THROUGH CLOTHING OURSELVES WITH HIM IS THE GREAT SECRET OF A USEFUL AND HAPPY LIFE. (Ver. 14) As the Sun of Righteousness shines around us we contract a luminosity like his. We get sanctified through contemplating him. The same image that is in him becomes ours from glory to glory, as with unveiled face we behold the face of God. (2Co_3:17) It is this likeness to our Lord which makes us increasingly earnest and useful and happy in life"s young day. We feel that salvation, in all its length and breadth, is Hearer realization than when we first believed. The morning hours give promise of the perfect day. As one has well put it, The pilgrims of the dawn tolerate nothing in themselves that the light of day would rebuke. Hence it is the counterpart of this that they make no provision for the flesh; whatever provision they take for their heavenly journey, the flesh has no share in it. The sin adhering to their nature, the old man not yet dead, is an enemy whose hunger they do not feed, to whose thirst they do not administer drink, whose dying solicitations they regard not, but leave him to perish by the way. But the supreme preparation uniting all others in one is the putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ. In him alone the dignity and the purity of our nature meet; transformed into his character, we need nothing more to fit us for the holiest heavens; but nothing less will suffice his expectation at his coming. He will come to be glorified in his saints already the likeness in ten thousand reproductions of himself; and they shall in turn be glorified in him. Hence the great business of the pilgrims is to occupy the precious moments of the morning in weaving into their nature the character of Christ as the apparel of the eternal day. And if in faith that worketh by love the love that fulfilleth the Law they diligently co-operate with the Holy Spirit, it will be his blessed function to see to it that before the Bridegroom cometh, his bride, and every individual soul that makes up her mystical person, shall be found clothed in his spiritual perfection as with a garment without seam, woven from the top throughout. Beyond this we cannot go. This is the close and the secret of the whole exhortation to the pilgrims of the dawn. They have come up out of the night at the sound of his awakening voice, and have left their Egyptian darkness for ever. They are wrestling with the dangers of the morning, rejoicing in its partial satisfactions. But supremely and above all they are intent upon the coming day; in their pathway there is no death, but they wait for the more abundant life; they are full of trembling and solemn expectation of all that the day will pour out of its unfathomable mysteries. But the end of all their expectation is the Person of their Lord. And to prepare for him by being like himself is the sum of all their preparation." May we all thus put on Christ and be like him! R.M.E.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 11, 12, 13 Owe no man anything.
Rom_13:8
Owe no man anything.
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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.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v11 Chapter 28
Chapter 28
CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORDS RETURN AND IN
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THE POWER OF HIS PRESENCE
Rom_13:11-14
THE great teacher has led us long upon the path of duty, in its patient details, all summed up in the duty and joy of love. We have heard him explaining to his disciples how to live as members together of the Body of Christ, and as members also of human society at large, and as citizens of the state. We have been busy latterly with thoughts of taxes, and tolls, and private debts, and the obligation of scrupulous rightfulness in all such things. Everything has had relation to the seen and the temporal. The teaching has not strayed into a land of dreams, nor into a desert and a cell: it has had at least as much to do with the market, and the shop, and the secular official, as if the writer had been moralist whose horizon was altogether of this life, and who for the future was "without hope."
Yet all the while the teacher and the taught were penetrated and vivified by a certainty of the future perfectly supernatural, and commanding the wonder and glad response of their whole being. They carried about with them the promise of their Risen Master that He would personally return again in heavenly glory, to their infinite joy, gathering them forever around Him in immortality, bringing heaven with Him, and transfiguring them into His own celestial Image.
Across all possible complications and obstacles of the human world around them they beheld "that blissful hope". {Tit_2:13} The smoke of Rome could not becloud it, nor her noise drown the music of its promise, nor her splendour of possessions make its golden vista less beautiful and less entrancing to their souls. Their Lord, once crucified, but now alive for evermore, was greater than the world; greater in His calm triumphant authority over man and nature, greater in the wonder and joy of Himself, His Person and His Salvation. It was enough that He had said He would come again, and that it would be to their eternal happiness. He had promised; therefore it would surely be.
How the promise would take place, and when, was a secondary question. Some things were revealed and certain, as to the manner; "This same Jesus, in like manner as ye saw Him going into heaven". {Act_1:11} But vastly more was unrevealed and even unconjectured. As to the time, His words had left them, as they still leave us, suspended in a reverent sense of mystery, between intimations which seem almost equally to promise both speed and delay. "Watch therefore, for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh"; {Mar_13:35} "After a long time the Lord of the servants cometh, and reckoneth with them". {Mat_25:19} The Apostle himself follows his Redeemers example in the matter. Here and there he seems to indicate an Advent at the doors, as when he speaks of "us who are alive and remain". {1Th_4:15} But again, in this very Epistle, in his discourse on the future of Israel, he appears to contemplate great developments of time and event yet to come; and very definitely, for his own part, in many places, he records his expectation of death, not of a deathless transfiguration at the Coming. Many at least among his converts looked with an eagerness which was sometimes restless and unwholesome, as at Thessalonica, for the coming King, and it may have been thus with some of the Roman saints. But St. Paul at once warned the Thessalonians of their mistake; and certainly this Epistle suggests no such upheaval of expectation at Rome.
Our work in these pages is not to discuss "the times and the seasons" which now, as much as then, lie in the Fathers "power". {Act_1:7} It is rather to call attention to the fact that in all ages of the Church this mysterious but definite Promise has, with a silent force, made itself as it were present and contemporary to the believing and watching soul. How at last it shall be seen that "I come quickly," and "The day of Christ is not at {Rev_22:12; Rev_22:20, 2Th_2:2} were both divinely and harmoniously truthful, it does not yet fully appear." But it is certain that both are so; and that in every generation of the now "long time the Hope," as if it were at the doors indeed, has been calculated for mighty effects on the Christians will and work.
So we come to this great Advent oracle, to read it for our own age. Now first let us remember its wonderful illustration of that phenomenon which we have remarked already, the concurrence in Christianity of a faith full of eternity, with a life full of common duty. Here is a community of men called to live under an almost opened heaven; almost to see, as they look around them, the descending Lord of glory coming to bring in the eternal day, making Himself present in this visible scene "with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God," waking His buried saints from the dust, calling the living and the risen to meet Him in the air. How can they adjust such an expectation to the demands of "the daily round"? Will they not fly from the City to the solitude, to the hilltops and forests of the Apennines, to wait with awful joy the great lightning flash of glory? Not so. They somehow, while "looking for the Saviour from the heavens," {Php_3:20} attend to their service and their business, pay their debts and their taxes, offer sympathy to their neighbours in their human sadnesses and joys, and yield honest loyalty to the magistrate and the Prince. They are the most stable of all elements in the civic life of the hour, if "the powers that be" would but understand them; while yet, all the while, they are the only people in the City whose home, consciously, is the eternal heavens. What can explain the paradox? Nothing but the Fact, the Person, the Character of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not an enthusiasm, however powerful, which governs them, but a Person. And He is at once the Lord of immortality and the Ruler of every detail of His servants life. He is no author of fanaticism, but the divine-human King of truth and order. To know Him is to find the secret alike of a life eternal and of a patient faithfulness in the life that now is.
What was true of Him is true for evermore. His servant now, in this restless close of the nineteenth age, is to find in Him this wonderful double secret still. He is to be, in Christ, by the very nature of his faith, the most practical and the most willing of the servants of his fellow men, in their mortal as well as immortal interests; while also disengaged internally from a bondage to the seen and temporal by his mysterious union with the Son of God, and by his firm expectation of His Return. And this, this law of love and duty, let us remember, let us follow, knowing the season, the occasion, the growing crisis; that it is already the hour for our awaking out of sleep, the sleep of moral inattention, as if the eternal Master were not near. For nearer now is our salvation, in that last glorious sense of the word "salvation" which means the immortal issue of the whole saving process, nearer now than when we believed, and so by faith entered on our union with the Saviour. (See how he delights to associate himself with his disciples in the blessed unity of remembered conversion; "when we believed.") The night, with its murky silence, its "poring dark," the night of trial, of temptation, of the absence of our Christ, is far spent, but the day has drawn near; it has been a long night, but that means a near dawn; the everlasting sunrise of the longed for Parousia, with its glory, gladness, and unveiling. Let us put off, therefore, as if they were a foul and entangling night robe, the works of the darkness, the habits and acts of the moral night, things which we can throw off in the Name of Christ; but let us put on the weapons of the light, arming ourselves, for defence, and for holy aggression on the realm of evil, with faith, love, and the heavenly hope. So to the Thessalonians five years before, {1 Thes. 1, 5:8} and to the Ephesians four years later, {Eph_6:11-17} he wrote of the holy Panoply, rapidly sketching it in the one place, giving the rich finished picture in the other; suggesting to the saints always the thought of a warfare first and mainly defensive, and then aggressive with the drawn sword, and indicating as their true armour not their reason, their emotions, or their will, taken in themselves, but the eternal facts of their revealed salvation in Christ, grasped and used by faith. As by day, for it is already dawn, in the Lord, let us walk decorously, becomingly, as we are the hallowed soldiers of our Leader; let our life not only be right in fact; let it show to all men the open "decorum" of truth, purity, peace, and love; not in revels and drunken bouts; not in chamberings, the sins of the secret couch, and profligacies, not-to name evils which cling often to the otherwise reputable Christian-in strife and envy, things which are pollutions, in the sight of the Holy One, as real as lust itself. No; put on, clothe and arm yourselves with, the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself the living sum and true meaning of all that can arm the soul; and for the flesh take no forethought lust-ward. As if, in euphemism, he would say, "Take all possible forethought against the life of self (σάρξ), with its lustful, self-willed gravitation away from God. And let that forethought be, to arm yourselves, as if never armed before, with Christ."
How solemnly explicit he is, how plainspoken, about the temptations of the Roman Christians life! The men who were capable of the appeals and revelations of the first eight chapters yet needed to be told not to drink to intoxication, not to go near the house of ill fame, not to quarrel, not to grudge. But every modern missionary in heathendom will tell us that the like stern plainness is needed now among the new-converted faithful. And is it not needed among those who have professed the Pauline faith much longer, in the congregations of our older Christendom?
It remains for our time, as truly as ever, a fact of religious life-this necessity to press it home upon the religious, as the religious, that they are called to a practical and detailed holiness; and that they are never to ignore the possibility of even the worst falls. So mysteriously can the subtle "flesh," in the believing receiver of the Gospel, becloud or distort the holy import of the thing received. So fatally easy it is "to corrupt the best into the worst," using the very depth and richness of spiritual truth as if it could be a substitute for patient practice, instead of its mighty stimulus.
But glorious is the method illustrated here for triumphant resistance to that tendency. What is it? It is not to retreat from spiritual principle upon a cold naturalistic programme of activity and probity. It is to penetrate through the spiritual principle to the Crucified and Living Lord who is its heart and power; it is to bury self in Him, and to arm the will with Him. It is to look for Him as Coming, but also, and yet more urgently, to use Him as Present. In the great Roman Epic, on the verge of the decisive conflict, the goddess-mother laid the invulnerable panoply at the feet of her Aeneas; and the astonished Champion straightway, first pondering every part of the heaven-sent armament, then "put it on," and was prepared. As it were at our feet is laid the Lord Jesus Christ, in all He is, in all He has done, in His indissoluble union with us in it all, as we are one with Him by the Holy Ghost. It is for us to see in Him our power and victory, and to "put Him on," in a personal act which, while all by grace, is yet in itself our own. And how is this done? It is by the "committal of the keeping of our souls unto Him," {1Pe_4:19} not vaguely, but definitely and with purpose, in view of each and every temptation. It is by "living our fife in the flesh by faith in the Son of God"; {Gal_2:20} that is to say, in effect, by perpetually making use of the Crucified and Living Saviour, One with us by the Holy Spirit, by using Him as our living Deliverer, our Peace and Power, amidst all that the dark hosts of evil can do against us.
Oh, wonderful and all-adequate secret; "Christ, which is the Secret of God!" {Col_2:2} Oh, divine simplicity of its depth.
"Heavens easy, artless, unencumberd plan"!
Not that its "ease" means our indolence. No; if we would indeed "arm ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ" we must awake and be astir to "know whom we have trusted". {2Ti_1:12} We must explore His Word about Himself. We must ponder it, above all, in the prayer which converses with Him over His promises, till they live to us in His light. We must watch and pray, that we may be alert to employ our armament. The Christian who steps out into life "light heartedly," thinking superficially of his weakness, and of his foes, is only too likely also to think of his Lord superficially, and to find of even this heavenly armour that "he cannot go with it, for he hath not proved it". {1Sa_17:39} But all this leaves absolutely untouched the divine simplicity of the matter. It leaves it wonderfully true that the decisive, the satisfying, the thorough, moral victory and deliverance comes to the Christian man not by trampling about with his own resolves, but by committing himself to his Saviour and Keeper, who has conquered him, that now He may conquer "his strong Enemy" for him.
"Heavens unencumbered plan" of "victory and triumph, against the devil, the world, and the flesh," is no daydream of romance. It lives, it works in the most open hour of the common world of sin and sorrow. We have seen this "putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ" victoriously successful where the most fierce, or the most subtle, forms of temptation were to be dealt with. We have seen it preserving, with beautiful persistency, a lifelong sufferer from the terrible solicitations of pain, and of still less endurable helplessness - every limb fixed literally immovable by paralysis on the ill-furnished bed; we have seen the man cheerful, restful, always ready for wise word and sympathetic thought, and affirming that his Lord, present to his soul, was infinitely enough to "keep him." We have seen the overwhelmed toiler for God, while every step through the day was clogged by "thronging duties," such duties as most wear and drain the spirit, yet maintained in an equable cheerfulness and as it were inward leisure by this same always adequate secret, "the Lord Jesus Christ put on." We have known the missionary who had, in sober earnest, hazarded his life for the blessed Name, yet ready to bear quiet witness to the repose and readiness to be found in meeting disappointment, solitude, danger, not so much by a stern resistance as by the use, then and there, confidingly, and in surrender, of the Crucified and Living Lord. Shall we dare to add with the humiliating avowal that only a too partial proof has been made of this glorious open Secret, that we know by experiment that the weakest of the servants of our King, "putting on Him," find victory and deliverance, where there was defeat before?
Let us, writer and reader, address ourselves afresh in practice to this wonderful secret. Let us, as if we had never done it before, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." Vain is our interpretation of the holy Word, which not only "abideth, but liveth forever," {1Pe_1:23} if it does not somehow come home. For that Word was written on purpose to come home; to touch and move the conscience and the will, in the realities of our inmost, and also of our most outward, life. Never for one moment do we stand as merely interested students and spectators, outside the field of temptation. Never for one moment therefore can we dispense with the great Secret of victory and safety.
Full in face of the realities of sin-of Roman sin, in Neros days; but let us just now forget Rome and Nero; they were only dark accidents of a darker essence-St. Paul here writes down, across them all, these words, this spell, this Name; "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." Take first a steady look, he seems to say, at your sore need, in the light of God; but then, at once, look off, look here. Here is the more than Antithesis to it all. Here is that by which you can be "more than conqueror." Take your iniquities at the worst; this can subdue them. Take your surroundings at the worst; this car, emancipate you from their power. It is "the Lord Jesus Christ," and the "putting on" of Him.
Let us remember, as if it were a new thing, that He, the Christ of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, is a Fact. Sure as the existence now of His universal Church, as the observance of the historic Sacrament of His Death, as the impossibility of Galilean or Pharisaic imagination having composed, instead of photographed, the portrait of the Incarnate Son, the Immaculate Lamb; sure as is the glad verification in ten thousand blessed lives today of all, of all, that the Christ of Scripture undertakes to be to the soul that will take Him at His. own terms-so sure, across all oldest and all newest doubts, across all gnosis and all agnosia, lies the present Fact of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then let us remember that it is a fact that man, in the mercy of God, can "put Him on." He is not far off. He presents Himself to our touch, our possession. He says to us, "Come to Me." He unveils Himself as literal partaker of our nature; as our Sacrifice; our Righteousness, "through faith in His blood"; as the Head and Lifespring, in an indescribable union, of a deep calm tide of life spiritual and eternal, ready to circulate through our being. He invites Himself to "make His abode with us"; {Joh_14:23} yea, more, "I will come in to him; I will dwell in his heart by faith." {Rev_3:20, Eph_3:17} In that ungovernable heart of ours, that interminably self-deceptive: heart, {Jer_17:9} He engages to reside, to be permanent Occupant, the Master always at home. He is prepared thus to take, with regard to our will, a place of power nearer than all circumstances, and deep in the midst of all possible inward traitors; to keep His eye on their plots, His foot, not ours, upon their necks. Yes, He invites us thus to embrace Him into a full contact; to "put Him on."
May we not say of Him what the great Poet says of Duty, and glorify the verse by a yet nobler application?-
"Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free, And calmst the weary strife of frail humanity!"
Yes, we can "put Him on" as our "Panoply of Light." We can put Him on as "the Lord," surrendering ourselves to His absolute while most benignant sovereignty and will, deep secret of repose. We can put Him on as "Jesus," clasping the truth that He, our Human Brother, yet Divine, "saves His people from their sins". {Mat_1:21} We can put Him, on as "Christ," our Head, anointed without measure by the Eternal Spirit, and now sending of that same Spirit into His happy members, so that we are indeed one with Him, and receive into our whole being the resources of His life.
Such are the armour and the arms. St. Jerome, commenting on a kindred passage, {Eph_6:13} says that "it most clearly results that by the weapons of God the Lord our Saviour is to be understood."
We may recollect that this text is memorable in connection with the Conversion of St. Augustine. In his "Confessions" (8:12) he records how, in the garden at Milan, at a time of great moral conflict, he was strangely attracted by a voice, perhaps the cry of children playing: "Take and read, take and read." He fetched and opened again a copy of the Epistles ("codicem Apostoli"), which he had lately laid down. "I read in silence the first place on which my eyes fell; Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts. I neither cared, nor needed, to read further. At the close of the sentence, as if a ray of certainty were poured into my heart, the clouds of hesitation fled at once." His will was in the will of God.
Alas, there falls one shadow over that fair scene. In the belief of Augustines time, to decide fully for Christ meant, or very nearly meant, so to accept the ascetic idea as to renounce the Christian home. But the Lord read His servants heart aright through the error, and filled it with His peace. To us, in a surrounding religious light far clearer, in many things, than that which shone even upon Ambrose and Augustine; to us who quite recognise that in the paths of homeliest duty and commonest temptation lies the line along which the blessed power of the Saviour may best overshadow His disciple; the Spirits voice shall say of this same text "Take and read, take and read." We will "put on," never to put off. Then we shall step out upon the old path in a strength new, and to be renewed forever, armed against evil, armed for the will of God, with Jesus Christ our Lord.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv8–14 8–10. Owe no man any thing, save to love…
8–10. Owe no man any thing, save to love one another. Not only pay all tribute due, but all that is due every man. Every obligation must be discharged. The church member, who makes debts and does not meet them, violates this command. Bengel says: “Pay every debt; let none remain due to any man, save that immortal debt of mutual love, which, though fully paid, is still forever due.” Hath fulfilled the law. He who loves his neighbor will not do to his neighbor any of the things forbidden by the law; will not steal, kill, commit adultery, bear false witness, covet, and hence his love fulfills the Mosaic law.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv11–13 Rom_13:11.—Because we know the time, let us fulfil the…
CRITICAL NOTES
Rom_13:11.—Because we know the time, let us fulfil the law by love. We have been in the dark, but let us awake with the light. ῦπνου, deep sleep; dreams of the present time. Physical death. Spiritual stupor. The image of death. As χρόνος is duration of time, so καιρός is definition of time. It is a portion cut out of time, a season, an opportunity. Salvation.—Full spiritual salvation and day of perfect redemption viewed as connected with the universal spread of Christianity. Spiritual salvation in the world of glory. All is night here, in respect of ignorance and daily ensuing troubles.
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_13:11
The Christian’s duty and encouragement.—Different views are taken of time. Some seem to regard it as a useless commodity, to be frittered away in vain trifles. Others consider it too short for the work to be accomplished. Thus some hoard and others squander time. The majority do not look beyond the bounds of time. It is not to them fraught with eternal issues. Time, however, to the Christian is important, for it is the pathway to eternity. Time impresses eternity. How solemn the thought! All time’s thoughts, words, and deeds have a bearing upon the future. How seasonable the petition, “so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”!
I. The Christian’s knowledge.—The Christian is or should be a man who knows. Principally he should know the season, the period, in which he lives. It is difficult in these days to know the season. This is a time of great perplexity. The world has both changed and enlarged since the days of primitive Christianity. The man who knows the time in these days is a man of extensive knowledge. Still, the Christian may know the time as far more advanced than it was eighteen centuries since. He may know that great interests are at stake. He should know that increased activity is demanded, that overwhelming zeal is required. In these days, when wealth on the one side and poverty on the other are increased, when licentiousness, lawlessness, selfishness, and indifference still prevail to an alarming extent, it becomes the Christian to keep his intellect alive to the stirring events of his period.
II. The Christian’s duty.—“To awake out of sleep.” If the apostle’s time demanded wakeful spirits, much more do these times. Alas, how many so-called Christians are fast asleep! The enemy is upon them, and they do not heed the approach. Their dreams are of sweet music and of pleasant services. They are not awake to the calls of duty. They become somnambulists, and walk away from the voice of God’s messenger directing them to the post of duty. Such require a thunder-peal from heaven to awake them from sleep. It is consolatory to reflect that some are awake. But none are so wide awake as to be without need of the apostolic injunction which says that it is high time to awake out of sleep. We must shake off the torpor of indifference. Sleepy men are an easy prey to evil. By sleep we put on strength, but by moral sleep we induce weakness. Awake, awake, O Church of the living God, and put on immortal strength!
III. The Christian’s encouragement.—“Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” The period of completed salvation is fast approaching. Every beat of the minute-hand tells its advent. Salvation in prospect was accomplished when Jesus said, “It is finished.” Salvation is secured when faith lays hold on the Saviour. Salvation is perfected when the redeemed spirit enters into the perfect rest of heaven; and every moment of the believer’s life brings that completed salvation nearer. There are two advents to the soul: the first advent when Christ enters into that soul and is in it the hope of glory; the second advent when either Christ will come to the soul at His second coming, or when that soul shall go to be with Christ in paradise. The blest reunion is fast approaching. Here there is a union of faith; yonder there will be a union of sight. We are united with Christ by faith. We shall be reunited, perfectly united, to Christ by blissful vision. That union will be a perfect salvation from all that harasses in the present state. The prospect is stimulating. It quickens the drowsy powers; it delivers from lethargy. As the sailor draws nearer to his native land, after a prolonged absence, every sense is quickened, and he puts on fresh energy. As the runner is nearing the goal he takes quicker steps; his eyes catch a new light; he forgets the strain in his eagerness to win the prize. What buoyancy takes possession of the inventor’s spirit when after years, it may be, of experimenting he finds himself within measurable reach of the desired discovery! Shall the Christian runner lag when the prize of eternal glory is almost within reach? Shall the Christian sailor sleep, after the storms and buffetings of time, when the clear lights of heaven shine across the intervening waters? The sound of the harpers on the eternal shores greets his ears, and he can no longer slumber. From this dim cloud-land of partial knowledge he is hastening to the sphere of the complete unfolding of many mysteries, and his soul is all eagerness to enter upon the all-revealing light of eternity. It is high time to awake out of sleep, for the times are busy, for the world is pressing close, and the other world is letting down dazzling views of its surpassing glory.
Knowledge of time.—We should know time in its:—
I. Worth.—Estimated at the value of:
1. Life. Time the measure of life of a being capable of thought, endowed with conscience, gifted with immortality.
2. What able to be done during its progress.
II. Responsibilities.—Our relation to God. Knowledge of salvation. Duties in our sphere of life. Influence we exert. Ignatius when heard clock strike said, “Now I have one hour more to account for.”
III. Uncertainty.—Commercial institutions and projects abundantly prove this, but he who counts on time presumes on probability that has even more impressively proved its questionableness (Jas_4:13-14).
IV. Brevity.
V. Powerlessness.—It cannot destroy sin or take away its guilt. It cannot act for us. It cannot destroy the soul, though it end the life.
VI. Irrevocableness.—G. McMichael, B.A.
Self-denial the test of religious earnestness.—By “sleep” in this passage St. Paul means a state of insensibility to things as they really are in God’s sight. Thus, whether in private families or in the world, in all the ranks of middle life men lie under a considerable danger at this day, a more than ordinary danger, of self-deception, of being asleep while they think themselves awake. How, then, shall we try ourselves? Can any tests be named which will bring certainty to our minds on the subject? No indisputable tests can be given. We cannot know for certain. We must beware of an impatience about knowing what our real state is. We cannot, indeed, make ourselves as sure of our being in the number of God’s true servants as the early Christians were; yet we may possess our degree of certainty, and by the same kind of evidence—the evidence of self-denial. This was the great evidence which the first disciples gave, and which we can give still. The self-denial which is the test of our faith must be daily. The word “daily” implies that the self-denial which is pleasing to Christ consists in little things. This is plain, for opportunity for great self-denials does not come every day. Thus to take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us. If, then, a person ask how he is to know whether he is dreaming on in the world’s slumber or is really awake and alive unto God, let him first fix his mind upon some one or other of his besetting sins. It is right then almost to find out for yourself daily self-denials, and this because our Lord bids you take up your cross daily, and because it proves your earnestness, and because by so doing you strengthen your general power of self-mastery and come to have such an habitual command of yourself as will be a defence ready prepared when the season of temptation comes. Let not your words run on; force every one of them into cation as it goes; and thus cleansing yourself from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfect holiness in the fear of God. In dreams we sometimes move our arms to see if we are awake or not, and so are wakened. This is the way to keep your heart awake also. Try yourself daily in little deeds to prove that your faith is more than a deceit.—Newman.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_13:11
Christian’s view of time.—What is the true measure of time? I know that the outward measures are accurate enough; and when a man says to his friend, “Another year is gone,” they understand a certain space which can be precisely computed; but if acts and activity are the true measures of time for us, and not the hands on the clock, nor the changing path of the sun, then it may be well doubted whether in fact we do know at the end of a year what or how much it is that has gone away from us. A year of earnest work in the way of duty and for the cause of God, a year of amusement, a year marked by tasting first and then drinking deep of the foul cup of some new sin, a year marked by a great change of character for the better, in which he that once served sin has made up his mind, through God’s help, to serve it no more—any of these may be included under the phrase, “Another year has passed.” Out of the looms of time a measured portion of the web of our life has come: the measure the same for all, the texture and the tints how different! Nay, are there not even single minutes in which the scattered lights of our thoughts are gathered into one focus, and burn an indelible imprint into the soul? A man went once to Damascus, and a light from heaven struck him blind, and the Spirit of Christ, more penetrating than that light, sent deep into his conscience the unanswerable question, “Why persecutest thou Me?” The man was St. Paul, and that minute bore in it the germ of the Church of the Gentiles and of our knowledge of the Redeemer. A careless student was walking with his friend, when a flash of lightning struck the friend dead and awoke the student out of his worldliness. Luther was that student, and the Reformation began from that terrible instant. Minutes like these are not to be reckoned only at their value as fractional portions of a year. Time has a quality as it has a quantity. We cannot be sure that a single day or year may not carry in it the decision of our eternity. There may be no great sign or wonder to tell us so; to all around the weight of another year upon us may seem no greater than in time past. But every part of us is growing. Habits are strengthening, feelings growing calmer, the advice of others losing its influence over us, the circle of those who might have the right to advise is fast contracting. And it is surely possible that when we are only conscious that a year is gone, our whole life, so far at least as life is a state of probation admitting of change and improvement, may have passed away with it.—Archbishop Thomson.
“High time to awake out of sleep.”—These words regard Christians themselves. This is undeniable, from the motive subjoined: “For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Are believers, then, asleep? Not in the sense they once were—this would be impossible. But there are found even in them some remains of their former depravity. Though the good work is begun in them, it is far from being accomplished. While the bridegroom tarried, even the wise virgins slumbered and slept. Yes, Christians are often in a drowsy frame. This is sadly reproachful. Yet if the address be proper for Christians, how much more necessary is it for those who are entirely regardless of the things that belong to their peace!—if we consider how long they have been sleeping! We ought to lament that we have lost any of our precious hours and opportunities. However short it may have been, the time past of our life should more than suffice, wherein we have lived to the will of man. What then should those feel who have sacrificed the whole of their youth—perhaps the vigour of mature age? What should those feel who perhaps have grown grey in the service of sin and the world? The later we begin, the more zealous should we be to redeem the advantages we have lost, and to overtake those who were wise enough to set off early. High time—if we consider that the day is arrived and the sun is risen so high. “The night is far spent,” etc. We can say more than the apostle. The night is spent; the day is fully come. And we are all the children of the light and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as do others. “They that sleep, sleep in the night.” Our obligations always increase with our advantages. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. And the servant that knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, shall be beaten with many stripes; for where much is given much will be required. High time—if we consider the business they have to do. I am doing, said Nehemiah to some who would have interrupted him; I cannot come down to you—I am doing a great work. How much more may a Christian say this! He has an enterprise connected with the soul and God and eternity. Some things are desirable, and some are useful; but this is absolutely indispensable—
“Sufficient in itself alone;
And needful, were the world our own.”
Neglect in many a concern is injurious; but here it is ruinous—ruinous of everything, and ruinous for ever. High time—if we consider the nature of the season in which this difficult and all-important work is to be accomplished. It is short, and there is but a step between us and death. It is uncertain in its continuance, and may be terminated every moment by some of those numberless dangers to which we are exposed: once gone, it can never be renewed. High time—if we consider the danger they are in. If a man were sleeping in a house and the fire were seen, who would not think it high time for him to awake and escape for his life? This is but a weak representation of the danger of sinners. They are condemned already. High time to awake out of sleep—if we consider that all besides are awake. God, glorified saints, the children of this generation, devils, and death, are awake. “It is high time to awake out of sleep.”—W. Jay.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13
Rom_13:11. Cæsar wept.—When Cæsar, in Spain, met with a statue of Alexander, he wept at the thought that this illustrious conqueror had achieved so much before he had even begun his career. The man who is awake will accomplish much. Every sight will stir his soul to energy. He will emulate others in good works.
Rom_13:11. Sunrise from the Righi.—Doubtless many readers of these pages have been among the number of the thousands of travellers who each year witness the sunrise from the culm of the Righi. So anxious were you to behold the sight that you rose from your bed the moment you heard the sound of the horn which announced that the night was far spent and the day was at hand. Hastily dressing, you were soon silently and earnestly watching for the first gleam of light in the Eastern sky. It may be that some one of you turned to see whether your friend and fellow traveller was sharing your eager anticipations, and found him wanting. You at once hastened back to the hotel and knocked loudly at his door. He, too, had been awoke by the blast of the horn, but, being weary, was half asleep. You exclaimed, “Do you know the time? It is high time to awake out of sleep, for the sight for which you have travelled so far is far nearer than when first you were roused.” He, too, was soon among the silent band of watchers, and with you beheld the King of Day as he crowned each snow-capped peak with roseate hues, and lit up the lakes of Lucerne and Zug and Lowerz below, and many a distant valley, until the whole panorama was bathed in his glorious light. St. Paul, as a watchful sentinel in the Church, as one who was eagerly expecting the glorious appearing of his Lord and Master, earnestly exhorts the Christians at Rome to live in no debt but that of love (see Rom_13:10). He seeks to awaken them from their indifference by reminding them that the “day of the Lord,” the consummation of their “salvation,” was nearer than when “first they were roused from their sleep of sin.” “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.”—Bardsley’s “Illustrated Texts.”
Rom_13:11-12. The improvement of time.—Boyle remarks “that sand-grains are easily scattered, but skilful artificers gather, melt, and transmute them to glass, of which they make mirrors, lenses, and telescopes. Even so vigilant Christians improve parenthetic fragments of time, employing them in self-examination, acts of faith, and researches of holy truth, by which they become looking-glasses for their souls and telescopes revealing their promised heaven.” Jewellers save the very sweepings of their shops because they contain particles of precious metal. Should Christians, whose every moment of time was purchased for them by the blood of Christ, be less careful of time? Surely its very minutiæ should be more treasured than grains of gold or dust of diamonds.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv8, 9, 11, 12, 13 8. “Owe no man anything, except to love one…
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. God’s 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.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv8, 11, 12, 13 Rom 13:8 - Rom 13:14.
Romans
LOVE AND THE DAY
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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.
The Apostle has just been laying down the general exhortation, ‘Pay every man his due’ and applying it especially to the Christian’s relation to civic rulers. He repeats it in a negative form, and bases on it the obligation of loving every man. That love is further represented as the sum and substance of the law. Thus Paul brings together two thoughts which are often dealt with as mutually exclusive,-namely, love and law. He does not talk sentimentalisms about the beauty of charity and the like, but lays it down, as a ‘hard and fast rule,’ that we are bound to love every man with whom we come in contact; or, as the Greek has it, ‘the other.’
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}.
‘The day,’ in Paul’s writing, has usually the sense of the great day of the Lord’s return, and may have that meaning here; for, as Jesus has told us, ‘it is not for’ even inspired Apostles ‘to know the times or the seasons,’ and it is no dishonour to apostolic inspiration to assign to it the limits which the Lord has assigned.
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.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv8–14 [Having shown that the Christian must recognize the rights…
[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.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv8, 11 See Lev 19:13; Pro 22:7.
Owe
See Lev 19:13; Pro 22:7.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv8, 11 The obligation of Christian love:
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.
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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.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv8, 11, 13 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Paul tells believers how to act toward neighbors.
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Owe no one anything, except to love one another
This is a double negative. You can translate it in a positive form. AT: "Pay all you owe to everyone, and love one another" (See: Double Negatives)
Owe
This verb is plural and applies to all the Roman Christians. (See: Forms of You)
except to love one another
This is the one debt that can remain as shown in the note above.
love
This refers to the kind of love that comes from God and focuses on the good of others, even when it does not benefit oneself.
covet
to desire to have or possess something that another person possesses.
Love does not harm one's neighbor
This phrase portrays love as a person who is being kind to other people. AT: "People who love their neighbors do not harm them" (See: Personification)
translationWords
love
neighbor
fulfill
law
adultery
envy
command
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv8, 11, 12 13:8-10 These verses discuss how believers relate to other…
13:8-10 These verses discuss how believers relate to other people. If we truly love others, our actions will reflect all the commandments in the law that concern our relationships with other people.
13:8 The idea of obligation is the hinge that connects 13:1-7 and 13:8-10. Christians are to “give to everyone what [they] owe them” (13:7), and Christians always owe love to their neighbors. • Owe nothing to anyone: Debts are not sinful but should be avoided and, if incurred, should be promptly repaid so that the believer is free to serve in love (see Prov 22:7). • love one another: Believers are called to love all those they encounter (Rom 12:14-21; Luke 10:25-37), but the phrase especially emphasizes the love that each believer owes to other believers. • you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law: This teaching closely follows Jesus’ teaching in Matt 22:34-40.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.