“Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” Romans 13:10
Love is not sex. It’s not merely an emotion. Love is the fulfilling of the law. This alone is a staggering revelation today as we’re prone to think of love only in terms of Eros and Philautia – that is, romantic and self-love. We encounter Philia and Storge along the way too, but these are all colored by Philautia. But God islove – and He’s indivisible or, if you prefer to say, He’s self-consistent, which means that His righteousness and His love are wrapped up in one another in a way that makes one without the other impossible. One can’t go into the ocean without getting wet and, likewise, one can’t speak of God’s love without speaking of His righteousness too. The two are inseparable.
Being finite beings, and dependent upon God for the proper definition of the facts of reality, when we reject His definitions we play a game of brute factuality. As Cornelius Van Til would have described it, sinful man slices and dices the facts of life so that they’re like different foods on a plate – or even different courses. The modern mind looks at knowledge without an integrative principle because one simply can’t integrate without Christ.
All knowledge, according to Christian philosophy, is revelatory of God because all things were created by God and have their place in God’s redemptive/historical plan. In other words, for anything to be a fact at all it must derive its “factness” – that is, be interpreted – by God’s word. A fact that doesn’t need to be interpreted would, in essence, be God.
Modern education, rejecting the Bible as the basis for knowledge, makes sure that students can’t think in anything resembling philosophical consistency because now, by default, all facts are uninterpreted. This is what we mean when we say that we’re in an era of brute facts. To ask people of their theory of knowledge, the nature of truth, the source of ethical good, the goal of life, and so on is like asking a baby to compare War and Peace to A Farewell to Arms. They simply don’t possess the reference points through which they can think rationally about the world. This is the great tragedy of our time. Billions of dollars are spent every year on a so-called education that, in point of fact, subverts and obliterates true knowledge.
With politics, for example, we start midstream. Moral proclamations are bandied about all the time without ever qualifying them. “No one should have to…” or “everyone deserves…” are statements of ethical obligations that absolutely must be defined, but never are. The modern man doesn’t define their standard because he’s been trained and encouraged to embrace the sin-principle of autonomy. Invariably, this includes brute factuality, which is, at the bottom, irrationalism. In other words, when the autonomous principle is acted upon and facts are considered outside of the plan and authority of God, men and women try to be rational while being ultimately irrational. The exercise is something like saying, “what I’m saying makes sense although nothing ultimately makes sense and neither one of us can ever share the exact same premise. So, there’s no use in talking but we’re gonna talk anyway and pretend that the conversation is meaningful so long as neither of us ask the other how we know anything at all. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t ask why any of this conversation is meaningful to persons in a universe that’s impersonal and random!”
It’s like this that non-belief is the world’s greatest con-game.
It’s the same thing with love. People are fond of saying vacuous things like “love is never wrong.” This has the appearance of nobility and wisdom and makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside, so it’s an easy thing to say. The problem is, one is compelled to ask, “love according to what?” There must be a standard by which one understands love or else it’s nothing at all. This is what God does in this passage. He tells us that true love, as far as human relationships are concerned, which is the context of the passage, is the fulfilling of His law. Love cannot, therefore, be lawless; it can’t be in violation of His moral order.
Once again, the context of this passage – indeed, the whole chapter of Romans 13 – deals with interpersonal relationships and God’s provision for social peace in the gospel age. The previous chapters of Romans have already detailed what’s wrong with the world (sin), what God has done about it (…by sending His own Son…), and what that means (…therefore …we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…). Chapter 12 tells us about our rational response to all of this magnificent news. It says, “therefore, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” We aren’t going back to the priesthood of Leviticus. We don’t have a physical temple where we need to offer sacrifices for our sin. Jesus Christ is our perfect priest (Hebrews 10).
Likewise, we have no more need of prophets since we have the inspired and finished word of God in holy Scripture (Hebrews 1). The work of Jesus is finished and he’s our prophet too. In the Old Testament there was another separation of powers. A priest couldn’t be a prophet; a prophet couldn’t offer sacrifices and be a priest; a king couldn’t be priest or prophet. Remember how God sent the prophet Nathan to confront King David when David sinned. That displayed not only that the offices were different but that, tellingly, God’s word, spoken through His prophet, was higher than the earthly king.
But Christ is also King too. So, Jesus Christ is prophet, priest and king. And we’re called to be holy as He is holy. To be holy doesn’t mean to be more ethical than before, but to be “separated” for God – set apart. That’s the meaning of Romans 12:1 – a living sacrifice. We’re called to holy living in Christ, to be conformed to Him in our minds and in our lives/conduct.
As we began in verse fourteen, though, and follow through to this point, God orders civil life with another kind of separation. The converted believer, saved by faith in Christ, is a member of the body of Christ and, therefore, a part of the church, which is the true and spiritual Israel. So, the believer and the church are “set apart” – that is, holy and separated from conformity to this world (and its animating principle of autonomy). But this separation doesn’t mean a withdrawal from the world completely. No. The world needs the gospel, just as we needed it too (Romans 10:14-15). By his resurrection from the dead, Christ doesn’t only prove His credentials to the church (Romans 1:4) – that being, He’s the savior of sinners – but also that He’s God…and, therefore, King of the world. As King, Christ doesn’t judge unbelief in the world right now but has commanded His church to preach the good news. As an intermediary until His second coming, when all rebellion will be unilaterally crushed, He’s ordained the civil magistrate to punish the criminal outbreaks of sin that can/will erupt until that glorious day! But make no mistake, Christ is King over the unbelieving world. The separation of powers isn’t a wink and nod to rebellion but a sign of grace and mercy, which is meant to lead sinners to repentance.
As Paul said to the Areopagus in Acts 17:30-31, “…the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed; and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead”
It’s in this light that we consider the following verses about sin. The believer is to live peacefully with all – believers and non-believers alike – in this age. If the believer is insulted or inconvenienced he is to do everything in his power to ignore that slight for the sake of the gospel. It’s not merely a “nice thing to do” or “being polite” that matters. No…that’s bringing the glory of such conduct to ourselves and that’s pointless because such honor ends at our grave. The idea, the guiding principle, is to avoid conflict so that the name of Christ is honored.
If the offense from a neighbor rises past this point, and goes to violence or theft, the Christian can certainly defend themselves. To believe otherwise is to claim that using self-defense is actually worse than those things. To say that using a firearm for personal defense is wrong is to say that a woman shooting a would-be rapist should have consented to rape and that self-defense is worse – yes, worse – than rape. That stands the moral law on its head. Then, in the horrible case that there has been a victim of violence or theft, and that crime wasn’t averted, God has established the civil magistrate to punish the evildoer.
Into this mix He says we are to love our neighbor. If we strive to apply that principle, interpersonal crime will be nixed. To love our neighbor is an astonishing command – and, yes, it’s a command. And, to be clear, it’s a command to love all people. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing His riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:12-13). This passage makes it abundantly and unquestionably clear that everyone in the world, regardless of their race, class, sex, philosophy, religion – or any other distinction – is our neighbor. We are to love everyone. It’s an incontestable demand made by the certain and sovereign God of all.
Love does no wrong to a neighbor, God says. Love isn’t a nebulous and ambiguous emotion; it’s the nature and character of God poured into our hearts, given by Him, defined by Him, motivated by Him and, ultimately, directed back to Him for His glory. All “love” outside of His standards is, consequently, not true love but selfishness – greed, lust, and pride cloaking itself in God’s majestic character. God defines love since He is love and for men and women to love in truth they must love according to His standards.
To talk of love without defined standards is the vacuous stuff of autonomous man play-acting at being noble. To speak of love on one’s own terms is a most abominable thing as it seeks – even demands – that God’s ethical order to reality be redefined according to one’s pride. True love must love what is good and abhor what is evil and these are only to be rationally defined by God, not man. For our benefit, the Lord provides this brief checklist – a rundown of the major principles governing the love of one’s neighbor as related to the topic of social life.
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