“Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery;’ ‘do not murder;’ ‘do not steal;’ ‘do not covet;’ and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever owed something to someone else? I currently owe one bank a car payment, and one mortgage company a house payment. I’ve owed for a car once before in my life, but that’s all the debt I’ve ever had. How about beyond monetary debts? Have you ever had any of those? If you want to switch gears to something like personal debts of honor or failings that need to be forgiven, I’ve owed quite a few more of those over the years. Paul was just talking at the end of the last section about the kinds of debts we can incur in this life. Being in debt to anyone for anything is not a good state of affairs. There’s only one kind of debt that should be ongoing in our lives if we can help it. Let’s talk about what that is.

It’s worth noting out of the gate here the context we are sitting in as Paul begins what appears to be a new thematic focus. This whole discussion from Paul is rooted in his call for followers of Jesus to live lives that are rooted in sacrificial submission to the authority of God because of the grace of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Everything through the first half of chapter 15 flows from that one, driving force.

This present section began with Paul’s looking to apply the idea of sacrificial living to our relationship with the State. What State? Whatever State under whose authority you happen to be living. It doesn’t matter where you live, the government in operation over you was given its authority by God. Because of that, submitting to governing authorities as a follower of Jesus is something you do as a reflection of your submission to God’s authority. Yes, there can be exceptions to that, as we talked about even though Paul doesn’t mention them here, but because the authority is God-given, even if it is being wielded badly, there will be practical consequences for our refusal.

The last thing Paul says, which you were supposed to have read yesterday, but didn’t get the chance to read until today, is that we should be the kind of people who pay our obligations when we have them. He then lists out several different kinds of obligations starting with our primary obligation to the government: taxes. But our obligation paying can’t be limited only to that. Whatever it is you owe some, you need to pay that to the glory of God.

Here, though, Paul makes a turn. We should “not owe anyone anything.” At first glance this seems to be at odds with his previous assumption that we have obligations. We are to pay them, yes, but having obligations to pay means that we do in fact owe things to different people or institutions. Here, he says we shouldn’t owe anyone anything. How does that work? Well, if we pay all of our obligations, we soon won’t owe anyone anything. Simple enough. If we are an obligation-paying people, then debt won’t be something we will carry for long.

But Paul doesn’t just say we shouldn’t owe anyone anything. He immediately offers an exception. This is the one debt that won’t ever go away. It is not a monetary debt. It is not even a debt of honor. It is the debt of love. “Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another.” Love is the one debt that all Christians carry. And while the first context for this love is within the body of Christ, the church, it is not limited to that. We are to practice this one another love with everyone around us. No one is exempt from it as far as we are concerned. Every single person you meet is a “one another” to whom you owe this debt of love.

Okay, but how does this work? What have they done for us that we owe them love. In the vast majority of cases, nothing. Even within the context of the church where this one another love becomes especially important most of the one anothers around us will not have done anything to put us in debt to them. So then, why do we carry this debt? The short answer is: Because of Jesus. This becomes clear in the last part of v. 8. “Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Before Jesus came and did His work on the cross, the Law of Moses was our only means of getting and staying right with God. To put that more directly, the law was our only means of righteousness. How to fulfill the law, then, eventually became a major preoccupation of the Jewish people. By the time Jesus came around, there were groups that were hyper-focused on making sure they kept every single detail of the law so they were living in a constant state of righteousness. There was a widespread belief that if everyone in Israel could just keep the law perfectly for a single day, that would trigger God’s plans to send the Messiah to finally redeem and restore the people once again to their long-imagined Davidic glory.

Even after Jesus came and did His work, though, lawkeeping still loomed large in the minds of at least the Jewish background followers of Jesus. And those Gentiles who were already God-fearers when they became believers had adopted this concern for lawkeeping themselves. As Paul and the other apostles were helping people to understand, though, keeping the law perfectly wasn’t ever something we were going to accomplish. That is why God sent Jesus in the first place. As Paul wrote back in chapter 3, in that glorious turn from condemnation because of sin to the good news of the Gospel, “But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, attested by the Law and the Prophets. The righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction.” In other words, Jesus is the means by which we keep the law.

Okay, but then why is Paul talking about our fulfilling the law here? Because this was how his audience still thought, and he knew it. He will yet round out this chapter with an exhortation to “put on Christ” as the means of actually doing this, but even though Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and replaced it with the new one rooted in faith in Him, the way He did that was to keep the law perfectly before making Himself a sacrifice for us. Before He did that work, though, Jesus Himself told us what the heart of the law is, pointing to the thing that is the real mechanism for keeping it properly. That’s what Paul is echoing here.

When a legal scholar asked Jesus what the greatest command was, Jesus famously replied that it comes in one package with two parts. The first part, as everyone then expected Him to say, is that we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second part is like that. In other words, the second part is the same thing as the first. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. That is, we are to love the one anothers around us just like we love ourselves. Doing this, Jesus said, fulfills all the Law and the Prophets. In other words, if you want to keep the law, love is the means by which you do that.

“The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery;’ ‘do not murder;’ ‘do not steal;’ do not covet;’ and any other commandment, are summed up by this commandment: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love, therefore, is the fulfillment of the law.” Love fulfills the law. Thus, love meets our obligation of righteousness to God. To put that yet another way, love makes us right with God.

Sure, but if love is our means of getting right with God, don’t we need to be loving Him and not worrying so much about other people? That’s a tempting thought, but it is a thought that ignores what Jesus said and what Paul is echoing here. Remember what Jesus said? The greatest command is that we should love God with everything we’ve got. Right, there it is. We should love God. Why worry about others so much? Because the second part of that greatest command is like the first. That is, again, they are the same thing. If you do the one, you will do the other. If you do the other, you will be doing the one. Loving the one anothers around us is the means by which we love God. We owe a debt to God that is paid by our love for the one anothers around us. When we love one another, we keep the law that makes us right with God.

In short: If you want to be right with God, you need to love the people around you. All of them. All of the time. Your debt of sin to God is an everlasting one, thus this obligation to love the people around you is an everlasting one. Thankfully, of course, your debt has been paid by Jesus if you are willing to accept His work on your behalf on the cross and in the resurrection. In Him you can be right with God. He made the ultimate gift of love to all the one anothers who ever were or will be on our behalf. We are right with God in Him when we are willing to acknowledge that He is Lord. That acknowledgment, though, means keeping His command. And what was His command? To love one another after the pattern of His love for us. It’s love all the way to the bottom.

Love is the one debt we owe that will never go away. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to pay it every single day when we interact with the people around us. We can show them the love of Christ, fulfilling our obligation. Let us, then, be a people who love. Let that be our only obligation, and let us pay it lavishly and at every chance we get. Let us look for opportunities to make payments, thus bringing honor and glory to the one who loved first and loves most. Let us be fully His people.