More from Romans 13: The law we must obey; the debt we should accumulate: LOVE.
“Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.” Romans 13:8-10, The Message
Love is the word for a relationship between people. Christian love is the kid of love in which I am concerned for others and do what needs to be done to make their lives complete. The GReek word for this is agape. It is giving-love. It’s this love that the Bible is concerned with when it tells us to ‘love others’ (Matthew 22:39). This is the love Paul uses as the key to making our ethical decisions. If we put this love in the driver’s seat, we’ll be able to make decisions that will produce a Christian life that’s pleasing to God. We see this new love in Jesus. By looking at him, we can find out just how love shapes ethical decisions. Jesus, it would seem, was oblivious to rules and regulations in his decision making. His question was always, “How can I act so that this person becomes the person God wants him to be?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations: The Message Bible and Its Translator
