Romans 13:9-10 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
Paul does some biblical theology in this verse and quotes parts of the Ten Commandments found in Exodus 20. He chooses the commandments that especially focus upon relationship with other people and how we interact with them. The commandments from God deal with two types of relationships: with God and with others. That is why Jesus summed up the whole Law in two commands: Love God and love others. When we are being transformed into the image of Christ, God will grow love within our hearts through the work of grace. It is our responsibility to respond in the obedience of faith by listening to the Holy Spirit who will grow within us a desire to love. Paul later describes this as the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23. What gets in the way of this? Sin and selfishness. When we do what pleases the flesh, we are acting out of distorted instincts, and the result will be using the people around us as a means to an end, and the end is something that benefits ourselves and our own agendas. Love, however, will seek the good of others and how to help them along their own journey. This leads Paul to respond in v. 10 that love does not wrong to the neighbor. Love builds up the neighbor, even if it means that we must sacrifice something form our own lives. We are no longer concerned with pleasing the flesh or fulfilling selfish desires but we want to do what is best for others in order that they might come to the same saving knowledge and experience of Jesus that we have. When we see life this way, we are doing what God has created us to do and we will fulfill all the law. Some Jews of Paul’s day got caught up in the details of little laws and did not see the full picture of God’s desires for us. Paul has laid out God’s goal for us clearly in this letter. As he moves into the exhortation section of the letter beginning in ch. 12, he helps his readers make connections to real life so that they can see what it means to live as believers and transformed people.
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