After his challenging words about how Christ-followers should orient themselves towards civil authority, Paul returns to his more basic exhortations about how to live out God’s mercy and love in relationships — here turning explicitly to love.
Let’s look at the text.
Text
[13.8] Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. [9] For “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and any other commandment is summed up this this saying: “You will love your neighbour as yourself.” [10] Love does not do wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the full manifestation of the law.
[11] You know also the season, that it is already the hour for you to rouse from sleep. For salvation has already closer to us than when we first had faith: [12] the night is far spent, and the day has come near. So then, lest us cast off the works of darkness and clothe ourselves with the armour of light. [13] Let us walk with decency as in the day, not with carousing or drunkenness, or sexual exploits, or general lack of restraint, not in quarreling or rivalry. [14] Rather, clothe yourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, unto the appetites.
Experience & Encounter
When reading this section, I felt like I was back on solid ground. 13.8-10 are a critical and clear restatement of the Christian understanding of God’s ways, which we see throughout Jesus’ teachings. While 13.11-14 feel like more typical moral instructions, Paul places them in an apocalyptic framing, which is striking and makes me inspired to make sure I’m awake, and living in relationships accordingly.
Explore
This is a pretty straightforward passage, but it might be helpful to dig a bit more on a few details on the two sections of the text.
The Debt of Love
While this passage shifts the focus of the argument, it’s linked to the previous verses by the theme of debt. In 13.7, Paul has urged the faithful to pay whatever is owed to anyone, including the civil authorities. Now he continues by saying not to owe anything to anyone, except mutual love (Witherington 315; Kruse 500). All this is still part of the paraenesis of the letter, which Paul grounded in our participation in God’s mercy (12.1), which in turn was the major theme of Romans 1-11.
The exercise of love, expressed not in fuzzy feelings but in concrete actions benefiting the other, “fulfills the law” (13.8, 10). As we’ve already seen in this series, while grounded in Jesus’ teaching (Mark 12.29-31; Matthew 22.36-40), the idea that the law can be summed up in the double command to love God and neighbour was common in Second Temple Judaism. Indeed, the very commandment “Love your neighbour as yourself” comes from Leviticus 19.18. There is an open question about whether Paul intends this exhortation to love to apply within the Church (Kruse 500) or to everyone in society (Witherington 315). In some ways this debate continues the debate in first-century Judaism about who qualifies as one’s “neighbour.” Some Jewish literature takes this in an exclusionary way, only referring to those who share the same responsibilities to you within the Law, that is, to fellow Jews; but other texts, such as Sirach 13.16, 1 Enoch 99.15, and Josephus’ Jewish Wars 7.260) interprets it in a wider sense (Witherington 315). Crucially for us as Christians, when this question was put to Jesus, he responded by telling them the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which defines one’s neighbour as precisely the person you’d least want it to be (Luke 19.25-37). With this in mind, while Paul’s use of ‘one another’ (allelous) here suggests he has reciprocal love within the community of faith top of mind, the broader context of Christian love of neighbour and even enemy (Matthew 5.44) — to say nothing of Paul’s own exhortation in 12.17 to look for what is good for everyone — reminds us that the debt of love extends to everyone and everything in creation (Eberhart; Tonstad; Witherington 316).
This is again a practical, active love, which incorporates the whole of God’s law within it: If one fulfills the law of love, which is the Law of Christ, then one will have naturally fulfilled what was intended in the Law of Moses (Witherington 315f; cf. Romans 10.4). As Witherington concludes:
Love is not a substitute for the Law but the perfect expression and fulfillment of what the Law aims at and desires of God’s people. Indeed, love is, in a sense, a Law unto itself, for it goes well beyond the avoidance of doing harm, or even respecting and helping the neighbor. (Witherington 316)
Apocalyptic Ethics
The chapter ends with a return to apocalyptic language, with an appeal to wake up, pay attention to what’s happening, and live in light of Christ’s coming. (These four verses (13.11-14) include six time words (’season’, ‘hour’, ‘already’, ‘now’, ‘night,’ and ‘day’).) While there are certainly Jewish apocalyptic uses of this imagery, it is most strongly reminiscent to Jesus’ Parable of the Bridesmaids (Matthew 25.1-13). Much comment has been made (especially in the last century) on Paul’s beliefs on the timing of Jesus’ second coming. But as Witherington notes, the exact nature of Paul’s thoughts on this don’t change his message here:
[W[]hen the timing of the second coming is allowed to be uncertain while the event is believed to be certain, one can treat it like company coming from afar. One needs to be prepared always, because one does not know just when it will show up. (Witherington 317)
Paul mentions spiritual armour and lists behaviours Christians should avoid. As we’ve seen, the general pop-cultural understanding of the psychology of sin, which Paul used in his letters, understood poor behaviour to be about a loss of control. It’s no surprise then that here Paul focuses on extreme examples of losing control, whether through excessive partying and drinking, sexual promiscuity and general licentiousness, or through losing one’s temper. It’s notable here that the final word here, zelos ‘zeal’, was also used for religiously-motivated violent. Since zealous argumentation between Christ-following Jews and non-Christ-following Jews was the likely cause for the Emperor Claudius’s edict against Jews in Rome, this would be all the more relevant for the communities to which Paul was writing.
While the specific content here is unique to Romans, the passage has strong parallels in Galatians, Colossians, and Ephesians. Themes of robing and arming, and moral and ethical exhortations were commonly connected in the Pauline tradition:
| Romans | Galatians | Colossians | Ephesians | |
| Waking | …it is already the hour for you to rouse from sleep. (Romans 13.12) | Sleeper, awake (Ephesians 5.14) | ||
| Clothing | …, clothe yourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13.14) | As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Galatians 3.27) | … you have stripped off the old self … and have clothed yourselves with the new self, … (Colossians 3.9-10) | … clothe yourselves with the new self … (Ephesians 4.22-24) |
| Arming | …clothe ourselves with the armour of light (Romans 13.12) | Therefore take up the whole armor of God… (Ephesians 6.13-17) | ||
| Vice Lists | Romans 13.13 | Galatians 5.19-21; followed by a list of positive behaviours in 5.22-23 | Colossians 3.5-8; positive behaviours follow in 3.12 | Ephesians 5.3-4 |
Challenge
These days, it’s impossible to write about any passage urging the faithful to wake up without thinking about the ‘anti-wokeness’ movement. I find this hard to write about simply because it’s so silly. ‘Wokeness’ is not a thing. It’s simply a term — intentionally corrupted by bad actors from a specific usage within the American Black community — used by reactionaries to make the the love of neighbour in politics seem ridiculous and dangerous. But so much of ‘anti-wokeness’ is literally just that: a willful refusal to open one’s eyes, and see the world as it really is and act accordingly.
As passages like today’s show so clearly, there is no room for such an attitude in the life of faith. We are to live with eyes wide open, and to follow with open minds, hearts, and actions that don’t just avoid harming others, but actively promote their good. That is nothing more or less than the law of love to which we are consistently commanded.
Expand
This passage expands our life of faith because it focuses on the work of love of neighbour, which is always challenging us to love more, to love better, and to love in thought, word, and especially deed.
Summary & Conclusions
As part of his general exhortations to put God’s mercy into action, here Paul focuses on living out the law of love. In order to make this happen, we need to wake up from the sedative of the status quo and live intentionally, in community, and for the sake of the world.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
Matthew Root 