Day for sharing love, Valentine's Day. And an apt passage to read for such a season, Romans 13:8-10. As I read the text I remembered an incident that happened in my life. On the 4th July 2007, on our way back from Sangam, a river near Mysore , along with my friends. My friend and I, skid, the bike twisted and turned, whirled and wobbled and then fell bruising my friend, and deeply cut over his eye, while I scrapped on the road with my arm below me and my leg, fractured. But there came an engineer who did not know me or any of my friends, who was on his way to his work, stopped, and helped us, and brought us back to Bangalore, dropped us at the hospital and left.
Does this strike our mind? Well, that person for sure was not a church goer, and certainly not a Christian, this man was a ‘stranger’, yet he did what was right at that time. How many of us think like that? How often do we end up judging people of what they did and who they are? How many of us have thought of helping the one we don’t know? I have three questions that we will be meditating on, derived from the passage.
What does love fulfil?
The Christian as in v8 is not allowed to be in debt, except for the debt that can never be paid back, the debt to love one another. The idea of ‘debt’ following the previous periscope concerning money will instigate us to think in the same line, however Paul, here does not refer to the money, but to indicate the Christian’s obligation to live by the spirit and not the flesh. The root regularly carries both literal and a metaphorical meaning in the early Christian writings. This love for the other has no obligation or no limit. We are to love not only those of the ‘family of God’ but also our co travellers in life as well, just like God’s love, which is extended to all. The same way we are called to love one and other like we love ourselves. Obviously love will take different forms depending on the recipient, but the decision to place the welfare of the other over that of our own may not be limited to those of like faith, as Paul adds, that whoever loves another, has fulfilled all that the law requires, for every law that enforced is based on the neighbour. Take for example the laws of various nations; we can clearly see that the every law is pertaining to a neighbour, well, in this case a citizen neighbour. The love that Paul writes to Romans is the love that transcends all boundaries, cultures and ethnicities and, a love that is never judgemental.
Here we must note that the love Paul mentions of is a love that is genuine. For instance, if you treat someone you thoroughly dislike as though in fact you cared very deeply for them, and if you try to think how it is to live inside their skin and walk in their shoes, then it may well happen that a genuine empathy arises from that real affection, which finally leads to an un-hypocritical love. The love Paul speaks of is tough, not simply in the sense of ‘tough love’ as applied to the difficult that of bringing up children, but a love with will. For if we reduce love to emotions, we lose not only the consistency of behaviour but also the very possibility of our moral discourse. The context hence, breaths life into what might be for him a nearly dead metaphor, giving a particular force to the command to love: ‘this is the debt owed to everyone that can never be discharged or paid back.
Whom should I love?
The answer to this question lies in the heart of the text that was read to us, just now, in v9. Loving one’s neighbour is itself, of course, a command from the Torah even though it is not a part of the Ten Commandments. Paul was not the first to see it as a summary of the whole law. The idea of being able to sum up Torah in a single phrase has a long history in Judaism of which Paul was no doubt aware of. The commandments found in Exodus 20:13-15, 17; and Levi 19:18; against adultery, murder, theft, covetousness, and whatever other commandments there maybe, are all summed up as in Matthew 22:28 “love your neighbour as yourself” as also in Galatians 5:14. As Jesus taught us in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:25-37), the neighbor is not the one who is just next to you, he/she is not the one whom you know, but this neighbour is the one, who is not known to you, or in short, a neighbor is anyone we encounter in life, who needs our help. Love is the inevitable response of a heart that is truly touched by God. God’s love manifests’ itself through the loving acts of the children of God, wherever it is absent, and any claim to a family or a relationship without love is merely pretentious.
In our present day culture, the cult of self-esteem has advanced and moved up so high that it is hard to identify, if the act is really done out of love, or of and other selfish motifs. It is in this context, that it is very necessary for us as Christians to point out that Jesus’ words are not a command to love ones-self, but recognition of the fact that we ought to love others. It is in the expression of this love that we show to our neighbours, that we do love ourselves as well, for if we show hatred to them, we also show to them that we hate ourselves, which for sure, is not true. We don’t hate or show any kind of hatredness towards ourselves, do we? I’m sure not. Hence, we should love our neighbors as ourselves.
What does this Love do?
This love simply does ‘no wrong’. It should simply not suppose to mean that the full achievement of ‘love’ consists simply in doing no wrong, for there goes a saying, “to do no harm is the praise of a stone and not a man”. Rather love, on its way to higher and positive goals takes in this negative one in a single stride: if love seeks the highest good of the neighbor, it will certainly do no wrong to him/her. The love that Paul speaks of is the Agape love, which is more selfless and that which cannot be turned on the self. What is commanded is that, we are to have the same loving regard for the others, which we have instinctively, for ourselves. For love never wrongs another person. To actually wrong another person or to find fault, is not the sign of the true love, which is spoken of in this passage. For true love, does not decide to love, depending on the acts of the other person, but it instantly loves because of the love for the self. This passage takes its place along side Paul’s several earlier statements about the Torah, confirming a positive understanding and making it clear once again that the ethical obligation is not undermined but reaffirmed by a proper understanding of justification and Christian life.
I’m sure there might be a many of us who would like to empathize with people, and there can be a few who would go beyond just empathizing, but can I say that there are only a hand full of people who go that extra mile to love, and continue to do it without judging? It for sure isn't wrong to love, because love does no wrong to the self or to the other, hence fulfilling the law.
Now that we have understood that love fulfills all law, this Valentine's day let us all love our neighbors, the people travelling in our lives, as ourselves, and that love does no wrong at all, let us challenge ourselves, that be it Hindu or Muslim, a man or a woman, gay or lesbian, a transgender or a commercial sex worker, or anyone in this diverse world is, let us learn to accept, help, love and care for people, not by being judgmental on what they do or who they are, but simply because we are called and commanded to Love our neighbor. Amen.
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