Owe no man anything, save to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.

The expression anything and no man clearly indicate a transition to the private sphere. Most commentators think that Paul here returns to the duty of love; Meyer, for example, says at the beginning of Romans 13:8-14: “Exhortation to love and to Christian conduct in general.” As if the apostle were in the habit of thus resuming without cause a subject already treated, and as if, wishing to describe the task of love, he could have contented himself with saying, as he does in Romans 13:10: “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor!” No, the apostle does not wander from his subject: the duty of justice. Only he is not ignorant that there is no perfectly sure pledge for the exercise of this duty except love. This is what leads him to speak again of love, and what explains at the same time the purely negative form he uses: “not to do wrong,” an expression which is the formula of justice, much more than that of love. Love is therefore not mentioned here except as the solid support of justice.

The believer should keep no other debt in his life than that which a man can never discharge, the debt which is renewed and even grows in proportion as it is discharged: that of loving. In fact, the task of love is infinite. The more active love is, the more it sees its task enlarge; for, inventive as it is, it is ever discovering new objects for its activity. This debt the believer therefore carries with him throughout all his life (chap. 12). But he can bear no other debt against him; and loving thus, he finds that in the very act he has fulfilled all the obligations belonging to the domain of justice, and which the law could have imposed.

How could it have occurred to the mind of Hofmann to refer the words τὸν ἕτερον, the other, to νόμον, the law: “He that loveth hath fulfilled the other law” that is to say, the rest of the law, what the law contains other than the commandment of love? Love is not in the law a commandment side by side with all the rest; it is itself the essence of the law.

The perfect πεπλήρωκεν, hath fulfilled, denotes that in the one act of loving there is virtually contained the fulfilment of all the duties prescribed by the law. For a man does not offend, or kill, or calumniate, or rob those whom he loves. Such is the idea developed in the two following verses.

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Old Testament

New Testament