Do you owe your neighbor love? The Apostle Paul says yes:
“Owe no one anything, except to love each other.” - Romans 13:8
“Owe no one anything” is in reference to the verse above it, where the Apostle Paul exhorts God’s people to pay taxes and others debts they’re obligated to pay. He wants God’s people to have integrity in their financial obligations. However, he says that one thing we will always owe others is our love. Love is a debt we will never pay in full. This flies in the face of the way that many of us think about love in our society. We often think of love for neighbor as a favor or a mercy, not an obligation. But in fact, the testimony of Scripture would condemn this.
Going all the way back to the beginning, in Genesis, we find that humanity is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-28) and that we all descend from the same first parents. One implication of this, as Herman Bavinck put it so well, is that “Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals but an organic unity, one race, one family.” This is the basis for why we owe love to one another. John Calvin reasons this way when he wrote, “whatever man you meet who needs your aid, you have no reason to refuse to help him. Say, ‘He is a stranger’ but the Lord has given him a mark that ought to be familiar to you, by virtue of the fact that he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Isa 58:7).”
No doubt, by now you have heard the news about George Floyd and his being mercilessly killed by a Minneapolis Police officer several days ago. And no doubt, you have heard the cries of lament resounding from the mouths of many black Americans across the United States. The fact that George Floyd was, along with all our black neighbors, created in the image of God, demands that we respond with listening ears, compassionate hearts, and hands ready to act. To do so is not a mercy; it’s not a favor. It is an obligation. It is owed.
- Pastor Garrison Greene