09/06/2026
"Love and the Law"
A Message on Romans 13:8-14
Sept. 6, 2026
For Woodville Methodist Church, Woodville, TX
By Doug Wintermute
[email protected]
Romans 13:8-14 (NIV)
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
The Day Is Near
And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.
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Today’s scripture from Paul’s letter to the followers of Christ in Rome is kind of hard for us to wrap our heads around. What is all this talk of the Law and how love fulfills the law?
Here in Tyler County USA (Salute) we live by a set of laws that come from the federal government, the state government, the county government, and, if you live in the city limits of a town, city government. And one of those federal government statues we live under is what is commonly known as “separation of church and state.”
Now I don’t want to get into the politics of this too much but will say that if my research is correct that this phrase was first used in 1802 in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association to reassure them that the US government was not going to interfere with their religious liberties. (By the way, there is nothing in the Constitution that says “separation of church and state.”)
We have to remember that in England, which is where many of the founders of our nation came from, there was no separation of church and state. There was an official religion, with the very uncreative title of “The Church of England,” and the reigning monarch (king or queen) was the supreme governor and “Defender of the Faith.”
Now that sounds kind of weird to us but it had been that way in England for a long time, since 1534 as a matter of fact. Here’s what happened: King Henry the VIII (“I am, I am”) was married to Catherine of Aragon, and he wanted a son that would follow him on the throne.
Well Catherine had troubled pregnancies with miscarriages and other things. They had a boy but he lived only 52 days. Eventually they had a daughter, but that wasn’t good enough for Henry. He wanted a boy and blamed Catherine for not having one. (Yeah, Henry wasn’t very sharp on biology, was he?)
So Henry notifies the Catholic Pope that he wanted to have his marriage to Catherine annulled so he could get a different wife who would give him a son. Well the Pope wouldn’t do it, so Henry gets mad about it and says, “I’ll show him. I’ll start my own religion where I can do what I want. I will be my own Pope.” (Well, not in those words, but you get the point.)
So he does, making himself the de facto Pope of the Church of England. He annulled his own marriage and then went on to marry 5 other women, two of whom he had beheaded for adultery. (Yeah, Henry wasn’t a nice guy. Not a very Pope-ish thing to do, in my opinion.)
All that is to say that when people came from England to what is now the USA they didn’t want that kind of religious setup in America. So in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Free Exercise Clause, made it so that there will not be a government-official religion in America.
Okay, got all that? In the scripture I read today that Paul wrote in the first century didn’t have that separation of church and state either. For the Jewish people, religion and the law were both the same. That’s why the rules and regulations given to Moses are referred to as “The Law.”
I encourage you to read through Leviticus to see some of those laws. Yes, there are the 10 Commandments in both Exodus and Deuteronomy, but there are a lot more laws (something like 600+ of them) that cover a wide variety of topics, from what you could and could not eat, and what to do if you have mildew in your tent.
For the Jews of the first century one achieved holiness by keeping all those laws and regulations. It was almost a “you do good, you get good” kind of philosophy. If you did good and followed all the laws, then God would bless you and you would “get good.” Break those laws, and God would punish you.
But then Jesus comes along and turns everything upside down. The people at the time thought, “Is this Jesus fellow teaching a different Law than that given to Moses?”
Remember, the Bible as we know it wasn’t there to guide the people in the first century. They were trying to figure it out as they went, kind of like trying to put together an airplane while trying to fly it. There were a lot of questions. Did someone have to be Jewish first in order to follow Jesus, after all, Jesus was Jewish? And what about circumcision? That’s a part of being Jewish. Is that required? And what about the people who aren’t Jewish? Can they even be followers of Christ and, if so, should they be a kind of second-tier Christian because they weren’t Jewish first?
These were the kinds of questions that people were trying to answer in the first century. And you can see that “The Law” was central to many of those questions.
It’s into this whirlwind of questions that Paul is writing. Being a former Pharisee, Paul knew the Jewish laws forwards and backwards. And in this scripture he was writing to the believers in Rome, capital of the Roman Empire as well as a melting pot of various religions and cults.
So Paul takes all this into account and condenses all these things into one simple four-letter word: love.
It all comes down to love. You can keep every single one of the 10 Commandments, you can keep all 600-some Jewish laws, you can follow every single religious law, but if it is done without a love for God and a love for others then it is useless.
Paul gets specific about this in his letter to the believers in Corinth, which we call 1 Corinthians. “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” – 1 Corinthians 13:1-3
In Matthew 22 Jesus finds himself being questioned by a Pharisee, an expert in the Jewish Law. The smart guy is looking to pick an argument with Jesus and so he asks him which commandment is the most important. I figure he was hoping Jesus was going to pick one of the Top 10 so he could then say, “Well what about this commandment?”
But Jesus sees through this. He responds with this: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
What a great response! It’s all about love, loving God and loving others!
But here’s something that’s easy to overlook about Jesus’ response: He quotes from “The Law” in his response. Yep. He quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 for the first part, and then Leviticus 19:16 for the second part.
So not only is love the greatest commandment, it is also a fulfillment of the Jewish law. How awesome is that!
Paul has figured this out as well. That’s why he finishes verse 10 with, “Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Okay, let’s go in a completely different direction now. Let’s think about music today. Think about all the songs that are out there. What is the overwhelming, unquestionable number one topic of songs? It’s love! I asked AI how many songs there were about love, and it replied that even it can’t calculate an exact number but that it is in the hundreds of thousands.
Just think about it: Tina Turner asked “What’s love got to do with it,” and The Captain and Tenelle sang, “Love will keep us together.” The Beatles apparently ran out of lyrics when writing “All you need is love.” (“All you need is love, all you need is love, all you need is love, love, [and then they really go wild] love is all you need.) And even Dolly Parton, may she rest in peace, wrote and sang a song that could easily be interpreted as a song from God to us with “I will always love you.”
Love is important. And love will keep us together. But the most important love ever shown is that Jesus willingly went to the cross for each one of us so that our sins can be forgiven and that we can be reconciled to God.
As Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Love is the fulfillment of the Law, and Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and of love.
So my challenge to you this week is to love like Jesus. Remember the great love the father has lavished on us, and may our response be to love others the way Jesus and God love us.
And to answer Tina Turner, THAT is, indeed, what love has to do with it.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
