Love Your Neighbor

Romans 13:8-10
8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

I would like to approach today's devotional by taking the last verse first and finishing up with the first verse.

We first see that LOVE fulfills the law. Jesus taught this in Matthew 22:37-40, where all the law and prophets hang on loving God and loving others.

We also see that love does no wrong to a neighbor. This seems like an obvious statement. But we find that this is not always true among the saints. Often times there is backbiting, gossip and indifference to others among Christians. If we are backbiting, gossiping, complaining or just plain ignoring our brothers in Christ we are not only flat out disobeying Christ (John 13:34-35) we are showing our true FRUIT (Gal. 5:22-23; Matt. 7:15-20).

Finally (or firstly - depending on how you look at it) we are told not to owe anybody anything except love. We are to have no debt to others except to love them. I see this as a debt that can never be paid - we are to love the brothers every day. Jesus Christ freed us from the debt of sin to replace it with a debt of love.

Your challenge is to think of the Christians around you who you are indifferent towards or just don't like ("I love them but don't like them" is a cop-out so don't use it) and make a list. Lift them up in prayer; pray that God gives you a genuine love for them; and pray for opportunity to show this love in actions.