We spend so much energy trying to get “caught up”—on bills, on responsibilities, on expectations. But Romans 13:8 points us to one obligation that never gets erased by a paid receipt: the ongoing, joyful responsibility to love. Not sentimental love, but active, costly, Christ-shaped love that keeps showing up.

Love as Holy Obligation

“Be indebted to no one, except to one another in love…” (Romans 13:8). That line is both freeing and sobering. God isn’t calling you to live under crushing guilt; He’s calling you to live under a different kind of weight—the kind that pulls you outward instead of pressing you down. Love is the “debt” you’re meant to carry because love is what you were made for.

And this isn’t love powered by personality or mood. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). When love feels inconvenient, remember you’re not scraping the bottom of your own strength—you’re drawing from the overflowing mercy you’ve already received. The more you stay close to Christ, the more love becomes less like a demand and more like a natural overflow.

Love That Fulfills the Law

Paul says love “has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8). That doesn’t make obedience optional; it reveals obedience’s goal. Love doesn’t bypass holiness—it expresses it. “The entire law is fulfilled in a single decree: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Galatians 5:14). Real love doesn’t wink at sin, but it does refuse to treat people as problems to manage rather than neighbors to cherish.

Jesus made it unmistakable: “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you…” (John 13:34). The standard isn’t, “Did they earn it?” but, “How has Jesus treated you?” Love becomes the true measure of maturity—not how much you know, but how faithfully you reflect Him.

Love Paid in Everyday Moments

Love gets practical fast. It looks like “Be kind and tenderhearted to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32). It means you don’t just avoid doing harm—you actively do good. You choose patience when you’d rather win, gentleness when you’d rather be right, forgiveness when you’d rather keep score.

And love is more durable than we think. “Love is patient, love is kind… It keeps no account of wrongs… It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4–7). Ask God for one specific place today to “pay” this debt: a hard conversation done with humility, a quiet act of service, a repentant apology, an intentional prayer for someone who frustrates you.

Father, thank You for loving me first; fill me with Your Spirit so I will love boldly today—open my eyes to one person I can serve in Jesus’ name. Amen.

IT IS VITAL TO ANY UNDERSTANDING of ourselves and our fellowmen that we believe what is written in the Scriptures about human society, that it is fallen, alienated from God and in rebellion against His laws.

In these days of togetherness when all men would brothers be for a' that, even the true Christian is hard put to it to believe what God has spoken about men and their relation to each other and to God; for what He has spoken is never complimentary to men.

There is plenty of good news in the Bible, but there is never any flattery or back scratching. Seen one way, the Bible is a book of doom. It condemns all men as sinners and declares that the soul that sinneth shall die. Always it pronounces sentence against society before it offers mercy; and if we will not own the validity of the sentence we cannot admit the need for mercy.

The coming of Jesus Christ to the world has been so sentimentalized that it means now something utterly alien to the Biblical teaching concerning it. Soft human pity has been substituted for God's mercy in the minds of millions, a pity that has long ago degenerated into self-pity. The blame for man's condition has been shifted to God, and Christ's dying for the world has been twisted into an act of penance on God's part. In the drama of redemption man is viewed as Miss Cinderella who has long been oppressed and mistreated, but now through the heroic deeds of earth's noblest Son is about to don her radiant apparel and step forth a queen.

This is humanism romantically tinted with Christianity, a humanism that takes sides with rebels and excuses those who by word, thought and deed would glorify fallen men and if possible overthrow the glorious high Throne in the heavens.

According to this philosophy men are never really to blame for anything, the exception being the man who insists that men are indeed to blame for something. In this dim world of pious sentiment all religions are equal and any man who insists that salvation is by Jesus Christ alone is a bigot and a boor.

So we pool our religious light, which if the truth is told is little more than darkness visible; we discuss religion on television and in the press as a kind of game, much as we discuss art and philosophy, accepting as one of the ground rules of the game that there is no final test of truth and that the best religion is a composite of the best in all religions. So we have truth by majority vote and thus saith the Lord by common consent.

One characteristic of this sort of thing is its timidity. That religion may be very precious to some persons is admitted, but never important enough to cause division or risk hurting anyone's feelings. In all our discussions there must never be any trace of intolerance; but we obviously forget that the most fervent devotees of tolerance are invariably intolerant of everyone who speaks about God with certainty. And there must be no bigotry, which is the name given to spiritual assurance by those who do not enjoy it.

The desire to please may be commendable enough under certain circumstances, but when pleasing men means displeasing God it is an unqualified evil and should have no place in the Christian's heart. To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men. This is such a common truth that one hesitates to mention it, yet it appears to have been overlooked by the majority of Christians today.

There is a notion abroad that to win a man we must agree with him. Actually the exact opposite is true. G. K. Chesterton remarked that each generation has had to be converted by the man who contradicted it most. The man who is going in a wrong direction will never be set right by the affable religionist who falls into step beside him and goes the same way. Someone must place himself across the path and insist that the straying man turn around and go in the right direction.

There is of course a sense in which we are all in this terrible human mess together, and for this reason there are certain areas of normal activity where we can all agree. The Christian will not disagree merely to be different, but wherever the moral standards and religious views of society differ from the teachings of Christ he will disagree flatly. He will not admit the validity of human opinion when the Word of God is clear. Some things are not debatable; there is no other side to them. There is only God's side.

When men believe God they speak boldly. When they doubt they confer. Much current religious talk is but uncertainty rationalizing itself; and this they call engaging in the contemporary dialogue. It is impossible to imagine Moses or Elijah so occupied.

All great Christian leaders have been dogmatic. To such men two plus two made four. Anyone who insisted upon denying it or suspending judgment upon it was summarily dismissed as frivolous. They were only interested in a meeting of minds if the minds agreed to meet on holy ground. We could use some gentle dogmatists these days.

Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repentance which bringeth no regret: but the sorrow of the world worketh death, - 2 Corinthians 7:10

There is a broad distinction between the right and the wrong kind of sorrow for sin. "Godly sorrow" is literally rendered "sorrow according to God’’ which may either mean sorrow which has reference to God, or sorrow which is in accordance with His will; that is to say, which is pleasing to Him. If it is the former, it will be the latter. I prefer to suppose that it is the former sorrow, which has reference to God.

And then, opposite to that, there is another kind of sorrow, which the Apostle calls the "sorrow of the world," which is devoid of that reference to God. Here we have the characteristic difference between the Christian way of looking at my own faults and shortcomings, and the sorrow of the world, which has got no blessing in it, and will never lead to anything like righteousness and peace. It is just this - one has reference to God, puts its sin by His side, sees its blackness relieved against the "fierce light" of the Great White Throne, and the other way has not that reference.

To expand that for a moment, there are plenty of us that, when our sin is behind us, and its bitter fruits are in our hands, are sorry enough for our faults. A man that is lying in the hospital, a wreck, with the sin of his youth gnawing the flesh off his bones, is often enough sorry that he did not live more soberly and chastely and temperately in the past days. That fraudulent bankrupt that has not got his discharge, and has lost his reputation, and can get nobody to lend him money enough to start himself in business again, as he hangs about the streets slouching in his rags, is sorry enough that he did not keep the straight road. The " sorrow of the world " has no thought about God in it at all. The consequences or sin set many a man’s teeth on edge that does not feel any compunction for the wrong that he did. My brother, is that your position?

And then we can come a step further. Crime means the transgression of man’s law; wrong means the transgression of conscience’s law. Some of us would perhaps have to say, "I have done crime." We are all of us quite ready to say, " I have done wrong many a time "; but there are some of you that hesitate to take the other step, and say, "I have done sin," which is the transgression of God’s law.