Love the Lord your God

All this activity of the Spirit fulfils the purpose of the Law in believers. This fulfilment should not be separated from Paul’s rereading of Deuteronomy 30 in 10:4-9, where Jesus and faith in him are the telos of the Law. But nor should the Law’s fulfilment be seen as somehow limited by this. It is those who have the Sprit dwelling in and interceding for them that are named ‘ lovers of God’ (8:28), fulfilling the shema of Deuteronomy 6:4. The clear parallels between 8:18-39 and 5:1-11 should then guide our understanding of 5:5 to recognise tou theou as an objective genitive( or at the very least plenary). The Spirit then, fills believers with hope as it enables believers to fulfil the shema even in suffering, rather than by providing some internal, subjective sensation of God’s love. It is believers, offering their bodies as spiritual sacrifices who are to fulfil the law and all the commandments by loving their fellowmen in 13:8-14. The central position Paul gives the commandment of Leviticus 19:18 here, echoes Jesus’ summing up of the Law( Matt 22:34-40). While the Spirit is not mentioned explicitly in Romans 13, the language of obligation and fulfilment, the eschatological context( 13:11-14) and the later references to “walking in love”(14:15) confirm that “what is said here about love “fulfilling” the Law is in Pauline understanding a direct outworking of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer”.(Fee, GEP) Paul’s use of opheilete returns the reader back to Paul's hanging half sentence of 8:12. The believers putting to death of the misdeeds of the body by the Spirit is to be done in the context of love of the other.(also 15:2) The exhortation to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” in 13:14 , then refers backwards to the obvious debauchery of 13:13, but also forwards to the relationships between weak and strong in the Roman churches. Paul’s teaching about the Holy Spirit in the letter to the Romans forms a major part of his goal to bring about the obedience of faith in the new covenant people. He avoids the charge of anti-nomianism by showing how those with the Spirit, though not under the Law, fulfil the righteous requirements of the Law, love of God, and love of one another.


I, II, III