Proper 18, Year A | Romans 13:8-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
September 10, 2023
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“The commandments…are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” – Romans 13:9[1]
Even if you might not know each one by heart, chances are you’re at least familiar with the Ten Commandments. First appearing in Exodus as God proclaims them from a fiery blaze atop Mount Sinai[2] and later restated as part of Moses’ final address to Israel before his death,[3] the Ten Commandments have long been a cornerstone of Jewish and Christian tradition. Paul references a portion of them in our Romans passage this morning, suggesting to his readers that in case all ten might be hard to remember, there’s really only one any of us need to keep in mind: to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
A shortened list of the Ten Commandments like this appears only four places in the New Testament, three of those being Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s accounts of Jesus talking with the Rich Young Ruler. For us, everything looks pretty much the same across all four, but almost as soon as I began studying this week, I ran into some significant differences.
New Testament authors had two choices for how they said “no” or “not.” The first, which appears about 60% of the time in the Bible,[4] is an objective “no”—a negative that states reality as it actually stands. A few English examples would be, “Jesus didn’t die from the flu;” “I can’t lift 1,000 lbs. without help;” or “no, that elephant will not fly no matter how hard it flaps its ears.” The second is a subjective negation and is more along the lines of opinion, suggestion, or choice. We would see that in a child saying, “I won’t go to bed,” or a homeowner deciding not to mow their lawn for whatever reason.
Bible translations generally don’t make much of a distinction between these forms. Most of the time that isn’t a major issue, but every once in a while knowing your “no” can help us pick up on subtle implications we might otherwise miss. For example, in our rendering of the Beattitudes, Jesus says, “if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”[5] It sounds pretty basic—“if you don’t…he won’t.” But paying attention to the different forms of negatives we could read, “if you won’t forgive others, your Father can’t forgive your trespasses.” Similarly, when James writes, “you do not have because you do not ask,”[6] the meaning is more along the lines of “you don’t have because you won’t ask.” Or when John says, “those who do not love a brother or sister…cannot love God,”[7] he’s actually saying “those who won’t love a brother or sister…cannot”—or simply do not—“love God.”
Oddly enough, our four Ten Commandment passages in the New Testament are split, with Matthew and Paul choosing objective negation while Mark and Luke use the subjective type.
Another challenge in our list is the verb tense. Mark and Luke use a tense in keeping with their choice of no, making their lists say, “you shouldn’t murder;” “you shouldn’t steal” and the like. However, Matthew and Paul choose a future tense, which leads to an additional quandary. In present tense, commands are quite clear, combining an objective negative with an imperative verb, such as “do not sit down.” But 1st Century Greek doesn’t have a future imperative tense, which allows us two options when translating into English. We can read the objective “no” as a type of continuing command—“You are not allowed to sit down either now or in the future.” Or we can interpret it as a statement of objective fact about the future: “you will not be able to sit down.”
That brings quite a hiccup into Paul’s quotation. Because we know his source material, we can say he’s most likely listing commands: “do not commit adultery, murder, steal,” etc.—instructions that apply to both the present and the future. However, there’s an equally valid alternative when reading the exact same list, one which transforms the words from demands into promises: “you will not be able to commit adultery, murder, or steal.”
With that disparate of a reading, we run into a very interesting question: what if Paul’s choices here are intentional? What if he purposely avoided the “shouldn’t” structure, intentionally using this future negation so his readers would hear not only a list of quoted commands but also statements regarding coming realities?
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to commit adultery.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to murder.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to steal.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to covet.
“Love cannot harm a neighbor; therefore, love is Law’s fulfilment.”[8]
Although drawn from Leviticus,[9] you more likely recognized the instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself” as half of Jesus’ Great Commandment, frequently summarized as “love God and love your neighbor.” However, we still find that instruction difficult to follow, largely because of how we’ve convinced ourselves it’s a hierarchy: first, love God; second, love your neighbor. In times of conflict that structure allows for—or forces—a nice decision tree: if I have to choose between loving God and my neighbor, I need to choose God. Sadly, Empire and other human systems use that distinction to manipulate Christians, demanding we support certain positions or policies. Similarly to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, they ask, “You’re supposed to love God, right? Well, if you really love God, then you have to oppose” fill in the blank—which is almost always something that doesn’t directly affect you but does your neighbor.
This is both an abuse and a misunderstanding of the Great Commandment. We can see that simply by looking at its name. The Great Commandment (singular) doesn’t consist of two separate commands. It consists of one command stated in two ways. Just like the Deuteronomy is Moses’ restatement of existing law, the second half of the Great Commandment is simply a restatement of the first: “love God AND love your neighbor,” or perhaps more clearly, “love God BY loving your neighbor.”
Understood properly, there is no conflict found in these statements. There is no point of weakness for people to exploit. The only way for us to truly demonstrate our love for God is to actively show love to those around us. “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”[10] “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”[11]
Loving our neighbor isn’t simply a command the Bible gives us. It’s the objective reality of God’s Kingdom. Do you love and follow God? Then you will naturally seek the best for your neighbor. Following Christ may involve a constant flow of decisions, but Jesus has given us one simple question to guide us through all those situations, no matter how complex or divisive they may appear: how, in this moment, do I demonstrate genuine love for the neighbor God has set in front of me?
“The commandments”—all of them—“are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2]Exodus 20:2-17
[3] Deuteronomy 5:6-21
[4] 1,648 occurrences of “ou” (objective) to 1,042 for “me” (subjective) | If you take all connections to either form (2,261 for “ou” to 1,293 for “me”) the ratio shifts closer to 65% and 35%.
[5] Matthew 6:15
[6] James 4:2
[7] I John 4:20
[8] Romans 13:10 | my translation
[9] Leviticus 19:18
[10] I John 4:20
[11] Romans 13:10