Go and Do Likewise

 What Is Love? | Day 10B

"Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." Romans 13:10, NIV

Good morning. Yesterday we left a question hanging in the air, the kind that is easy to answer in theory and much harder to live out, and this morning we pick it back up.

A Debt That Never Closes

Jesus told the expert in the law to go and do what the Samaritan had done, as we discussed in Day 10A,, and the command did not end with that conversation on the road to Jericho. Paul later gave us the same command from a different angle. "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." (Romans 13:8 to 10, NIV) The command was never really about identifying who is eligible for our care. It was about becoming the kind of people who no longer need a category before we act.

John put it even more plainly. "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth." (1 John 3:17 to 18, NIV) Words are easy. Words cost us nothing and can be offered from a safe distance. Actual mercy requires us to stop, to spend something real, and to stay involved past the point where it would be easier to walk on. This is where good intentions tend to quietly fail us. We mean to help. We plan to reach out. We tell ourselves we will follow through once life settles down, and the moment passes unmarked because nothing about it demanded an answer right then. The Samaritan did not have that luxury. The need was in front of him, and he stopped.

Paul's word for this in Romans is worth sitting with a little longer. He calls love a debt, and not the kind that gets paid off and closed. Every other debt we owe eventually reaches zero. This one never does, because the obligation to love was never meant to be discharged once and forgotten. It renews itself every time someone crosses our path in need, whether that person is a stranger on a road we did not choose to travel or someone much closer to home whose need has simply become familiar enough that we have stopped noticing it. Familiarity is its own kind of fence. We do not have to dislike someone to walk past them. We only have to grow used to their need being there.

The Neighbor We Needed Most

Jesus went further still, beyond neighbor into enemy, which tells us this debt was never meant to stay inside comfortable borders either. "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5:43 to 45, NIV) If our love only reaches as far as the people who already love us back, we have not yet reached the standard this passage sets. We have only found a more comfortable fence, one built out of reasonable limits instead of religious ones, but a fence all the same.

None of this is asking us to earn anything. Obedience like this does not make us right with God. It flows from already being loved by him. Paul reminded Titus of exactly where this kind of love begins. "But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy." (Titus 3:4 to 5, NIV) We do not become neighbors to prove our worth through effort. We become neighbors because grace has already reached us across a distance we could never have closed on our own.

This is where the story stops being a moral example and becomes something far more personal. We were the one in the ditch, stripped by sin and unable to walk ourselves to safety, with nothing in our condition that made us an obvious candidate for rescue. Jesus Christ did not pass by on the other side. He came where we were, in our weakness, and he did not calculate whether we were worth the cost. He bore the full weight of what it took to carry us to safety, and he is still caring for us now, tending the wounds we could not tend ourselves, without asking whether we have first proven ourselves deserving of it. The lawyer wanted to know where the boundary of neighbor could be drawn. Jesus Christ removed the boundary entirely and then became the neighbor we needed most.

Prayer

Thank you, Father, for a love that never runs out and never asked me to earn it. Thank you for sending your Son to be the neighbor I could never be to myself.

Help me to pay this debt of love freely today, not out of obligation but out of gratitude for the mercy already shown to me. I ask this in Jesus's name. Amen.

The boundary of neighbor is gone, but our hearts have a way of finding one more line to draw, and that is exactly where this series turns next.

To God be the glory

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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