Suggestions for leading a study:

• Familiarize yourself with the passage in context, including the book itself.  Who wrote it to whom, and why?
• Read through the study guide a couple times to get the “big idea” as well as the flow of the argument
• Have the group read through the passage in it’s entirety before beginning the study.  One of the goals is to try to get your members to learn how to study Scripture methodically, and this is an important step.
• Be prayed up
• Have fun!
  

Loving Law

⁸Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." ¹⁰Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
¹¹And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. ¹²The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.

Discussion Questions

-Verse 8 compares love to a debt that we owe.  How do you think loving other people is like indebtedness?

-What word is used to describe the kind of debt that love is?  What does that mean to you?

-Do you think that Paul is telling us that there is no-one we should ever stop loving, or that we should never stop being loving people?

-Read verse 9. How many commandments are there that can just as easily be described as “love your neighbor as yourself”?        

-Is Paul saying that the kinds of expectations described in the 10 commandments no longer apply to us?  If not, why not?

-According to verse 10, why is love the fulfillment of the law?

-Agape love is usually described as actively caring for someone, but here Paul seems to be saying that just doing no harm is enough.  How do you reconcile that?

-Read verses 11 and 12.  Why is it so important to behave like this?    

-Read verse 13.  We have just been told that the old testament law is now summed up in loving your neighbor, and now Paul gives a list of things not to do.  Is he contradicting himself? 

-Verse 14 speaks to the outer person, or what people see, as well as to our inner person, or what we think.  How do these two things help us accomplish loving our neighbor as ourselves?

Leaders' Guide

This lesson explores the phrase, “love your neighbor as yourself”: what that means in relationship to God’s commandments, and how we can put it into practice in our lives.  

-Verse 8 compares love to a debt that we owe.  How do you think loving other people is like indebtedness?

            A debt is an obligation, the payment of which is not usually considered optional.  Paul uses this image to remind us that this is something that we should always be trying to make a part of our lives.

-What word is used to describe the kind of debt that love is?  What does that mean to you?

            Paul says that love is an “ongoing” debt.  In other words, it will never actually be paid off in this lifetime.  Unlike the financial debts we owe to other people or to the government, which in the passage just previous to this he insists we must pay, love is something that will continue to be an obligation for us.

-Do you think that Paul is telling us that there is no-one we should ever stop loving, or that we should never stop being loving people?

            This doesn’t arise out of the text directly, but there may be someone who feels like they are required by God to continue in bad relationships because of passages such as this.  While we never give up on people, God does not require us to continue in relationships that are not healthy and even admits that there will be times when we have to sunder our ties with family for the sake of the kingdom.  This is talking about the kind of people we are rather than some kind of legalistic requirement in regards to specific relationships.

-Read verse 9. How many commandments are there that can just as easily be described as “love your neighbor as yourself”?

            4 are mentioned specifically, however the list is followed by “and whatever other commandment there may be”, so these are clearly meant as examples rather than an exhaustive list.  All of the commandments can be summed up with this phrase.

-Is Paul saying that the kinds of expectations described in the 10 commandments no longer apply to us?  If not, why not?

            Clearly Paul is not saying that these kinds of commandments are not important guides for our behavior.  He is only putting them into their proper context as ways in which we display Godly love for other people rather than ritualistic ways in which we earn God’s favor. 

-According to verse 10, why is love the fulfillment of the law?

            Because love does no harm to its neighbor.  More on this in the next question.

-Agape love is usually described as actively caring for someone, but here Paul seems to be saying that just doing no harm is enough.  How do you reconcile that?

            The kind of love discussed here is never just an emotion and is always an action—a deliberate way of sacrificially caring for someone, as ultimately displayed for us through Christ on the cross.  Just not hurting someone doesn’t really catch the whole meaning of what agape love is.  The key to understanding this is in what it accomplishes: it is the fulfillment of the law.  But just fulfilling the law is not enough for God.  His desire is that our relationship with him go far beyond just legalistic righteousness, and that our relationship to other people does the same.  Doing no harm to your neighbor fulfills the law, but we should be reaching for a higher goal than that. 

-Read verses 11 and 12.  Why is it so important to behave like this?

            In these verses Paul gives a sense of urgency because we don’t know when the time will be up for us to be able to get it right.  Even though some 2,000 years have passed since this was written, that same sense should still apply.  Jesus could come back any time and when he does, we want him to find us fulfilling the law through love of neighbor, not doing the sorts of things that the next verse describes.        

-Read verse 13.  We have just been told that the old testament law is now summed up in loving your neighbor, and now Paul gives a list of things not to do.  Is he contradicting himself? 

            No, he is giving examples of what our lives would look like if we weren’t fulfilling the law.  The point here is to make sure we realize that just because the Old Testament law is supplanted by the law of love, that does not give us license to behave in any kind of sinful, self destructive way we want.  The law of love sets a higher standard for our moral behavior, not a lower one.

-Verse 14 speaks to the outer person, or what people see, as well as to our inner person, or what we think.  How do these two things help us accomplish loving our neighbor as ourselves?

            On the outside, this verse says that we should clothe ourselves with Christ.  In other words, our exterior characteristics should look like Jesus. Not because we wear robes and beards, but because we love others the way he does.  On the inside, we’re not thinking about our own selfish desires because doing so would preclude us from spending our mental energy on considering how we can love other people.