THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS - Chapter 13 - Verse 10

Verse 10. Love worketh no ill, etc. Love would seek to do him good; of course it would prevent all dishonesty and crime towards others. It would prompt to justice, truth, and benevolence. If this law were engraven on every man's heart, and practised in his life, what a change would it immediately produce in society. If all men would at once abandon that which is fitted to work ill to others, what an influence would it have on the business and commercial affairs of men. How many plans of fraud and dishonesty would it at once arrest! How many schemes would it crush! It would silence the voice of the slanderer; it would stay the plans of the seducer and the adulterer; it would put an end to cheating, and fraud, and all schemes of dishonest gain. The gambler desires the property of his neighbour without any compensation, and thus works ill to him. The dealer in lotteries desires property for which he has never toiled, and which must be obtained at the expense and loss of others. And there are many employments all whose tendency is to work ill to a neighbour. This is pre-eminently true of the traffic in ardent spirits. It cannot do him good, and the almost uniform result is to deprive him of his property, health, reputation, peace, and domestic comfort. He that sells his neighbour liquid fire, knowing what must be the result of it, is not pursuing a business which works no ill to him; and love to that neighbour would prompt him to abandon the traffic. See Hab 2:15, "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness."

Therefore, etc. Because love does no harm to another, it is therefore the fulfilling of the law: implying that all that the law requires is to love others.

Is the fulfilling. Is the completion, or meets the requirements of the law. The law of God on this head, or in regard to our duty to our neighbour, requires us to do justice towards him, to observe truth, etc. All this will be met by love; and if men truly loved others, all the demands of the law would be satisfied.

Of the law. Of the law of Moses, but particularly the ten commandments.