ruth taught here. Love is not an emotion
which we may indulge or not, as we please. It is not to select its
objects according to our estimate of their lovableness or goodness.
But we are bound to love, and that all round, without distinction of
beautiful or ugly, good or bad. 'A hard saying; who can hear it?'
Every man is our creditor for that debt. He does not get his due from
us unless he gets love. Note, further, that the debt of love is never
discharged. After all payments it still remains owing. There is no
paying in full of all demands, and, as Bengel says, it is an undying
debt. We are apt to weary of expending love, especially on unworthy
recipients, and to think that we have wiped off all claims, and it
may often be true that our obligations to others compel us to cease
helping one; but if we laid Paul's words to heart, our patience would
be longer-breathed, and we should not be so soon ready to shut hearts
and purses against even unthankful suitors.

Further, Paul here teaches us that this debt (_debitum_, 'duty') of
love includes all duties. It is the fulfilling of the law, inasmuch
as it will secure the conduct which the law prescribes. The Mosaic
law itself indicates this, since it recapitulates the various
commandments of the second table, in the one precept of love to our
neighbour (Lev. xix. 18). Law enjoins but has no power to get its
injunctions executed. Love enables and inclines to do all that law
prescribes, and to avoid all that it prohibits. The multiplicity of
duties is melted into unity; and that unity, when it comes into act,
unfolds into whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. Love is
the mother tincture which, variously diluted and manipulated, yields
all potent and fragrant draughts. It is the white light which the
prism of daily life resolves into its component colours.

But Paul seems to limit the action of love here to negative doing no
ill. That is simply because the commandments are mostly negative, and
that they are is a sad token of the lovelessness natural to us all.
But do we love ourselves only negatively, or are we satisfied with
doing ourselves no harm? That stringent pattern of love to others not
only prescribes degree, but manner. It teaches that true love to men
is not weak indulgence, but must sometimes chastise, and thwart, and
always must seek their good, and not merely their gratification.

Whoever will honestly seek to apply that negative precept of working
no