Love Does No Wrong

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Romans 13:10 ESV

Romans 13:10 MSG

I have to admit I struggle with Romans 13:10. Romans 13:10 in the English Standard Version says, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

The ESV is known for accuracy in the text so I turned to the Koine Greek to see what the original text says. The result was that the English Standard is a good translation of the Biblical Greek.

However, Romans 13:10 from the Message tells us, “You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.”

The addition of the word “when” in the Message gives clarity to the ancient text. That’s exactly why I regularly review several versions of the text, including the original language.

My take on the text is that in some translations they help the reader understand the context. In this case the context tells us that the love of God does not do wrong to a neighbor. In the original text the Apostle Paul knew the meaning of the word love.

In the Koine Greek there are three kinds of love. Love for a friend is Philia. Romantic love is Eros, and love of God and from God is Agape love.

You see where I’m going, right? In Romans 13:10 the word for love is from and of God. Using the word Agape for love was all the Apostle Paul had to do to make his point clear. So, the English Standard Version is perfectly true. When we have God’s agape love we can’t go wrong. The sum total of the additional information is all we need. Agape Love God is perfect and holy.

Sorting through the text did another thing for me.

It made me wonder if we need to clarify the English when we speak. In the Western cultures we tend to assume that the words we use don’t need further clarification so we don’t give it, The ancient languages can be more complex. Ancient languages use highly inflected grammar. They add noun cases, genders, and verb conjugations that point to the meaning. The English relies on Word order as in noun, verb, indirect object, and direct object. An example would be The cat gave the boy a worm. It’s a weird example but you get the idea why and how modern English is not as complex as the ancient language

Back to the text…an expanded version might say ‘God’s love doesn’t do wrong to a neighbor, so it fulfills the Law of Moses.

Deborah

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