Love fulfills the law, parts 1 and 2

Lynne Baab • Friday June 12 2026

Overall theme for the next few weeks: God’s law is love

Lesson 11: Love fulfills the law, parts 1 and 2 (1 Corinthians 13:8-13; Romans 13:8-10)

Key verse: The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Romans 13:9

Stepping into the Word

Four rivers flow together to form the Jordan River. One of the rivers originates in northern Israel in a spring in Banias, a town known as Caesarea Philippi in Jesus’s time, where Peter was the first person to call Jesus the Messiah (Matthew 16:13-18). The upper Jordan River flows through the swampy Hula Valley, a major resting place for migratory birds. Then the Jordan empties into the Sea of Galilee, full of fish in Jesus’s time and also today. At the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan continues to flow south, past possible sites of Jesus’s baptism, and into the Dead Sea.

The Jordan River flows through part of the Syrian-African Rift Valley, a vast geological feature that runs north to south for more than 3,000 miles, from Syria to Mozambique. The rift is so deep that the Sea of Galilee is below sea level, and the Dead Sea is even lower, 1410 feet below sea level. Water cannot flow out of the Dead Sea.

Tourists love the Dead Sea because of the amusing experience of being able to sit almost upright in its waters. Because the lake has no outlet, minerals have accumulated for millennia, and the high mineral concentration – 9.6 times saltier than the ocean – increases buoyancy. For most tourists, however, one time in the Dead Sea is enough. The water feels slimy, greasy, and disgusting. No fish can survive in that water.

The contrasts between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea provide a vivid lesson in the significance in passing on the love we receive from God. When we receive love from God and then show love to others, we are like the healthy Sea of Galilee, with its fresh waters and abundant fish. When we refuse to let love flow through us, when we look with disdain on others and refrain from reaching beyond ourselves with care and affection, we become like the Dead Sea, which does not nourish life and well-being.

Generous God, your love flows into us like a river. May your love fill us and overflow to others.

Love at the Center

1 Corinthians 12presents the apostle Paul’s most extensive and detailed teaching about spiritual gifts. In the first three verses of 1 Corinthians 13, he issues a warning about spiritual gifts. Without love, he says, spiritual gifts are useless. He insists that love for others is the context in which spiritual gifts should be practiced, and they should not be performed for purposes of self-aggrandizement. In verses 4 to 7, Paul recounts specific characteristics of love.

His description opens with two positive statements: “Love is patient; love is kind” (v. 4). These two characteristics of love originate in God’s patient forbearance and loving-kindness to the people of Israel, praised in the Psalms and illustrated so frequently in the Gospels in the life of Jesus. 1 Corinthians 13 continues with seven descriptions of what love is not. Then Paul concludes his powerful description of love with a list of four verbs describing what love does: “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (v. 7).

Unlike other spiritual gifts like prophesying and speaking in tongues, which will someday cease, “love never ends” (v. 8). Since God is love and love reflects God’s being, it remains. To the extent that spiritual gifts and knowledge are partial, they will no longer be needed in the fullness of the kingdom of God. Paul uses the illustration of a mirror, which gives a limited, dim, and distorted picture. One day our seeing will be direct and clear, and we will know fully in the same way that we are now fully known (v. 12). God sees us through the eyes of love; being fully known means being fully loved.

In Romans 13:8-10, Paul likewise underscores the surpassing nature of love. He identifies the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 9, see Leviticus 19:18) as the summation of the law. In fact, Paul argues, love is “the fulfilling of the law” (v. 10). This parallels Jesus’s teaching concerning the greatest commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). Paul’s words also parallel the Apostle John’s letter: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). The Bible presents a unified message about the importance of love in our lives as a reflection of God’s love to us.

When you read about the centrality of love in the Bible, what thoughts and feelings come to mind?

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Next week: God’s law is love, parts 3 and 4. Illustration by Dave Baab: Fly fishing in Lake Pukaki, New Zealand.

Previous posts about love:

This lesson appeared in the Fall 2023 edition of The Present Word adult Bible study curriculum published by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Used with permission.

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