Year A: Proper 18 | Romans 13:8-14
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
September 6, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
“The commandments…are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” – Romans 13:9[1]
You might not know the whole list by heart, but chances are you’re at least familiar with the Ten Commandments. First appearing in Exodus as God proclaims them from a fiery blaze atop Mount Sinai[2] and later restated as part of Moses’ final address to Israel before his death,[3] the Ten Commandments have long been a cornerstone of Jewish and Christian tradition. Paul references a portion of them in our Romans passage this morning, suggesting to his readers that in case all ten might be hard to remember, there’s really only one commandment (which isn’t one of those ten) any of us need to keep in mind: to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
A shortened list of the Ten Commandments like this appears only four places in the New Testament, three of those being Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s accounts of Jesus talking with the Rich Young Ruler. For us, everything looks pretty much the same across all four, but behind the scenes are some significant differences.
New Testament authors had two choices for how they said “no” or “not.” The first, which appears about 60% of the time in the Bible,[4] is an objective “no”—a negative that states reality as it actually stands. A few English examples would be, “Jesus didn’t die from the flu;” “I can’t lift 1,000 lbs. without help;” or “no, that elephant will not fly no matter how hard it flaps its ears.” The second is a subjective negation and is more along the lines of opinion, suggestion, or volition. We would see that in a child saying, “I won’t go to bed,” or a homeowner choosing not to mow their lawn for whatever reason.
Bible translations generally don’t make much of a distinction between these forms. Most of the time that isn’t a major issue, but every once in a while knowing your “no” can help us pick up on subtle implications we might otherwise miss. For example, in our rendering of the Beattitudes, Jesus says, “if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”[5] It sounds pretty basic—“if you don’t…he won’t.” But paying attention to the different forms of negatives we could read, “if you won’t forgive others, your Father doesn’t”—or maybe even can’t—“forgive your trespasses.” Similarly, when James writes, “you do not have because you do not ask,”[6] the meaning is more along the lines of “you don’t have because you won’t ask.” Or when John says, “those who do not love a brother or sister…cannot love God,”[7] he’s actually saying “those who won’t love a brother or sister…cannot”—they have absolutely no ability to—“love God.”
Oddly enough—and likely because Hebrew negation functions more like English—our four Ten Commandment passages in the New Testament are split, with Matthew and Paul choosing objective negation while Mark and Luke use the subjective type.
Another challenge in our list is the verb tense. Mark and Luke use a tense in keeping with their choice of “no,” making their lists say, “you shouldn’t murder;” “you shouldn’t steal” and the like. However, Matthew and Paul choose a future tense, which leads to an additional quandary. In present tense, commands are quite clear, combining an objective negative with an imperative verb, such as “do not sit down.” But 1st Century Greek doesn’t have a future imperative tense, which allows us two options when translating into English. We can read the objective “no” as a type of continuing command—“You are not allowed to sit down either now or in the future.” Or we can interpret it as a statement of objective fact about the future: “you will not be able to sit down.”
That brings quite a hiccup into Paul’s quotation. So while we assume he’s most likely listing commands: “do not commit adultery, murder, steal,” etc.—instructions that apply to both the present and the future—there’s an equally valid alternative when reading the exact same list, one which transforms the words from demands into promises: “you will not be able to commit adultery, murder, or steal.”
With that disparate of a reading, we run into a very interesting question: what if Paul’s choice here is intentional? What if he purposely avoided the “shouldn’t” structure, using this future negation so his readers would hear not only a list of quoted commands but also statements regarding coming realities?
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to commit adultery.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to murder.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to steal.
If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will not be able to covet.
“Love does not enact harm toward a neighbor; therefore, love is law’s embodiment.”[8]
Although drawn from Leviticus,[9] you more likely recognized the instruction to “love your neighbor as yourself” as half of Jesus’ Great Commandment, which Modern American Christianity frequently summarizes as “love God and love your neighbor.” However, we still find that instruction difficult to follow, largely because of how we’ve convinced ourselves this command contains a hierarchy: first, love God; second, love your neighbor. In times of conflict that structure allows for—or forces—a nice decision tree: if I have to choose between loving God and my neighbor, I need to choose God. Sadly, powerful people like to use that distinction to manipulate Christians, demanding we support certain positions or policies while goading within a subtle threat of damnation. “You’re supposed to love God, right? Well, then, you have to support”—or oppose—“[whatever the cause of the moment is.] If you don’t, then you must not love God, and we all know what happens to those people.”
And as a side note, we should probably establish here that this instruction to love your neighbor, a term that really just means “one nearby,” does not justify anyone’s choices or actions that harm people who are far away. In the 1st Century, harming someone from a distance was a challenge. They could hurl spears, shoot bows, and swing catapults, all of which have a significantly shorter range than modern weaponry. Even the most powerful ones didn’t reach much past a quarter mile. Everything within range of attack was still “nearby.” Accurately relating their capabilities to ours, we could easily argue the same for today.
Back to the point, both the hierarchical manipulation and any attempt to limit “who is my neighbor?”[10] are an abuse and a misunderstanding of the Great Commandment. We can recognize its singular nature simply by looking at its name. The Great Commandment (not commandments) doesn’t consist of two separate instructions. It consists of one command stated in two ways. Just like Deuteronomy is Moses’ restatement of existing Hebrew custom and tradition,[11] the second half of the Great Commandment is simply a restatement of the first, meaning the intention is “love God AND love your neighbor,” or perhaps more clearly for us, “love God BY loving your neighbor.”
Understood properly, there is no conflict found in these statements. There is no point of weakness for people to exploit. The only way for us to truly demonstrate our love for God is to actively show love to those around us. “Indeed, someone who refuses to love a sibling whom they have seen, is not able to love the God whom they have not seen.”[12] “Love does not harm one nearby; therefore, love is law’s embodiment.”[13]
But loving our neighbor isn’t simply a command the Bible gives us. It’s the objective reality of God’s Kingdom. It turns what feels like a demand into a promise of hope. Do you love and follow God? Then you won’t harm your neighbor; you’ll seek the best for them as a natural part of living! Life is complicated, but Jesus has given us one simple question that can guide us throughout our days, no matter how complex or divisive our choices may appear: how, in this moment, do I demonstrate genuine love for the person God has set in front of me?
“The commandments”—all of them—“are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2]Exodus 20:2-17
[3] Deuteronomy 5:6-21
[4] 1,648 occurrences of “ou” (objective) to 1,042 for “me” (subjective) | If you take all connections to either form (2,261 for “ou” to 1,293 for “me”) the ratio shifts closer to 65% and 35%.
[5] Matthew 6:15
[6] James 4:2
[7] I John 4:20
[8] Romans 13:10 | my translation
[9] Leviticus 19:18
[10] See Jesus’ response to that exact question in Luke 10:25-37.
[11] aka “the Law”
[12] I John 4:20 | My translation
[13] Romans 13:10