NOTES for Rom 13:8-10
Speaking of the relationships that bind those who live in the Kingdom, Paul returns to the Savior's words at the Last Supper and recalls love. The apostle is convinced that fullness lies precisely in it. Indeed, all the commandments were ultimately given so that those who follow them could make the right choice between good and evil; love presupposes that this choice has already been made. Therefore it is the one who loves his neighbor who reveals the fullness of the Law's fulfillment. Here the apostle evidently returns once more to the theme of the “living Torah” that a person seeking the Kingdom must become. For Paul, a “living Torah” is actually possible only there, for the Torah is to him an entirely objective reality. In Paul's time, it was generally accepted that the Torah had existed in God's design even before the creation of the world, and that in history it was merely revealed to God's people, who had likewise been conceived from the beginning.
This view is not far from the truth if we accept—and the Bible proceeds precisely from this premise—that the Torah describes the objectively existing dynamics and laws of the relationship between God and humanity. In that case it must have existed at least as long as humanity itself, and perhaps even longer, if we accept that God knew this dynamic in every detail even before He created humanity, a well-founded assumption. In that case the Torah cannot be reduced to commandments or laws alone. It is, above all, relationship: whether a person's relationship with God or his relationship with his neighbor.
Yet the fullness of relationship with both God and neighbor is necessary and possible precisely in the Kingdom. The love of which Jesus speaks, the love unknown to the world but permeating the Kingdom, constitutes the flesh, the spiritual substance, of such relationships; while the Torah, the inner Torah so widely debated in Paul's time, forms their structure. Only in the Torah does the spiritual substance of which the Kingdom consists find its form, while the Torah, in turn, finds only in the Kingdom the spiritual substance that allows it to become embodied. This takes place in and through the human person, for in the Kingdom everyone becomes a “living Torah,” just as the Savior Himself became one for those seeking the Kingdom. It is apparently this experience of life in the Kingdom that Paul has in mind when he says that the day is already dawning and salvation is near. Abstaining from excess here no longer looks even like an ascetic effort, but simply like a natural state—as natural as life in the Kingdom can be.