IMPACT OF LOVE ON LIFE AND FUTURE – Verse 11 functions as a connector that pulls the recent discussion of love as the motivator of behavior—specifically obedience to authorities and paying down indebtedness—into a new direction—the future. (v. 11: Besides this [nrsv], And do this [niv], why all this stress on behavior? [philips].[1]  If love is the appropriate mode of action now in light of the past, then love is also the appropriate mode of action now in light of the future. [2]

FUTURE INVADING THE PRESENT –The conviction that Christ will return alludes to another conviction—that God will actually one day redeem his creation. Yet, in some sense through the death, burial, rising, and ascension of Christ, the future has already invaded the present through the presence of the Spirit in the community. As our future posterity is within us and will live beyond us, as the oak is within a tiny seed, so God’s future has invaded our present. So we carry hope that God is working within our world moving us purposefully toward a glorious consummation. [3]

CHRYSOSTOM [344-407]– "Wake up!" (v. 11). Paul is not trying to frighten his hearers but to encourage them, so as to detach them from their love of the things of this world . . . the nearer the King is, the more we ought to be ready to receive him. [3]

connections

What was the occasion of your first debt or loan?

How would your life be different if you consciously envisioned "wearing" Jesus Christ?

What is the connection between slumber and the return of Christ? How does Paul depict the light and darkness?

gambits

Paul’s strong eschatological zeal did not diminish during the course of his ministry; but rather increased as he neared the end of his life. Here, he informs the Christians that the "final consummation was now closer at hand than when he and his Roman readers set out on their course of Christian faith. [4]

Some look at Paul’s belief in the imminent return of Christ as an example of the apostle’s potential for error in predicting the eschaton. Paul is clearly wrong, they say. This causes not a few problems for Christians. For instance, what’s the use in preaching from a passage in which the writer’s timetable is clearly in error? Does the value of Paul’s ethical reflections, tied to that return of Christ, not diminish in value in proportion to the additional delay of that return?

Achtemeier concludes from Paul’s dysfunctional eschatology that "we are no longer dominated in our understanding of the Christian faith by our sense of the nearness of Christ’s return to the extent that Paul was." [5]

So how should we take this passage? Throw it out? Delete it? Disregard it entirely? No. These words in Romans 13 reflect our conviction that God’s future should impact our present. The passage recalls the God who will one day redeem his creation, who will one day fulfill the promise of restoration and recreation given in the resurrection of Christ. In Jesus Christ, God’s future has already invaded our present.

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[1] Barclay Neuman and Eugene Nida, A Translator’s Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Romans (NY: United Bible Societies, 1973), page 251.
[2] Paul, Achtemeier, Interpretation Series: Romans (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), page 210.
[3] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture VI (InterVarsity, 1998), page 333.
[4] Interpretation Series: Romans, page 211.
[5] Ibid., page 211.