What Love Actually Does
Romans 13:8-14 | Matthew 18:15-20
Most of us, if we're honest, would rather not sit with this week's texts. Paul and Matthew are describing something most of us don't do very well — and something our culture has almost entirely stopped valuing.
They are talking about love. Not the sentimental version. Not the warm glow that wells up toward people who are easy to like. Love as a way of life. Active. Demanding. Persistent even when it costs something.
Here's what is remarkable about Paul's letter to Rome. He doesn't invent something new. When he writes owe no one anything except to love one another, he immediately turns to the Decalogue. Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not covet.
We've been taught to hear those as prohibitions. The fence around acceptable behavior. But that is not how the Jewish tradition has ever understood them.
The Decalogue has always been a gift — the gift of how to live in community, in right relationship with God and with one another. Not a fence but a map. Not a threat but an invitation. You might even call them the ten best ways — because at the heart of every one is relationship. How you honor God. How you treat your neighbor. How you keep a community from fracturing under the weight of human selfishness and fear.
Paul is reminding his readers that love is not a new invention. This has always been God's way — from Sinai to Rome. Love your neighbor as yourself fulfills the Law.
And yet. Here we are, still figuring it out.
Because knowing what love requires and actually doing it are two very different things. Anyone who has tried to speak honestly with someone who hurt them — without it becoming an attack — knows how hard this is. One step forward. Two steps back. And then, if you're lucky, one step forward again.
This is the territory Matthew 18 is trying to help us navigate.
Matthew 18 is the community discourse — Jesus's extended teaching on what life together looks like. It begins with the disciples arguing about greatness. Jesus puts a child in their midst — among the most marginalized in first-century society. Welcome the least, and you welcome me. Then the parable of the lost sheep — the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine for the one. It is not the will of your Father that one of these little ones should be lost.
Only then does Jesus offer what we hear in this week’s text.
This is not a framework for church discipline. Not the foundation for excommunication — which is how the church has mostly used it, and which is a profound distortion. This is a pastoral map for how a community refuses to let a relationship die without doing everything possible to repair it.
The process: go to the person privately — not to win, but to be heard and to hear. If that fails, bring one or two others to witness and advocate for reconciliation. If that fails, bring it before the community. And if the person still refuses, your obligation has been fulfilled.
Simple enough to describe. Almost no one does it.
We avoid. We triangulate. We complain to everyone except the person we need to speak with. Or we go in hot, lead with accusation, and wonder why it explodes. Our culture has two modes for conflict: avoid it entirely, or win it decisively. Jesus is describing a third way. And it is harder than either.
Because what it requires is something most of us have forgotten we carry. The freedom of the true self. The self that is grounded enough to tell the truth without making it an attack. Secure enough not to need to win. Free enough to want restoration more than vindication.
The false self cannot do this. It either retreats into silence or comes out swinging. Both are self-protection. Neither is love.
Becoming someone who can actually do this takes a long time. It is the slow fruit of a transformed life — what Paul means by “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is what happens when love becomes not an occasional gesture but the fundamental orientation of who you are.
Every other debt, once paid, is finished. The debt of love cannot be discharged. You are always still owing it. A community that lives by this does not write people off — not because it is naive about harm, but because it knows it owes something that can never be fully paid.
Community is not a sentimental gathering of like-minded people. From Sinai to Rome to here, it has always been the place where we learn — haltingly, imperfectly, one step forward and two steps back — what love actually does.
The only thing we owe one another is love. Active. Patient. Courageous. Never quite finished. It turns out that is not a burden. It is how we come alive.