Daily Prayer Devotional for Women and Men | OnlinePrayerJournal

Pray

Read

For additional translations of the passage, use this link to Bible Gateway.

Romans Romans ¹³Love Fulfills the Law ⁸Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. ⁹The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. The Day Is Near ¹¹And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. ¹²The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. ¹⁴Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.

Meditate

Consider

Think Further

‘Speaking of debts…’, Paul continues (from v. 7), there is one debt we can never repay—that of love toward one another, reflecting the amazing love Jesus has shown us. As I write this, our family has just come through a difficult crisis, and I will never forget the love of our Christian friends. A visit at the hospital in the middle of the night, a visitor from the other side of the Atlantic to take care of me, food, and answered prayer beyond anything we ever thought to ask for. How can I ever repay everybody? I can’t. This is Christian love. People fulfilling the greatest commandment and the second, which is like it.2

This love is imperative in kairos time. Greek has two words for ‘time.’ There is chronos, clock time, and there is kairos, the right time, a special time, a time of crisis, with no precise chronology implied. Here it refers to the ‘present time’ (v. 11). Our faith is not a static entity. It is not an abstract philosophical theory. It is faith in a living God who works in time, kairos. Events are moving toward a goal, when sin and death will be done away with, and Jew and gentile will be one new people—as indeed was already happening in the mixed congregation in Rome.

This gives a sense of urgency to Paul’s words. They were urgent when he wrote to the Romans. They are just as urgent two thousand years later. The new day is breaking. We need to get up and get dressed. Our new clothes are none other than Jesus Christ himself. When we put them on, we will look like him, and when people see us, they will see him, because we will reflect his amazing love.

Apply

Pray