“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”
Love does not harm its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. — Agapē (love) ouk ergaetai (does not work, accomplish) to kakos (evil, harm) toward the neighbor. Plērōma (fullness, fulfillment, completion) of nomos (law) is agapē—not in the sense of abolishing law but consuming it, directing all its commandments toward love. Love is the law's telos (goal, end, purpose).
Church Fathers on Romans 13:10
“Love works no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law.” Observe how it has both virtues, abstinence from evils (for it “works no ill,” he says), and the working of good deeds. “For it is,” he says, “the fulfilling (or filling up) of the Law;” not bringing before us instruction only on moral duties in a concise form, but making the accomplishment of them easy also. For that we should become acquainted with things profitable to us was not all that he…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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