Paul, the writer many associate with nearly one third of the New Testament, was rarely spoken of between the rows of cotton in the slavery south because his epistles said to obey your master.

Paul isn’t quoted under the dank clothes line or over the raw sewage in the slums of Brazil because Jesus said the poor are blessed.
Paul isn’t studied in the women’s group because feminism can’t redeem his call to cover and silence and step aside.
But people of every color, class and gender agree that Paul was at his most faithful when he penned Galatians 5, 1 Corinthians 13 and today’s text from Romans.
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Romans 13:8-14 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

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What does Christian love require?
Congregational Responses:
The absence of selfishness
That we go far beyond just not hurting
Treating everyone as a neighbor
Putting on Christ everyday
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“And it may be that,” says Kathleen Norris, “growing to mature adulthood requires us to reject the popular mythology that life is simply handed to us; that death is a subject to be altogether avoided; that love is easy, quick, fated…”
If it is romanticism, the fervent feelings that escape reality; if it is sentimentality, the morality of emotionalism that idealizes; if it is the noisy gong and the clanging cymbal of private possessiveness, individual eroticism, and ego charity, then it is nothing more than I will love because I love the love of self-interest.
In the movie “The Mission,” Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest, braves the South American jungle to build a mission.  He and the natives live and learn together, deepening each other’s faith, becoming family.
But the Portuguese and Spanish soldiers soon follow with their war canoes, powder rifles and starched uniforms to enslave the indigenous people.  They torch the mission and surround the village with a firing squad.
Father Gregory gathers all for worship, armed only with the prayer of song and the cross of Christ, believing with his life that, “If might is right, then love has no place in this world.”  He processed into the bullets and was shot dead as a martyr.
What does Christian love require?
That love is patient.
That love is kind.
That love is not envious.
That love is not boastful.
That love is not arrogant.
That love is not rude.
That love rejoices in truth.
That love bears all things.
That love believes all things.
That love hopes all things.
That love endures all things.