---
title: Romans 13:8
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/romans-13-8/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/romans-13-8.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Romans 13:8
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Romans 13:8

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Be indebted to no one, except to one another in love. For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "Do not owe anything to anyone except to love one another; for whoever loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law"

## JW Usage

Watchtower commentary takes Romans 13:8 as describing the Christian obligation to love fellow believers and the fulfilment of the law through this love. The "his fellow man" rendering accommodates the JW associative-love framing — love is primarily directed within the congregation, with appropriate distance from the world. The verse is cited alongside meeting attendance and organisational unity as evidence of fulfilled love.

## Protestant Usage

The verse closes Paul's transition from civic obligations (vv1-7) to the ethics of neighbour-love (vv8-10). "Owe no one anything except to love one another" is unqualified — Paul is not narrowing love to the church but expanding the Mosaic neighbour-command (Lev 19:18) to a universal Christian principle. Vv9-10 list the commandments love fulfils: do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet — every commandment that governs treatment of any human being. Love is the law's fulfilment because love refuses to harm the neighbour. The Watchtower's narrowing of "the other" to congregational fellow-Witnesses misses the verse's universal scope, which the surrounding context of civic obligations and shared neighbour-ethics makes plain.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders ton heteron as "his fellow man" — consensus reads "the other" (ESV/NASB) or "his neighbor" (KJV/NIV). The Greek heteros means "another" or "the other" — unmarked for in-group versus out-group. The NWT's "fellow man" subtly imports an in-group connotation — fellow believer, fellow Witness — that the Greek does not require. Combined with the next verse's neighbour-love command from Leviticus 19:18, the JW narrowing reads against Paul's universalising move.