OUR ONLY OUTSTANDING DEBT
Debt has been the main subject of the political debates in the U.S. presidential race. Personal debt is growing for many North Americans and sits like an ominous gray cloud over our finances. Some stats say we own about 40,000 of the billion dollar Canadian deficit.
Have you ever wished someone would pay off your debts (credit cards, mortgage)? In 2002 the Mount Carmel Missionary Baptist Church in Norfolk, VA made that wish come true for some. One Sunday of every month, the pastor, Bishop C. Vernie Russell Jr. chose one family from the church to come forward, and the congregation took up an offering to pay off their debt. Over a period of 14 months, the church collected 340, 000 dollars to rescue 59 of the church’s families from debt.[i]
That is a radical gesture. It seems almost too incredible to grasp. I don’t know how we would even begin to convince ourselves to do something like that at KEMC.
But the principle behind this lavish gesture is a biblical one. “When you were dead in your sins … God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us … he took it away, nailing it to the cross” (Col 2:13-14). God paid the debt our sin had incurred with the love he showed us on the cross where his Son died. Our debt is paid.
We can never repay God for his kindness and love. Yet such a grand act of love begs a response. This response is not in any way “paying God back” and yet we speak of it as owing it to God. What is this response? Loving others.
Loving others is how we begin to “pay back” the unpayable debt of God’s love for us. Paul in Romans 13 returns to the theme of love after his interlude on governments. Or did he ever leave the theme of love? What does loving others look like in the life of the disciple of Jesus?
1. The One thing you always Owe
Context: We have to remember that the theme under which these teachings come to us is found in Romans 12:1-2. “Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercies…” Paul says, referring to the great sketch of our salvation laid out in Romans 1-11. Everything following 12:1-2 is a practical response to the wonderful mercies of God in Christ Jesus.
When Paul spoke of loving our enemies and not retaliating in revenge, he continued that theme as he moved into submitting to government authorities. Revenge belongs to God and he placed the power of justice in the hands of the State. Our work is to love; the State’s job is to administer justice. There is great freedom for the Christian in this.
a) Owning the debt of love – So as Paul continues the theme of love it appears that he moves into the realm of debt and paying taxes, which is true in a minor sense.
“Let no debt remain outstanding…” (8a) is easily misunderstood as referring primarily to loans and credit cards or the taxes mentioned in v. 7. However, the term Paul uses here is not used in the sense of financial debt or obligation. It actually has a broader sense of obligation or duty. Within the context of this passage it is nothing less than love that Paul refers to in regards to our true debt.
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law” (8). This is a debt that we are urged to own joyfully in light of God’s tremendous love. It is not a debt that can be paid as it is a continuing debt, an endless debt.
What about actual debt? Does Paul mean for us to ignore the financial debts we have incurred and focus only on the debt of love? I believe Paul would say that when I love others, I fulfill the law – not ignore it. Meaning that in fulfilling my higher duty assures that I will obey my other duties. Loving God will not hinder me from loving others, and loving others will not keep me from my obligation to obey the law or pay my debts. Part of paying my debts is maintaining a character of integrity as a Christian and testimony of God. As I pay my financial debts and obligations I hope to show that my faith in God means something in the tangible world. Loving others means giving them what I owe them. If we don’t do that how will they perceive our love?
b) “Love your neighbor as yourself” – Love fulfills the law. All of it. We have a sampling of the Ten Commandments, the so-called social commandments, given to us in verse 9. We have these commandments in the negative “Do not” format. Why does Paul speak of what love will not do?
Paul has already spoken of love in the positive in 12:3-21 and how we are to behave. He now speaks of love in relationship to the law. Law tends to be negative as the law tends to prohibit people from actions that would harm other people. The law focuses on the prevention of evil more so than on the promotion of good, though good is in mind. So we have these examples:
Do not commit adultery: Love does not break the marriage covenant. Not yours and not anyone else’s. True love values the virtue of others and will not lead anyone to sin. Adultery damages not just the two people involved but families, friends and the church. Adultery is a sin against love.
Do not murder: Love does not rob someone of their life. We believe in the sanctity of life from unborn babies to the elderly (abortion and euthanasia are not options).
Do not steal: Love does not take what does not belong to it.
Do not covet: Coveting underlies all sins. It sees what others have and is not content. This harms my neighbor because it leads me to wish that my neighbor were deprived of something he owns so that I could possess it.
These and other commandments are summed up in one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the second greatest commandment that Jesus taught. Remember the first? He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37). The first commandment has a boundary that begs the extreme limit of human ability (all your heart, soul, mind). To God we always say “yes” and never “no.” Everything Jesus did when he walked Palestinian soil was yes to God: preaching, healing, eating with the 12, and retreating to be with God.
The commandment “Love your neighbor” also has a boundary: “as yourself.” It too is a high calling but self-care is not the limit of human ability. Loving our neighbor does not mean we have to do everything for our neighbor. Saying “yes” to God may mean saying “no” to my neighbor.
However, the calling we have is to view our neighbor from a perspective of love. As we do this we will seek his or her good and we will avoid doing anything that will harm him or her.
c) Love sums up the law – If love fulfills the law does that mean we can ignore the law? That’s not what Paul had in mind. Rather, as we think about how we conduct our lives we see that the act of love satisfies the requirement of the law. If we love others, we won’t commit adultery, murder, steal or covet. Love subordinates self-interest in order to serve others.
I read about humility this week and was taught again about its nature. Humility is not self-abasing so that I put myself down in order to lift others up. Humility is such that I am so busy thinking about you that I am not even thinking about how I need to humble myself.
That is love: investing in other people emotionally, spiritually and physically at cost to ourselves. If we do not invest in others and deposit what we have in our own account it will not gain interest and we will be on the verge of relational bankruptcy. Putting our love in others multiplies the investment.
James agreed with Paul, he said, “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right” (Js 2:8).
2. As Different as Night and Day
Paul now brings us to a place to consider the motive and the means for loving our neighbor as ourselves. With this understanding we will find that the life we lived for ourselves will be different from the life transformed by the renewing of our minds because of chapters 1-11. This difference will be as obvious as night and day.
a) The “Why” of love: Christ is near – What is our motivation for working at the debt to love one another?
Paul wrote, “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed” (11).
An old farmer had a grandfather clock that went haywire and chimed fourteen times one midnight. He jumped up and said, “Wake up, Nellie, it’s later than it’s ever been before.” Time is a factor in this text and the time is now. The hour has come to wake up from sleeping. Were the Roman Christians growing oblivious to their calling to follow Christ like the church at Sardis? Were they becoming calloused to the commands of the Great Commission?
We need to know the time. It was night and now it is day; darkness has passed with the coming of the morning light; sleep is done – time to get up, time to be about the tasks of the day.
For the past week or two I have waken at 3 or 4 in the morning. The first thing I do is roll over and look at the clock. The second thing I do is think, “Oh good, it’s not time to get up.” Then 6 o’clock hits and my body refuses to get out of bed. I have to rehearse why I must until my brain takes control of my body and heaves a body part out of the covers. One of the problems of waking so early is that it’s not light out yet.
When the light dawns, you get ready, get dressed and start moving. It’s as simple as that. But now the urgency is intensified; Paul says, “our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” What does he mean?
In blunt: Christ is near. We could take this to mean that Jesus is returning soon and we ought to live our lives in view of his return. But after two thousand years we could also deduce that this motivation is not really urgent. So it is probably not the Day of the Lord Paul refers to when he calls us to demonstrate our love. What he does mean to say is that the time left between the day of their initial salvation and the day of their final salvation is diminishing. And for us too, there is less time to serve the Lord now than there was when we were first saved. There is no time to waste.
We have each been given a limited time to live this life. Life is brief as it is. Paul urges us then to love others as the best way to spend our time, especially in view of the great salvation we have in Christ.
Our salvation is what Romans 1-11 is all about. We were a race of rebels looking for ways to live for self and incur God’s wrath. We were in need of salvation because we all sinned and fell short of the glorious standard of God. But while we were still sinners Christ died for us (here is the model of love we are to follow). We died with him and rose with him and now nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus if we believe that all of this is true. Now we look forward to his blessings instead of his wrath.
This salvation is nearer now than when you first believed. And in view of this we gotta get lovin’.
b) The “How” of love: Wearing Christ – Loving God and loving others brings about a necessary change in how we do love. Paul contrasts again the night and the day and the activities of each: “The 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. (night vs. day; dark vs. light) Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy” (12-13).
We are encouraged here to make a stand against the darkness that we can so easily engage in and live counter-culturally. It used to be that there were activities that we shunned as being “worldly,” but we have since balked at that label as being legalistic. Christians do not want to seem holier- than-thou so we have become permissive. There may be a fine line between legalism and holiness however. The line is in our attitude about such things. Some things are clearly deeds of darkness but when we exist in darkness we don’t recognize them as dark deeds anymore. I believe it’s time to shed light on those things.
When the light of Christ hits the darkness men and women are changed radically. In the Welsh revival that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, 100,000 outsiders were added to the churches. "Drunkenness was immediately cut in half, and many taverns went bankrupt. Crime was so diminished that judges were presented with white gloves signifying that there were no cases of murder, assault, rape or robbery or the like to consider. The police became ‘unemployed’ in many districts. Stoppages occurred in coal mines, not due to unpleasantness between management and workers, but because so many foulmouthed miners became converted and stopped using foul language that the horses which hauled the coal trucks in the mines could no longer understand what was being said to them, and transportation ground to a halt."
Why is it that when the gospel floods a people like this in revival they give up certain vices? Because those things are not important anymore and love finds itself incompatible with those vices in regards to others.
Chrysostom, the great preacher of the early church, said, “…nothing so kindles lust and sets wrath ablaze as drunkenness and tippling…Wherefore, I exhort you, flee from fornication and the mother thereof, drunkenness.”[ii]
Paul wrote, “…make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (NASB 14b). Make no room for sin in your life; give it no place in your life. If you are going to love others what place do these things have?
No, instead, if we are going to walk in love, how do we do it? Paul confessed in Romans 7 that when he tried to do good it was tainted with sin. It cannot be done in the flesh – the flesh must be crucified, put to death. If we are going to walk in love we must “…clothe (ourselves) with the Lord Jesus Christ” (14a).
When we put on Christ we let him live through our lives. We show his love when human love is inadequate. We show his love when we are offended and to those who wish to be our enemies. Putting on Christ means depending on Christ to live his life, his grace, and his love through us by means of his Spirit.[iii]
Our only outstanding debt as followers of Christ is to love others as God has loved us. This is the one thing we will always owe. And as we learn to love like Christ loves our lives will be as different as night is from day.
Francis Chan sat next to a Muslim one time on a plane to Africa. Eventually he asked the Muslim about his beliefs, and then he asked Chan about his. When Chan told him how Jesus had changed his life, he said, “I hope you’re not one of those radicals.” He said he used to wait on tables and have Christians preach at him. Obviously he had been turned off by Christians and Chan did not know how to proceed.
Then the Muslim asked Chan why he was going to Africa. Chan replied, “I went there a few years ago and I saw these kids who had nothing. I saw them digging through trash heaps looking for water, for food, for anything. There’s no education. They’re just dwindling away.” Chan told him that it broke his heart to see such poverty and when he returned home, he started selling what he could and got friends to do the same.
The Muslim just looked at Chan, eyes getting big. He said, “That is amazing to me. I prayed that I would meet someone like you. I’ve never understood the charity of some Christians – why they would sacrifice their own stuff for someone that they might not even know. Tell me more about this.”
Now he was interested.
What changed for this man was hearing that Christians loved. That opened the door for the gospel of Jesus.[iv]
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:9-11).
Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN
[i] SOURCE: SermonCentral Staff. Citations: “Manna from Heaven” by Andrea Billups and Laurie Meyers. People Magazine, August 5, 2002. Colossians 2: 13-14.
[ii] C.E.B Cranfield Romans, p. 334
[iii] Bob Deffinbaugh, sermon Love, Law, and the Last Days
[iv] Francis Chan in Thinking, Loving, Doing ed. John Piper, p. 105
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