Pay it Forward
Romans 13:8-10
A woman and her husband came to the pastor and said, “We're going to get a divorce, but we want to come to make sure that you approve of it.” There are people who come to the pastor hoping that when they say there is no feeling left in their marriage, the pastor will say, “Well, if there's no feeling left, then, the only thing you can do is split.” Instead, the pastor says to the husband, “The Bible says you're to love your wife as Jesus Christ loved the church.” He says, “Oh, I can't do that.” The pastor says, “If you can't begin at that level, then begin on a lower level.
You're supposed to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Can you at least love her as you would love a neighbor?” The husband says, “No. That's still too high a level.” The pastor says, “The Bible says, ‘Love your enemies. Why don’t you start there.’”
A lot of people want to camp out in the very first phrase of Romans 13:8 and talk about debt. Let me tell you, that is not what this passage of Scripture is about. I believe you can make a case for not incurring debt. This church has made a commitment to not go into debt. I hope one day that I will be debt free.
But this passage is talking about another kind of debt. It’s not your public debt, paying your taxes. It’s not your private debt, paying your bills. It is your primary debt, and it is to love your neighbor. That’s what Paul says in Romans 13:8. He uses paying your debts as a platform to launch a different principle, how we are always indebted to other people.
You can come to a place where your financial debts are paid off. But when it comes to the debt of love we owe, we never completely pay it off. We’re always indebted, and we keep on paying on this.
Have you ever owed someone money? Has an individual ever loaned you money, and every time you see that individual, what do you think about? “I owe that guy money.”
That’s what you think about. This verse is saying we all ought to look at everyone else and every time we see another person, we ought to say, “You know, I owe that person something. I owe that person love. I owe that person acceptance. I owe that person compassion. I’m indebted to that person.”
Now, I want to ask and answer four questions about this “love debt” we owe.
Q: How did you incur this debt? How did you become indebted?
A: Jesus paid your sin debt when you were flat broke.
Jesus paid your sin debt and my sin debt when we were flat broke. Here’s the scenario: A holy, righteous, perfect God who demands perfection created a people who had the capacity to sin. And because every one of us at one time in our lives have committed sins, we’re sinners by nature and by choice, we cannot relate to this holy God.
Let me tell you what religion is. Religion is when people like you and others write checks to God to try to buy acceptance.
• Okay, God, here’s Communion.
• Okay, God, here’s reading my Bible.
• Okay, God, here’s doing good works.
• Okay, God, here’s going to church.
I don’t ever miss, God. You think you can buy God off. That’s religion.
Let me tell you what salvation is. In salvation, God looked at us and saw we were sinners and we could never repay the debt we owe. And so He said, “Listen, I’m going to send my only Son, and he’s going to pay your debt for you.” So Jesus Christ came to planet earth, and He was totally sinless. He was all man, but He was all God.
At just the right time, at the cross, the Lord Jesus stepped in and said, “Father, I know Bob Joyce is a sinner. I know those people are sinners, and they’ll never be able to pay off the debt they owe to You. So Father, I’m paying it off myself. I’m paying off Bob Joyce’s debt.” And He died. He paid the gold of his blood and the silver of his tears. When He died, He was paying my debt to the Father. That’s how we incurred this debt. You and I are all indebted because of this. You can’t pay God off. You can’t buy salvation. You know why?
Because Jesus paid it all.
All to him I owe.
Sin had left a crimson stain
but He washed it white as snow.
That’s question number one, how we incurred the debt.
Q: To whom do you repay this debt?
I owe a debt. Now, the obvious answer is: I pay this debt back to Jesus, because Jesus is the One who paid my debt, so I owe it to Him. Well of course we owe love to Jesus,
but let me show you this—
A: Jesus has designated your neighbors as your creditors.
In other words, He said, “You know how I want you to pay back this debt? Don’t pay it back to me.” Jesus said. “You pay it back to your neighbors. You have to pay it forward.” Look at verse 8 one more time, Romans 13:8. He says, “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.”
Have you ever been contacted by one of these bill collection agencies? You know what I’m talking about. If you don’t pay your bills or you’re overdue on your bills, the business will turn it over to a collection agency, which will in turn call you. Oh, they’re really, really nice about it, of course. They keep calling you up, and saying, “You owe this, you owe this, you owe this; you owe this.” By paying the collection agency,
you’re paying off that business. Did you know Jesus has done the same thing? To every one of us, Jesus said, “Listen, rather than demanding you repay the debt to Me, I have designated him and her, and him and her, and him and her, and him and her as the collection agency. I want you to pay me off by paying love to those people around you, loving your neighbors.”
Look at verse 8 again. It says, “love one another.” The word “another” is an interesting word. There is one word in the Greek language that means another of the same kind. It’s allos. Frankly, I wish that’s what it said.
I wish it said, “You love other people who were just like you, people who act like you, think like you, talk like you, smell like you. Those are the kind of people you love,” because that would be easy.
The word he uses here is love one another, and it’s the word heteros, which means,
“Love others who are different than you.”
You love people who don’t think the way you think; act the way you think; their face is a different color; they may not be the same social class you are. It means you love them. They don’t have to be just like you. Who’s your neighbor? It’s the person who lives next door to you or down the street from you. That’s true.
But it’s also the person sitting next to you or behind you or in front of you. Your neighbor is also the person you pass on the street every week. Your neighbor is the person who lives on the undesirable side of town. Your neighbor is the person who lives on the other side of Texas, the other side of the country and the other side of the world. This says everyone is your neighbor and we are bound to show love to everyone. That’s who we repay the debt to.
Q: How do you repay this debt?
A: By writing checks of love and forgiveness to others.
You find someone who needs love; and write them out a check of love. Here it is, I’m going to love you. You find someone who’s hurt you and needs forgiveness, you write them a check of forgiveness. That’s how you repay this debt.
Love is not some ethereal concept you just can’t grasp. Sometimes we think it is. We just say, “I just love you,” and nobody knows what it means. Love is so practical it means you don’t think of yourself, you think of the other person.
Someone came up with a list that they called love rules. If you’re a husband or wife,
or parents or children, this is what it means to show love in your family:
If you open it, you close it.
If you turn it on, you turn it off.
If you unlock it, you lock it.
If you break it, you fix it.
If you can’t fix it, you call in somebody who can.
If you borrow it, you return it.
If you use it, you take care of it.
If you make a mess, you clean it up.
If you move it, you put it back where it was.
If it belongs to someone else
and you want to use it, ask their permission.
If you don’t know how to operate it,
leave it alone.
If it doesn’t concern you, just don’t mess with it.
Have you noticed all the characteristics in that little love list means you’re thinking of the other person, you’re not just thinking of yourself?
Some people say that the opposite of love is hate. But that is not true. The opposite of love is selfishness, self-centeredness. And husbands and wives, as long as you’re thinking about yourself, you really won’t love your mate. But when you start thinking
about the needs of your mate, that’s when you become a loving marriage partner.
Jesus told a story about this in Matthew 18. Simon Peter came up to Jesus, and said,
“Hey, Jesus, how many times do I have to forgive somebody who has hurt me?
Seven times?” Jesus said, “Hardly. Try seventy times seven.” Then Jesus told this story.
He said the kingdom of God is like the king who was settling his financial affairs
and called in a servant who owed him $100,000. The king said to the servant,
“Hey buddy, you owe me $100,000. If you don’t pay me, I’m going to throw you in prison, and I’m going to throw your wife in prison and I’m going to throw your children in prison.” The servant fell on his knees and said, “Oh, king, please have mercy on me! Give me time. I’ll pay it off.” The king had mercy on him and said,
“You know what, I’m so moved by your plea for mercy that not only will I not throw you in jail, but I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll just write it off. I forgive your debt.
You’re free and clear. You don’t owe me a thing.”
And the servant walked out of there feeling wonderful. But no sooner was he out of the king’s quarters than he saw another servant in the hall of the palace. And this servant owed him $10. The servant who was just forgiven $100,000 said, “Hey buddy, you remember that ten bucks you owe me? You better pay me right now.
If you don’t pay me right now I’m going to throw you, and your wife and your children in prison.” Jesus uses exactly the same words. The servant fell to his knees and said, “Oh please, sir, don’t put me in prison. Give me some time and I’ll pay you the ten bucks I owe you.” The servant said, “No way, José.” That’s the Texas translation. “No way. You’re going to jail and you and your wife and your children.
Get out of here! You’re going to jail.” What’s wrong with this picture?
Word got back to the king, and he called the servant back and said, “Now let me get this straight. I just forgave you $100,000 debt and you go out there and demand
that somebody who owes you $10 pay you?” The servant had nothing to say, because it was true. The king said, “Well buddy, your debt has just gone back on my books. You now owe me $100,000. Pay it.”
Then Jesus made this final observation, and it’s a little disturbing. He said, “In the same way, my heavenly Father will not forgive your sins if you do not forgive
the sins others commit against you.” You see, the way we repay God for the forgiveness He’s shown to us; it was a $100 trillion dollar debt we owed. When someone comes along and offends you with some nickel debt, some little five-buck debt, you’d better be quick to forgive them, because you’ve been forgiven.
One other question here we need to look at.
Q: What are the benefits of repaying this debt?
A: Love satisfies all of God’s commandments.
It satisfies all of God’s commandments.
You know, there are a couple of ways you can go through life. You can go through life trying to keep all of God’s commandments. Let’s see, there are the Ten Commandments and then there are 613 other commandments in the Old Testament, so you can make you a list of 623 commandments, write them down, check them off every day. Let’s see. I didn’t do this today, I didn’t do that. Uh-oh, I did that one. Too bad. Just try to keep this list. Or the other way, the better way is throw your list away and say, “Hey, all the commandments are summarized in love.”
You know, the first four Commandments of the Ten Commandments deal with our personal relationship with God. And Jesus said, you want to keep the first four Commandments? You love God with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your being. And if you do that, then you don’t have to worry about taking his name in vain.
You don’t have to worry about worshipping graven images or having other Gods before Him. Just love Him. And all these other Commandments, the last six have to do with our human relationships:
• don’t commit adultery,
• honor your parents,
• don’t steal,
• don’t lie,
• don’t covet.
Paul said, “Listen. Forget the list. Just love people. Because when you love them, you won’t hurt them.”
I’ve heard people guilty of committing adultery. They said, “You know, we just couldn’t help it. We loved each other too much.” They didn’t love each other too much; they loved God too little or loved their mate too little. Don’t blame love for that.
The Bible says love doesn’t do that kind of stuff. Love always thinks about how is it going to affect the other person? It is so very practical.
The key to all of this is He says you’ve got to love your neighbor as you love whom? Yourself. You know, I just wish He had said something like, “Love your neighbor like you love Jesus,” Or, “Love your neighbor like you love your mate.” He said, “Love your neighbor like you love yourself.” He doesn’t say it one time but half a dozen times. We struggle with that, don’t we? If somebody gave me a big button to wear that said, “I want to love you the way that Jesus loves me,” I’d probably wear that. Or if they gave me a big button that said, “I want to love you the way that I love Jesus.”
But if somebody gave me a button that said,
“I want to love you the way I love myself,”
I don’t know if I would wear it.
Would you? Because there’s something about that, that bothers us.
Let’s be honest. You’ll never be set free to love other people until you accept yourself for who you in Jesus Christ. You and I both know the sickest people in the world and the most hateful, hurtful people in the world are people who really don’t like themselves. Because they really don’t like themselves, they can’t love anybody else.
Gloria Gaither, at one of the Gaither concerts said, “Hey, you’re not a worm nor are you a wonder. Don’t think too little or too highly of yourself. You’re not a worm; you’re not a wonder. What you are is a bundle of possibilities in Jesus Christ.”
Then she led everyone in singing a little chorus that went,
“I am loved, I am loved, I can risk loving you,
for the one who knows me best loves me most.”
Think about that. If God—Who knows you and me better than anybody else knows us, if He loves us, we ought to be set free enough to accept ourselves and love others.
I’ll finish with this short little story. Opal Whetset is a Christian writer. One night she was on a Greyhound bus between Flagstaff, Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was a cold February night and the bus stopped in a small Indian community. A young American Indian teenager boarded the bus and sat down behind her.
Maybe it was the warmth of the bus or the rocking motion but she could tell
by his breathing he was soon asleep. Sometime later he woke and ran down the aisle to ask about a certain stop where he was supposed to get off. The driver snapped back and said, “We passed that stop a long time ago. Why didn’t you get off then?”
The young man went back to his seat. She could tell he was anxious and upset. He got back up, walked back to the driver, and said, “Will you stop the bus and let me get off and walk back to where I was supposed to get off?” The bus driver said, “No, it’s too cold and it’s too far. You’d freeze. You’ve got to ride the bus all the way into Albuquerque then catch another bus back to your stop.” The young man sat down in his seat behind Opal. She could tell he was upset. She turned around to this young man she never met before, and said, “Are you afraid? Is there anything I can do to help?”
He said, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve never been to Albuquerque, and besides, I don’t have any money. They’re going to make me pay again. I don’t know what to do.” She said, “Well listen, don’t worry, you just stick with me. When we get to Albuquerque, I’ll make sure you get on the right bus. And if they want to charge you, which they shouldn’t do, I’ll buy your ticket.”
Then Opal went up and talked to the bus driver and explained the situation. She said, “Can you make sure the next bus he gets on, they don’t charge him to take him back to where he needs to go?” The bus driver finally agreed.
Opal went back and sat down and turned to the young man behind her and said, “It’s all taken care of. Don’t you worry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
After riding for about ten minutes in total silence, Opal felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and the young man leaned forward, and asked her this question. He said, “Ma’am, are you a Christian?” Has anybody ever asked you, “Are you a Christian?”
Because, you see, when we show that kind of unusual love to people, they know.
