It’s a four-letter word. It has become a problem for millions of people. Yet it is hard to live without it. When we are in it we normally try to get out of it. If it becomes unmanageable it can make life miserable—destroying a person’s health, crushing a marriage, and robbing people of hope. What am I talking about? The “it” that I am speaking of is debt. From the child paying back money borrowed from mom and dad to purchase a bike, to the homeowners among us, all of us know what it means to be in debt.
In any debt there are three basic components. What the debt is. To whom the debt is owed and by whom it is owed. And how the debt is to be repaid. If you take out a mortgage to buy a home, you work with a lending institution under those basic terms. The amount of the loan will be specified. Lender and borrower will be identified. And a repayment schedule will be worked up. Even in the case of a child who says to a classmate, “May I borrow a dollar from you to buy a snack….I’ll pay you back tomorrow,” those three aspects of debt exist. The debt is identified. The borrower and lender are identified. And the repayment is specified.
Because the Scriptures so often connect concepts from the world to spiritual things it probably comes as no surprise to us that debt has been used to teach a number of spiritual lessons. Jesus used the basic principals of borrowing and indebtedness in some of his parables about forgiveness. Through the prophets and writers of the Psalms the LORD spoke about the honor his people owed him. In the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray we are reminded of the debt of sin which God has forgiven us and which we are to forgive in others who sin against us.
In the Word of God on which we will focus from Romans 13 we will see a different application made from the familiar idea of debt. Here we are told that we owe a debt that we will never pay off. (Read text.) With the three basic principles of debt in mind let’s dig into these verses and ask the Holy Spirit to work a change in our Christian life. Here we see:
“WE HAVE A CONTINUING DEBT OF LOVE”
I. What is it?
II. To whom do we owe it?
III. How do we pay it?
The Apostle Paul’s directive concerning the believer’s debt of love comes on the heels of his command about submitting to the governing authorities. In the verses just before the section we are considering he said, “This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” (Romans 13:6-7) With the idea in mind of a believer paying what he or she owes, the Holy Spirit led Paul to make a transition to the continuing debt of love believers owe. He shows us what that debt of love is, those to whom we owe it, and how we pay it.
I.
So what is this debt of love we owe? “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.” Whenever something from the everyday world of physical things is used to picture something in the eternal world of spiritual things some explanation will be needed. The connection is not always seamless. Our debt of love does not come from us borrowing from those we are to love but from our borrowing from another Person—a third party we could say. This is what I mean. Normally in a loan one person must repay another person for what was borrowed. In our debt of love we borrowed love from God but then we are directed repay that love not to God but to others. This makes our debt of love somewhat different than any other debt.
For a moment or two we need to look at God’s accounting system to better understand our continuing debt of love. Since any sin violates God’s holiness he must keep track of the sins committed by every person. If he just ignored them he wouldn’t be just and holy. The Bible also tells us that one sin against God creates a debt that none of us can pay. In fact we couldn’t pay off our debt to God with a thousand lifetimes of proper obedience to him. So according to God’s ledger we are spiritually bankrupt. And unlike financial debt we can’t file for bankruptcy and walk away and start over. No, it must be paid. And unlike financial debt we can’t come to God and offer to pay just a “few cents on the dollar” by doing some good deeds to make up for our sins. Again, he must have each sin paid for in full. There is no room for negotiation.
But thankfully God acted on our behalf. He sent his Son Jesus to pay off our debt. We borrow from him both to pay for what we owe because of our sins and to have the holiness we need. That is one way to describe saving faith in Jesus. It is borrowing from Him to have our sin-debt paid and to have a positive balance of holiness that we need to be loved by God.
Once we know and believe that our debt—the one we could not pay off—has been paid we naturally want to give all that we are and have to the One whom we once owed. But he accepts our response to what we owe him in a unique way. He says, “Don’t pay me directly. Pay those around you instead.” We have heard a number of passages that speak about this in our service this morning. Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) 1 John 4:7 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” So when Paul says we have a continuing debt to love one another he isn’t saying that we have borrowed love from each other and must pay it back. He is simply reminding us that we have borrowed love from God and He has asked us to love each other out of our desire to pay Him back. That is our continuing debt of love. It is paying our debt of love to God by loving others.
Recently there have been a number of political demonstrations in the news. Protesters have gathered in various places to demonstrate their opposition to our potential war with Iraq. In our state there have been some recent protests against the death penalty. Locally PETA--People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—is set to protest the circus. A woman from PETA has promised to appear naked in public, painted like a tiger and confined to a cage. When people believe in something they want to show it. They may picket or protest, write letters to newspapers, or vote a certain way. People demonstrate so the world will know what they stand for, what’s truly important to them, what they’re passionate about
Jesus gave his followers very specific instructions on how to demonstrate their Christian faith. On the night of his betrayal, Jesus took on the role of a servant and washed his followers’ feet, something that was counter cultural, something that Peter nearly refused to have done because it went so against the grain of their culture. Then Jesus described how we are to go against cultural norms and love one another. That is the demonstration of our continuing debt of love.
II.
But before we claim that we are ready to pay our debt of love we need to carefully consider those who will be collecting the debt. We acknowledged that our love for others comes from God’s love for us and is really directed toward him. But God wants us to make our payments not to Him but to others. In these verses the Apostle Paul identifies those to whom we are to pay our continuing debt of love. “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.” And then he says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And also, “Love does no harm to its neighbor.” Three different groups are on the receiving end of our debt of love. Those in the “one another” group are our fellow Christians. “Fellowman” of course includes all people. And our “neighbor” might best be defined as those near us—believers and unbelievers, friends and enemies. These creditors won’t always be easy to pay. In fact it will frequently be a challenge to pay our debt of love to others because they act so unlovable to us.
I am reminded of a contrast someone made between infatuation & love. It says, “Infatuation is when you think your husband is as handsome as Tom Cruise, as amusing as Rodney Dangerfield, as intellectual as Albert Einstein, as devout as Billy Graham, & as athletic as Hulk Hogan. That is infatuation. Love is realizing that your husband is as handsome as Albert Einstein, as intellectual as Hulk Hogan, as devout as Tom Cruise, as athletic as Rodney Dangerfield, & as amusing as Billy Graham. But you love him anyway.” In a spiritual sense it may be easy to love those who attract us with similar love—those who are kind to us and loveable. That could be compared to infatuation. But when reality sets in and our neighbors, our fellowmen, and even our fellow believers aren’t loveable we are still to love them. That is paying our continuing debt of love.
This point is brought out in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Think of how the Samaritan did the opposite of what people would have expected of him. He loved his enemy. He helped the helpless. He went above and beyond common courtesy and loved a fellow human. Jesus spoke about who is to receive our continuing debt of love when he said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:27-28)
Maybe you heard about the guy who fell in love with an opera singer. He hardly knew her, since his only view of the singer was through binoculars - from the third balcony. He was convinced he could live “happily ever after” married to a voice like that. He scarcely noticed that she was considerably older than he. Nor did he care that she walked with a limp. Her mezzo-soprano voice would take them through whatever might come. After a whirlwind romance and a hurry-up ceremony, they were off for their honeymoon. When they got to their motel room the man was shocked at what he saw his wife do. She plucked out her glass eye and plopped it into a container on the nightstand. She pulled off her wig, ripped off her false eyelashes, yanked out her dentures, unstrapped her artificial leg, and smiled at him as she slipped off her glasses that hid her hearing aid. Stunned and horrified, he gasped, “For goodness sake, woman, sing, sing, SING!” (Swindoll - Strike the Original Match 68)
It was easy for the man to think and say that her voice would take them through whatever might come. But he didn’t realize what he was getting into. It’s easy to say, “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Words come easily. Any of you who work under a difficult boss, with a spouse, or with children - know how difficult the actions of love are to follow through on. And yet that is what we owe to them. Obviously, we must look to Christ to supply us with the desire and determination to love others.
Sometimes a short statement powerfully worded can be more memorable than many paragraphs on the same topic. As we think of our debt of love maybe this captures what our attitude must be toward others. It has been said, “There are two types of people in the world--those who come into a room and say, ‘Here I am!’ and those who say, ‘Ah, there you are!’” God calls on us to be in the second group. Whenever and wherever we come into contact with another person we don’t say, “Here I am!” but we say, “Ah, there you are!” With that selfless attitude we are ready to truly love others as God has loved us.
III.
So far as we have considered the debt of love the Apostle Paul described in these verses from Romans 13, we have seen what it is and those to whom we owe it. Now before we end our sermon it is vitally important for us to look at how exactly we pay our debt of love.
A little girl stayed for supper at the home of her first-grade friend. The vegetable with the meal was buttered broccoli, and the mother asked if she liked it. The child replied very politely, “Oh, yes, I love broccoli.” But when the bowl of broccoli was passed around the table she declined to take any. The hostess said, “I thought you said you loved broccoli.” The girl replied sweetly, “Oh, yes, ma'am, I do, but not enough to eat it!”
Like that little girl we may say, “Oh, yes, I love others.” But we don’t love them enough to show it. Here the Apostle Paul gets specific about paying our debt of love. “The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Although the statement “Love your neighbor as yourself,” is a very straightforward and a precise summary of the commandments it is helpful to look at the parts of the whole. If we apply the old saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees,” to the Ten Commandments we see the forest when we understand that we are to treat others, as we would like to be treated. But on the other hand, only if we see each “tree in the forest” do we have an accurate guide to follow in our love for others.
So, we love our neighbor as we love our self by honoring and respecting those in authority. We love our neighbor as we love our self not by only not murdering them but by protecting them from harm. When we honor God’s gift of marriage, we love our neighbor as we love our self. Concerning property and reputation, we love others as we love our self by saying, doing, or thinking, nothing that will harm those around us.
A woman went to a lawyer looking for help so that she could divorce her husband. She said that she didn’t love the man anymore and so she didn’t see any reason to stay married. The lawyer said that he had a plan. He told the woman, “Go home and be super nice to your husband for thirty days. Then when we file the divorce papers he will be so shocked it will just crush him.” The woman, filled with anger and a desire for revenge, thought it was a great plan. She went home and became “super-wife.” In everything she was kind and loving toward her husband. At the end of the thirty days the lawyer called the woman and asked if she was ready to go through with the divorce. The woman said, “No way. I love my husband to much to get a divorce!” The actions of love caused the woman to fall back into love. A similar thing will happen to us when we pay our debt of love by loving others as we have been loved by God. Even those who are unloving will become lovable to us.
“I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go.” Although we use that phrase in relation to our financial situation we have something like that in these verses. “To God we can’t help but say, “I owe, I owe.” But then with his love in mind we say, “It’s off to work we go.” We go to love others as we love ourselves.
Friends in Christ, may God always enable us to see our continuing debt of love. May we see what it is. It means we love others as we have been loved. May we see to whom it is owed. We owe it to all people—fellow Christians, friends, neighbors, and all people. May we also see how this debt of love is paid. We pay it as we love our neighbor according to all the commandments that make up the golden rule, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” With an understanding of our debt of love may God enable us to continue pay it in love. Amen.
