We Have A Continuing Debt Of Love

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.