To Encourage You

Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

One of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world is to have a debt hanging over our heads.  While we are in such a condition, there’s that constant awareness that we’re under obligation. We just aren’t free.  Proverbs 22:7 puts it this way: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.”  And who wants to be a slave?  But that is exactly what we are, in a sense, as long as we owe someone money.  

But then there’s another kind of debt that can nag at our hearts.  It’s the debt of sin.  It’s that feeling deep in the conscience that comes when we’ve wronged someone, and the guilt of it acts as a type of bondage in our lives.  I sometimes wonder how people can commit violent crimes like murder, avoid the law by covering it up in some way, and then go on living as if nothing had ever happened. Yet, it happens all the time. Recently, I read of a mother who was arrested for killing and burying her two children in 2015.  How does one avoid apprehension for something like this for so long, and how do they live with themselves while they run and hide?  

But it isn’t only something so heinous that can hang over a person’s head. Actually, every sin we commit is described as a debt in the Scriptures.  In Romans 6:23 we are told that “the wages of sin is death.”  You see, the sentence of death for sin wasn’t just something that applied to Adam and Eve when God told them that the day that they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they would surely die (Genesis 2:17).  The sin and the debt for that sin have been passed on to all of us, for “in Adam all (of us) die.”  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). And because God is perfectly just, we are all under the debt of that sin. We will all reap what we have sown. It’s a certainty. It’s something we can’t escape.  And it’s a debt that we cannot pay.  And so, it hangs over our head, this guilt for our sin.  

In the Old Testament God made a way for His people to deal with this guilt through a sacrificial system whereby the death of an animal would function as a substitute for the payment for their sin.  It was a means whereby that sin was “covered” in a sense. Yet, these animal sacrifices couldn’t ultimately take that sin away. Hebrews 10:1-4 explains it this way: “For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”  

So where does that leave us?  What hope do we have? Wonderfully, we have much hope because, eventually, there was a sacrifice for our sin, one that could completely wipe our slate clean. Again, from Hebrews 10:5-14: “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.”’ When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.  And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. FOR BY A SINGLE OFFERING HE HAS PERFECTED FOR ALL TIME THOSE WHO ARE BEING SANCTIFIED.” 

Do you hear that? Those who have placed their faith in Christ are no longer in debt for their sin. They are free of it, for the debt has been paid on their behalf by Christ.  He died for them. As a result, when we place our faith in what He has done for us, we die IN HIM. The debt is paid, and we are free.  

But that leaves us with a different type of debt. It’s what’s referred to in Romans 13:8. It’s the debt to love. You see, as Jesus paid the obligation of debt for our sin when He died for us on the cross, we now are under obligation, i.e., “debt,” to love others with the love that Christ has poured out on us.  It’s a debt of gratitude rather than guilt.  It’s the least we can do for others when we consider the magnitude of what Jesus has done for us.  May God help us to love others in response to the awesome love with which He has loved us.  He paid a debt we could not pay. May we love Him and our neighbor with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, for it’s THAT debt that we will now and forever owe.