Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 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. (Romans 13:8-10)
Is it possible to keep tabs on everything that comes into your life so that you really owe nothing to anyone? Is this the point that God is trying to get across? How is it practically possible to even do that? Wouldn’t you just drive yourself crazy and also drive those around you crazy as well? Probably!
Anyway, are acts of kindness and generosity debts we should keep tabs on? Are they intended by those who do them to be things we should repay? Don’t people do them because they want to show their love and concern? It is silly to attempt to stay even with or get ahead of people who show you kindness and love. It degrades their actions and impugns their motives. After all, God does you good just because He loves you. How will you ever repay Him for all He has done?
Is there not a deeper message God is trying to impart here that we must understand about the nature of debts themselves and what it means to know how to deal with our debts and obligations?
What are the principles by which we must judge our obligations? How can we live our lives in a way that keeps us out of the kind of debts we should not incur? Can we really be debt free? Are there certain debts we can never repay? These are the questions we need answers to. And as we look at our text today, we will find the answers and also see several important principles by which we can judge the true things on which we must keep tabs.
We come right away to an important principle of Christian stewardship. Stated simply and succinctly, it is "Pay your bills!" That is precisely what God is saying in verse 8a: Let no debt remain outstanding. Pay what you owe. Pay those bills.
And speaking of bills! They come without fail. You pay them, but like weeds, they just keep coming back. There is the light bill, the gas bill, the water bill, the fuel bill, tax bills, mortgage payments, insurance bills, credit card bills, car payments, and on, and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Some of you may feel like you are buried under a mountain of bills, not knowing which ones to pay first. I heard of a man who had a unique way of paying bills. He was overextended and couldn’t pay all of them every month. One month, one of his creditors called him and demanded payment on a certain account. He said, "Look, the way I pay my bills is to put them all in a hat and pull five of them out. Now if you don’t quit bugging me, next month I won’t even put you in the hat!" Well, while that might not be the solution, it does point out the frustration that many people feel every month in paying bills.
But the command is clear. We are not to be in debt. Just what does this mean? How can anyone in contemporary society live by this commandment? Don’t we all have to incur some debt? How would anyone buy a car? Or a house? Only rich people could afford to do that if we had to pay cash for everything.
When it says "Let no debt remain outstanding...", what is in view is not a prohibition against incurring reasonable debt, but a warning against living beyond our means. It is, at once, a positive command to pay what you owe, and a negative command not to incur what you cannot pay. There is nothing in Scripture that prohibits lending or borrowing money. Scripture prohibits charging excessive interest rates, but it does not prohibit incurring honest debt.
What we Christians need to understand is that God expects us to be good stewards of the possessions He has placed in our hands. That means we must take a serious look at our lifestyles. And "lifestyles of the rich and famous" is not the biblical standard. Are you over your head in debt? If you are, then you can understand why God so straightforwardly commands us to pay our bills. The reason is that debt puts us into bondage. When we owe our creditors, we are under their control, and we feel the pressure of that bondage. The Christian has an obligation to pay his bills, and to keep his obligations current.
Additionally, I believe the one thing that all of us owe is our best. As we look at our obligations to God, to His Church, to one another and to society at large, does any of us have a right to do less than his or her best? We live in a world that is crying out for people of excellence. Think about your situation, who you are, where you were born, and what you have been blessed with. Does any of us have a right to do less than our best? Most of us are not disadvantaged. We live in America. Do we have a right to do less than our best? Most of you are successful. You’re not poor. You may not be a millionaire, but you are not on welfare. Do you have a right to indulge yourself because you can? Do you have a right to spend your God-given gain for selfish ends while the Kingdom goes lacking. All of you are talented, multi-gifted individuals. Are there gifts that are being unused? Are there ministries that are left undone because those with the gifts will not step forward? We are blessed by God. Does any of us have a right to do less than our best? Owe nothing to anyone. Let no debt remain outstanding. We must heed the challenge, we must see the vision, we must obey the call to be all we can be for Jesus Christ. In the words of Oswald Chambers, let us give "our utmost for His highest." We must pay the debt of being our best, that Jesus might be glorified in the earth.
While we are exhorted to pay our debts, there is one debt that we cannot fully pay, and that is the debt of love. Monetary and material debts are possible to fully pay, but no matter how much we pay on the debt of love, there is still a balance due: Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another … (v. 8a-b)
The first exhortation to pay your bills is followed by the second, to love one another. Now, you might be wondering how the first leads into the second. This is because love is also a debt. Just as there are financial debts and material debts, there is the love debt that we owe to all. The point is made that love is a continuing debt, a debt which will never be fully paid. It is something we owe to every person, regardless of race or color, or situation in life. It is a debt we must continually be paying.
What makes this passage more interesting is that is calls on us to love, not just Christians or those like us, but also those who are not like us. It says next, … for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. (v. 8c)
When Paul exhorts us to love one another he uses the word állelous, a derivative of állos. When he exhorts us to love our neighbor he uses the word héteron a derivative of héteros. Állos is the word for another of the same kind. Héteros is the word for another of a different kind. What we are being called on to do is to love those who are not like us. Those whom we would be hesitant to love. Those to whom we do not normally gravitate. The New International Version translates it, "fellowman." The call is clearly to love all people and to demonstrate that love in practical ways.
For a brief time I studied Hebrew from a conservative Rabbi in Raleigh, North Carolina. I remember on one occasion having a discussion with him about doing good deeds. He remarked that if there was a Jewish family with a need and another Jew met that need, it was not something special, it was merely his duty. It was something that he ought to do, not something he should receive praise for. I thought that was an interesting insight. In reality, it is simply love being demonstrated on a practical level. When the Scripture calls on us to love one another, God is asking us to behave in a certain way toward one another. You see, love is not some warm, sentimental feeling we have. Love is a commitment of the will to be kind to one another, to respect one another, to help one another, and to do good to one another. Jesus taught us that love means feeding your enemy, giving your enemy a cup of cold water when he is thirsty. Jesus taught us that love means to do good to those who do not love you.
Jesus, of course, was the ultimate manifestation of true love. Because of love, Jesus left his eternal throne of glory and became a man. He suffered and died on a cross because he loved us. God’s love was manifested in God’s action on behalf of all. We need to love, not merely in word, but also in deed and in truth. Jesus said that "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Not only are we commanded to pay our bills and love our neighbor, but we are also commanded to obey our God.
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. (vv. 9-10)
The call to the Christian is to be obedient to God. We are called to submit ourselves daily to the lordship of Jesus Christ and to seek to live in accordance with His Word. If you are truly a born-again, heaven-bound child of God, then you should have a desire to obey God’s commandments. But did you know that the commandments of God have their origin in love? Love for God and love for neighbor is a summing up of all the commandments of God.
When God called his covenant people Israel, He met with them, at Sinai, and on that mountaintop, gave Moses His law. The law of God originally was inscribed on tablets of stone. We know them as the Ten Commandments. Actually, they are literally the ten "words" of God. In the beginning there were only ten. But commandments, like bills, do have a way of multiplying. As time passed, the religious leaders of Israel developed a body of literature to explain what the commandments meant and to try to apply them to everyday life. We know it as the Talmud. The ten words became twenty, and the twenty, forty, and the forty, eighty, until there finally came to be six-hundred and thirteen commandments. Imagine, six-hundred thirteen commandments in order to explain ten. Sometimes we in the Christian Church don’t make it any better. There are some churches where there are more than six-hundred thirteen commandments. But God originally gave us ten. The first four had to do with man’s relationship to God. God said that we should have no god before Him, nor make a graven image, nor take His name in vain, and that we should remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. The last six have to do with man’s relationship to people. We are to honor our father and mother, commit no murder, commit no adultery, not steal, not bear false witness, and not covet what is our neighbor’s. These commandments are still as valid today as they were when God spoke them on Sinai. And we as believers ought to desire to obey them.
It is interesting that Jesus summed these commandments up in two Great Commandments. He said that we are to love God and love our neighbor. He said that on these two commandments hung all the law and the prophets. That is an amazing statement. Can it be that loving God and your neighbor will cause you to keep the commandments? It’s true. If you love God with all of your being, you will find yourself keeping the first four commandments. And if you love your neighbor as yourself, you’ll do him good and not hurt. You will neither covet his possessions, nor steal his goods, nor kill him, nor lie about him, nor sleep with his wife. Rather, you will be looking for ways to help him, and encourage him, and build him up. You will be treating him like you treat yourself — with lots of tender loving care. Love truly is a summing up of the commandments of God. Love truly is the fulfillment of the Law. Love causes us to fulfill the Law because it seeks the good of the other. To love our neighbor means to seek his welfare and to protect his rights.
When we love, we are simply obeying our God. We are submitting ourselves to a higher law. It is the law of love, as interpreted by the full counsel of the Word of God. We are told in the Bible that we can love because He first loved us. And the power that enables us to love is nothing less than the Son of God living within us. Only as we submit to Him and surrender our lives to His lordship will we find that we are able to truly love and to truly fulfill the Law.
Our last point is really the place to begin. Only as we seek to obey our God do we find the power to live the Christian life. Do you want to live in harmony with God? Do you want to live in fellowship with your neighbor? Do you want to be an example of how a Christian deals with obligations? Then surrender to Christ and allow Him to live through you. Don’t keep tabs on how you stack up to others, rather consider how you stack up to Christ’s plan for you.
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