Pastor Steve's Sermons
“Our Daily Bread”
Sept. 21, 2008 /Exodus 16:1-4,13-30/ Rev. Steve Young
An elderly woman, full of faith, would each day open her front door, step out on the front porch, look up into the sky, and shout, “Praise the Lord! Thank you for this new day! Thank you, God, for all your blessings to me!”
Well, one day an atheist moved into the house next door. And the atheist grew sick and tired of hearing this woman praise the Lord so loudly each morning. And so every day after he heard her say, “Praise the Lord,” he began to yell out, “There is no God!”
Time passed, and this awkward spectacle occurred every day.
And then one day in the winter, the lady stepped onto her front porch and, after praising the Lord, said, “Now, you know, Lord, my cupboard is getting bare, and I really need some food. I look to you, Lord, for my daily bread.”
The next morning she stepped onto her front porch, and there were two bags full of groceries sitting there in front of her door! She looked up toward heaven and shouted, “Praise the Lord! You have provided food for me in my time of need!”
Now at that very moment her neighbor suddenly appeared from around the hedge between their two yards. “There is no God!” he sneered. “I bought you those groceries myself!”
Without missing a beat, the lady threw her arms into the air and shouted, “Praise the Lord! You have given me these groceries and made the devil to pay for them!”
Speaking of empty cupboards--we’re living in some tough economic times, aren’t we? Our president used that phrase in a speech back in April, and for more and more of us that dire description of economic life is becoming real. This economic recession that we find ourselves in--with businesses shrinking, work force being laid off, or even going under, or being bought out by other companies. With home values shrinking and people losing the equity in their homes. With the rising cost of food and fuel. With people worried about the safety of their savings and their investments and their pensions. With some folks swamped by credit card debt, behind on their mortgage payments, borrowing from their retirement funds, unable to save anything. With some people at the point of declaring bankruptcy. This economic recession seems to be hitting everyone is some way. Someone said to me recently that they had never seen the economic situation this bad in our country.
But let’s put our misery into perspective. For most of us, meeting our immediate material needs is nowhere near as challenging as it was for the ancient Israelites as they wandered through the wilderness after the Exodus. Now those Israelites of years ago really had it tough.
Let’s recall their story. The Israelites were less than two months out of Egypt. Their pursuers, the armies of Pharaoh, had finally been waylaid at the Red Sea, thanks to a dramatic intervention of Almighty God, and thus they were no more threat to the Israelites. But now the Israelites are in the wilderness and facing all the rigors that a wilderness brings.
Now keep in mind that the wildernesses that we meet in the pages of Scripture are quite different than the wildernesses that many of us know here in the U.S. When I think of a wilderness, I tend to think of vines and brambles and dense foliage and heavy undergrowth. But the wildernesses of the Holy Land tended to be hot and dry and barren and sandy or rocky. It was a desert wilderness, with sparse vegetation. Oases were few and far between. Only the tough-minded and tough-hearted could survive the rigors of the desert wilderness climate and topography.
When you’re wandering in the wilderness, every day is an anxious day. What will we find to eat today? Where will we find fresh water to drink today? Where will we find provisions to meet the basic needs of life?
Now in our Scripture passage this morning the Israelites were a few days out from the oasis of Elim, where there were 12 springs and 70 palm trees. And now they were back in the desert wilderness, facing the rigors of hunger and thirst. And they began to complain to Moses about how tough things were for them. All of a sudden, Egypt didn’t look so bad. Wasn’t there water to drink in Egypt? Wasn’t there bread enough to go around? Wasn’t there meat to eat? Those basic needs assumed paramount importance for them. The oppression of their Egyptian sojourn seemed to pale in comparison with the rigors of the desert wilderness. The Israelites forgot the pain of the whip of the Egyptian taskmaster. They forgot the long hours toiling in the hot sun making bricks for Pharaoh’s store cities. They forgot the degradation of being a slave. When food and water are scarce, those other things pale in significance.
Now from our vantage point 3000 years later we often tend to judge the Israelites as cranky children. Can’t they see that God is guiding them? Don’t they have visual reminders of his presence in the pillar of cloud by day and the fire by night? Don’t they remember God’s triumph at the Red Sea? Complain, complain, complain--that’s all they seem to do.
But I suspect that if we were the ones who were trudging through the trackless wasteland, we would have done some complaining, too.
The Israelites wondered if they had been forsaken by God, but the Scripture says that God heard their complaint and told Moses that he would provide food for them in the wilderness: he would rain down bread from heaven. It would come with the dew. It would be like coriander, a small, sweet-smelling seed; its color would be like bdellium, a whitish-yellow gum (Num. 11:7).
Every morning of the week except the seventh they would find it lying on the ground. And they could collect it in quantities large enough to feed their families. They could easily find an omer a day, a quantity of measure equal to about two quarts. There would always be enough for everyone to have enough but for no one to have too much. If you tried to hoard it and keep it for the days ahead, it would become buggy, and it would rot. Except for the sixth day of the week, when they could gather twice the normal amount and have enough left to feed them on the seventh day, too, so that they could rest on the Sabbath. They called it “manna”, meaning, “what is it?” And they could beat it with a mortar and pestle or grind it. And the resulting flour they could boil or bake it into loaves of bread that tasted like cakes made with olive oil (Num. 11:8).
And as long as they were in the wilderness there was manna. It was new every morning. Manna was God’s sustaining gift to his people. It was God’s provision for their daily needs. It was God taking care of his people.
Now we have a theological name for that. We call it providence. What is providence? Providence may simply be defined as God “providing” for the needs of his people.
The Israelites had trouble learning the lesson of the providence of God. They always struggled with it. Throughout their wilderness wanderings their thoughts were focused on what they lacked. They had difficulty believing that they were living under the watchful oversight of God and that God indeed was taking care of them each day and that God would take care of them in the future.
And Jesus’ followers had to be taught the same lesson. When Jesus saw his disciples anxious about what they would eat or what they would drink or what they would wear if they became his followers, he told them to learn a lesson from the birds of the air and the flowers of the field about God’s care (Matt. 6:25-33).
I wonder what Jesus would say to us today as we walk through our economic wilderness. Would Jesus assure us that God cares about our challenging financial situation? Would Jesus tell us that God is still at work in our lives? Would Jesus assure us that God is taking care of our material needs today? Would Jesus remind us that God is supplying and will continue to supply our daily bread?
Here we find ourselves in the month when we give attention to the stewardship of our material resources--how we handle the resources we have received from God—the bag of groceries on our front porch, as it were. When we consider what we spend for ourselves, what we save, and what we give back to God.
And here is where the rubber hits the road.
Because if we have a strong sense of the providence of God, that God is indeed caring for us and providing for us, we’re going to be a lot more relaxed and cheerful in our financial commitments than if we are afraid about having enough of the things that we need for our future. If we don’t have a genuine faith in the providence of God we’re going to be anxious and afraid. We’re going to think that if we commit to tithing or to giving proportionately we might not have enough in the future. Something bad might happen to us. Something totally unexpected might occur. And we would miss the money that we gave to God. We might be laid off from work. We might become ill. The stock market might crash. Our bank might fail. The recession might become a depression. And then what would we do?
I believe that the primary human attitude that resists proportional giving and tithing is not human greed, but rather the attitude of fear. The fear of not having enough. The fear that God won’t provide. Although there may be several surface arguments against tithing and proportional giving, I believe that the basic attitude underlying our resistance to giving is fear. The fear that God might actually let us starve out here in the wilderness.
My friends, is that the type of God that we have? Do we have the type of God who would lead us into the wilderness only to let us starve there?
Or do we have a God who cares for his children and gives them their daily bread?
Bishop Robert Schnase, bishop of the Missouri Conference, tells in his book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations the story of a young couple he knew in a church in Texas. Both Matt and Keri grew up as United Methodists. They had been active in UMYF and Sunday School. Although neither was particularly active in church during their college years, after they met, married, and settled back in the community, they became active in their church again. By the time they were in their mid-thirties, and they had two young children. They both had good incomes, with a nice home in the suburbs, two cars, and kids in preschool. They were quite active in their church. They both took Disciple Bible Study and were involved in starting a new Sunday School class for couples of their own age.
And then something happened that would end up changing their lives. Their pastor asked them to write a short devotional piece about stewardship for the church newsletter. It was part of the preparation for Consecration Sunday, which, as you know, emphasizes proportionate giving and the tithe. Writing the piece got the couple to think about their own level of giving to the church. Although they felt good about the amount that they gave to the church over the course of the year, when they looked at the graph that plotted giving to the church against household income, they realized that they were giving less than 2% of their income to the church.
And as they considered the practice of tithing and how that practice would impact their lives, they felt that it was really impossible, given their mortgage payment, car payments, saving up money for college, and saving for retirement. They never had money left over at the end of the month. How could they possibly tithe?
But they decided that for the next year they would step up their level of giving from 2% to 3% of their income. And with God’s help they did just that the next year.
Well, the next year the pastor asked them to give a “stewardship moment” during the service the Sunday before Consecration Sunday. Their topic was to be “How Giving Shapes One’s Faith.” That year Matt and Keri decided to try to increase their percentage of giving for the next year to 4% of their income. But to do so, they had to make decisive changes in their spending habits. They began to eat fast food less often, to keep their cars longer before they traded them, and to monitor the money they spent on family entertainment. And they used the raises in their salaries each year to help them to increase their giving.
It took Matt and Keri three more years to reach their goal of tithing.
Keri commented that the first time that she wrote the church a check that represented their tithe that it was a tremendous gut-check moment. It seemed crazy and extravagant. It seemed to be such a large amount. But she said that, on the other hand, having reached the tithe, she and her husband also experienced a tremendous feeling of accomplishment.
That same year they were asked to give a talk on Consecration Sunday. Matt began by saying that people talk about putting God first in their lives, but in actual practice most of a person’s major decisions are made without reference to God’s priorities, and God is really peripheral instead of central to their decision-making. Instead of giving God the leftovers at the end of the month, tithing is a spiritual discipline that puts God first. It’s a practical way of saying, “God really is the Lord of our lives.”
And then Keri described how tithing forced them to think about how they used their money. Tithing made them spend money more wisely, with less waste and fewer impulse purchases. Tithing caused them to save more diligently. Tithing made them rethink their borrowing and debt. Lowering credit card debts and auto debts freed substantial amounts for saving and giving. Keri went on to tell how for her and Matt, tithing had broken the sense of panic, worry, desperation, and fear that had driven many of their financial decisions in the past. By giving more, they worried less!
Is that possible? Can one by giving more worry less?
Matt’s and Keri’s experience is not unique. Many tithing families have found that the practice brings a real peace to the home. And they find that God does provide enough for them to have sufficient resources for their own needs and also enough to return a tenth to God.
Malachi the prophet put it like this: “Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house, and thus put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts; see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing” (Mal. 3:10).
God does provide: manna from heaven, bread for the wilderness journey, food on our table in the middle of economic crisis, money enough to give to God with enough left over to provide for the things we truly need.
At the root of this freedom from anxiety is this assurance: If we pray: “Give us this day our daily bread,” God really hears and answers.
“Stewards of God’s Mercy”
Sept. 14, 2008 / Matthew 18:21-35 / Rev. Steve Young
A woman was given a parrot for her birthday, but she was at once dismayed to discover that the only things that the parrot could say were rude and insulting comments. “You’re too fat.” “You’re so ugly.” “You’re really dumb.”
Nothing that the woman could say or do seemed to make any difference. She tried soft music, kind words, firm reprimands, and even a cold shoulder. The bird still responded with displays of disgusting language. In utter frustration she decided to put the parrot somewhere where it could chill out. She opened the door of the freezer and pushed the bird inside.
She heard a tremendous fuss at first, but then it became eerily quiet. Frightened that she might have left the parrot inside the freezer too long, she opened the door and brought the parrot out.
The parrot shook a few ice crystals off its feathers and then said to her, “I would like to offer my sincerest apologies to you for offending you with my language. Please forgive me. I’m very sorry and promise not to do it again.”
“I forgive you,” said the woman, mightily relieved.
And then the parrot said: “Ma’am, may I ask you a question?”
“Of course,” she responded.
“Just what was it that the chicken did?”
My sermon is about forgiveness this morning. It’s about God’s forgiveness and about ours.
Jesus often spoke about forgiveness, but perhaps his most vivid teaching on the subject is found in the parable recorded in Matthew 18, beginning with verse 23.
It’s a parable that I don’t need to explain to our children and youth. After all, one morning of Vacation Bible School our youth acted out this parable--with dialogue, costuming, and even a little bit of staging--and our Vacation Bible School children came in with their little groups to be the audience. But some of you weren’t there. And perhaps for some of you the story is not that familiar. Maybe some of you don’t know the story at all. So let’s review it once again.
Jesus told a story about a king who was settling accounts with his servants. And he came upon one who had obviously grossly mismanaged the king’s funds and who owed the king a tremendous amount of money. It was the largest amount of money that could have been described at that time, for the talent was the largest unit of money and 10,000 was the largest number in common usage. Ten thousand talents was a huge amount—something like the gross national product of a small country. Well, of course, the servant couldn’t pay such a gargantuan debt, and the king as punishment sentenced him, his wife, his children to be sold as slaves and decreed that all his possessions were to be confiscated.
As you might expect, the servant was beside himself with remorse. He fell down before the king and sobbed. He begged him, “Please, sir, be patient with me. Give me time. And I’ll pay you back.”
And seeing the servant’s penitent posture and hearing his plaintive cries, the king had mercy on the servant. He forgave the servant the entire amount of the debt! And he freed him from any punishment or penalty.
But going out from there, that very servant came upon a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, a few thousand dollars in today’s reckoning. And he grabbed his fellow servant by the throat and demanded, “Pay up. Give me what you owe me.”
And this second servant fell to his knees and begged for patience. “Give me time,” he said. “And I will pay it all back.”
But the first servant wouldn’t hear of it. He turned a deaf ear to his colleague’s cries for mercy. And he had him thrown into debtors’ prison. Until the entire debt be paid.
Now that last action did not happen in a vacuum. Some of his fellow servants saw what had transpired, and they were deeply moved by the tremendous injustice of it all. Here was a man who had been forgiven so much, and yet who was unwilling to extend a little mercy to a colleague. And they reported him to the king.
And when the king heard what the servant had done, he was furious. “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” he thundered. And he seized the man and resorted to a common tactic used by tyrants at the time. He commanded that the servant be tortured until his family came up with enough money to pay the debt.
And then Jesus made the shocking application. “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart” (Matt. 18:35).
Although biblical scholars tell us that we shouldn’t treat Jesus’ parables as allegories, where every element of the story has a moral application, but rather as stories with a single point, I do believe that there are a few legitimate inferences that we may draw from this parable.
One lesson that we might draw from this parable is about the nature of God—God has a merciful quality about him.
If the king is the “God figure” in the parable, we see in him someone who is moved by penitence and remorse. We see in the king someone who is able and willing to extend mercy. And so we may draw the conclusion that our heavenly Father has those qualities as well. Our heavenly Father is also slow to anger and abounding in mercy. The psalmist said, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).
When we come to God with a desire to turn from our sins, earnestly seeking God’s forgiveness for our offenses, we will find that our God is a God of mercy, one who is willing to forgive.
Then again, we can draw from this parable a lesson about the comparative debts that we human beings owe God versus the debts that others may owe us. In the incredible contrast between what the first servant owed the king and what the second servant owed the first--a 500,000 to 1 ratio--Jesus was pointing out the qualitative distinction that exists between what we owe God and what others may owe us.
We owe God so much. Consider our failure to live as God’s people, consider our sins of omission, consider our sins of commission, consider our rebelliousness, consider our indifference to the things of God, consider our unbelief; consider our disobedience. Consider how we have failed to live as people of love. Consider how we have not loved God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. Consider how we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.
Now compare that to the wrongs that we may have suffered from others. Someone has hurt our feelings. Someone has lied to us. Someone has deceived us. Someone has taken advantage of us. Someone has broken our trust. And it hurts. Of course, it hurts. It’s not easy to forgive. It is never easy to forgive when hurt is involved.
But a point of the parable is that there is a stark qualitative difference between what we owe to God and what others owe to us.
And a third lesson we might draw from this parable is that these two acts of forgiveness, God’s and ours, should be coordinate. They should go together.
Jesus was quick to remind his followers that experiencing God’s forgiveness is really connected to our own willingness to forgive others. “So will your heavenly Father do to you….” (Matt. 18:35). Jesus emphasized the connection between God’s forgiveness and our forgiveness again and again. In his model prayer Jesus said: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matt. 6:12). And at the end of that prayer we read: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15). And in the gospel of Luke we hear Jesus say: “Forgive and you will be forgiven…for the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:37-38). And again, in the beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7).
Now let’s be clear on what forgiveness is and what it is not.
Forgiveness is not a denial of the things that we feel. It does not involve the suppression of hurt feelings. It is not telling ourselves that what someone said or did didn’t hurt. Nor is forgiveness a condoning of sin. Forgiveness is not excusing sorry behavior. Forgiveness is not saying that sin doesn’t matter. Forgiveness is not whitewashing evil. Nor does forgiveness preclude a person from suffering legal consequences for actions that broke the law. Nor does forgiveness mean relegating ourselves to be somebody’s doormat, to be stomped on all day long. Forgiveness does not mean that a person couldn’t or shouldn’t remove oneself from an abusive situation. Again, forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Reconciliation means that two people are restored in friendship once again. But for reconciliation to happen it takes the efforts of both parties. One cannot reconcile if the other holds back. A person can forgive another without reconciliation taking place. And again, forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting. How can one totally forget painful experiences from the past? But forgiveness means that a person can remember without bitterness.
If forgiveness is none of these things, then what is it?
Well, forgiveness is letting go of the resentment that one harbors at having been wronged. Forgiveness is relinquishing the desire for revenge. Forgiveness is refusing to allow the poison of bitterness to fester down in one’s heart. Forgiveness is a conscious decision not to nurse a grudge. Forgiveness is a decision that by the grace of God we will seek to set free from our spite the one who has wronged us. We will pray for his or her well-being. We will seek that person’s good.
Let no one mistake the fact that true forgiveness is hard work.
No one knows that more than John McCain. For 5½ years he suffered horrendous physical and mental torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp. He had every reason to leave Vietnam a bitter and broken man. But McCain overcame his bitterness. This is what he wrote: “From the moment I regained my freedom I was intent on not letting Vietnam, or at least the most difficult memories of my times there, intrude on my future happiness. Looking back in anger at any experience is self-destructive, and I am grateful to have avoided it. I’ve made my peace with Vietnam and with the Vietnamese.”
True forgiveness is tough to do.
I am reminded of someone else traumatically affected by the Vietnam War. On June 30 of this year she read an essay on National Public Radio that she had written, entitled “The Long Road to Forgiveness.”
You probably don’t know her by name, but you have very likely seen her picture. For it was she who was photographed as a nine-year-old girl, running stark naked and screaming, with other children who fled a burning village.
You see, the North Vietnamese had taken her village of Trang Bang, which lay on an important highway from Saigon to the Cambodian border. And the South Vietnamese Army had decided to win it back. They decided to take it back by raining napalm upon the village. And Kim Phuc was in the village when aircraft dropped the napalm. It was June 8, 1972. The napalm set fire to her clothing, which subsequently set her back on fire.
As she ran down the highway she was screaming, “Nong qua, nong qua!” “Too hot, too hot.” An associated press photographer stood with a group of South Vietnamese soldiers and shot the photo as she came running down the road toward them. And the photo reached U.S. newspapers in a couple of days. And in time that photo became an icon of the war.
Audiotapes released years later from the Nixon White House reveal that Nixon and Haldemann commented on the photo. They speculated that the photo may have been doctored by the anti-war folks. “I’m wondering if that was fixed,” Nixon said. “Could have been,” Haldemann said.
What they didn’t know was that nine-year-old Kim Phuc was taken to a nearby hospital where her chances of living were deemed slim to none—her burns were so severe. They tried to triage her, so that they could treat other wounded persons who had better chances of living. But the photographer pressured them to treat her. Against all odds, and after a 14-month hospital stay and 17 surgical procedures, she was able to return to her village.
For a time she was used as a propaganda tool by the communists. Later she was sent to Cuba for her education. And somewhere along the way Kim Phuc became a Christian. And in 1992, she and her new husband, on a trip back from Moscow, stepped off a plane that had stopped to refuel in Gander, Newfoundland, and defected to the nation of Canada, where they still live today.
In 1996 Kim Phuc was invited to give a speech at the United States Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Veterans Day, where she reminded her audience that we cannot change the past but we can work for a more peaceful future. Following the speech she received word that the man who had ordered the air strike on her village wished to meet her. And she agreed to see him. Someone told her that he was right behind her. She stopped and turned and was overcome by the anguish she saw written across his face. She opened her arms to him; he fell into her arms sobbing. And he said, “I’m so sorry. I’m just so sorry.”
And she answered, “It’s all right. I forgive. I forgive.” Later that day they knelt and prayed together. The vet reflected on the experience. He said, “Finally, I was free. I had found peace.” Her forgiveness had set him free. By the way that Vietnam vet’s name is John Plummer, and today John is a United Methodist pastor. He is pastor of Rocky Mount United Methodist Church in Rocky Mount, Virginia.
And Kim Phuc is still an emissary of God’s peace. She tours the world on behalf of the Kim Foundation, a charitable organization that funds medical care for child victims of war around the world. It was a long and hard road for her. But the power of God’s forgiveness had led to her being able to forgive.
What can pull us out of hatred and bitterness and make us able to forgive?
John McCain tells how one evening he was tied in ropes by North Vietnamese guards and left alone in a tortured body position to suffer through the night. A little later another guard entered his room and silently loosened the ropes to alleviate his suffering. Just before morning that guard returned to McCain’s cell to re-tighten the ropes so that the other guards would not discover his kindness.
The kind North Vietnamese guard never spoke a word to McCain, but several months later as McCain stood in the prison courtyard on a Christmas morning, the same North Vietnamese guard approached McCain and, with his sandal, drew a cross in the dirt so that McCain could see. After a moment, he rubbed it out and walked away.
You want to find the power to forgive someone in your life? Look to the cross. Where one who hung there in agony said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
And when we are able to forgive another for the wrong that person has done to us, we become stewards of God’s mercy, who through the cross has already offered to forgive us.
“Staying in Debt”
Sept. 7, 2008 / Romans 13:8-14 / Rev. Steve Young
A young couple deeply in debt had a humorous way of dealing with the collection agencies that were hounding them. They left the following recording on the home answering machine that screened their calls: “Sorry, Butch and Babs aren’t here right now. Please leave your name and number after the tone. If you are calling regarding an outstanding debt, please leave your message before the tone.”
Would that it were so easy to avoid our debts!
Although there is a strain of financial advice that recommends staying in debt--particularly if you are borrowing from the equity in your home at low interest and investing that money in a higher yielding investment, and if you can deduct your interest on your income tax--I think that most people breathe a sigh of relief when the time comes that they can pay off their debts. When their last credit card that has been carrying a monthly balance is paid off. Praise God! When the last payment on their vehicle loan has been made and the title is now in their name. Praise the Lord! Or when payment #360 out of 360 on their home mortgage loan has been paid. And they finally own their home free and clear. Well, for most folks that’s a time for rejoicing and giving thanks!
In the spiritual realm there is also a joy that comes when we know that we are free and clear of our spiritual debts.
I think of our debt of sin.
The thing that EUB’s used to pray and Presbyterians still pray when they recite the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” United Methodists, of course, use the word “trespasses” in place of “debts.” But the meaning is the same. We all pray for forgiveness of our sins against God. Debts, trespasses, sins—whatever words we choose to use--amount to the same thing. They refer to those areas of our life where we have offended God and broken his laws.
They are the offenses that, if left unpaid, are liable to send a person to God’s debtors prison.
So that we might be set free of this debt was the reason that Jesus went to the cross, the New Testament tells us. Someone has described what Jesus did by saying: “He paid a debt he did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay. Or as Colossians puts it, “He forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us….He set this aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col. 2:13-14). When we celebrate communion we make allusion to the payment of that debt, the forgiveness of those trespasses. As our communion prayer phrases Jesus’ words: “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
This debt of sin is a debt that we no longer have to pay. We are as free from that debt as the individual who has paid off his last credit card or auto loan or home loan. And that’s something to jump and down about. If we truly knew the extent of that divine payment for our debt of sin, I believe that we would all be jumping for joy!
But having acknowledged that the debt of our sins has been paid does not let us off the hook with respect to our duty to God. Because God has set us free from our sins does not mean that we are free to do just anything. Or else the efforts of the last 10 Sundays have been misguided. Were these Ten Commandments not in fact demands, requirements, obligations that God gave to his people? And commandments that when properly interpreted are still valid for us today!
And doesn’t the Apostle Paul indicate in his letter to the Romans that Christians are not off the hook when it comes to God’s expectations for them? Doesn’t Paul indicate that to be a Christian is to be obligated to God? Doesn’t Paul tell us that there is something that we must be doing? Not in order to be saved from our sins—Christ has done that--but in order to be faithful to the one who saved us.
Listen to the first part of verse eight in Romans 13: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Or as a contemporary translation puts it: “Let love be your only debt.”
My friends, if there is one consistent obligation that Jesus, Paul, and the other New Testament writers give to Christians, it is the debt to love one another. We remember that when Jesus was asked what was the most important duty of all for his followers, he said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37, 39).
If the debt of sins was meant to be taken away by Christ, the debt of love was laid upon the conscience of every would-be disciple by that same Christ. According to Jesus, every follower of his is obligated to love God and others. And that was Paul’s point in this passage from the book of Romans. To love is a debt from which no Christian ought ever to be free.
Now someone here may want to respond by noting that the commandment to love sounds a bit airy and insipid compared to the meatiness of the Ten Commandments. But if you are inclined to think that, let me assure you that neither Jesus nor Paul means by love the same thing that contemporary culture means by that word.
Contemporary culture understands by love something like this: a spontaneous, warm, affectionate feeling toward another. Now if we were to read Jesus’ commandment to love with such a contemporary lens, we would surely conclude that that commandment would be impossible to implement. I mean, how can you possibly feel warmly affectionate toward everyone? If a spontaneous, warm affection for another is what love is all about, how in the world could one command it? If that is what love is, you either have loving feelings toward a person, or you don’t.
But that is not what Christian love is at all about. Christian love is not at its base a warm and syrupy feeling for another. No, Christian love is compassion and goodwill and benevolence. Christian love is acting in a loving manner toward another person. Christian love is rooted in the human will and not in the emotions. Christian love is giving sacrificially to another. Not because we are compelled by a warm, syrupy feeling, but because we decide that giving of ourselves to others is what God wants us to do--and we want to be faithful to God. Christian love is being there for a person in need. Not because we are necessarily filled with affection for that person, but because we know that if Christ were there, he would be there to help that person in need, and we want to be like Christ.Christian love has its prime example in God sending his Son into a sinful and rebellious world to save the world. Now that was tough love! When God gave his Son to save us—that was tough love! Christian love is about doing the caring thing for others regardless of our emotional disposition at the time. For the Christian, to love one’s neighbors is to seek to be fair to them, kind to them, honest with them, helpful to them, respectful to them—no matter how difficult they are. That is what it means to act with Christian love.
And when we do, sometimes a miracle happens.
Tom Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, puts it like this. He says, “If you try to treat someone you thoroughly dislike as though in fact you cared very deeply for them—if you try to think of how it is to live inside their skin and walk in their shoes—then it may well happen that a genuine sympathy arises, and from that, real affection.” That is to say, loving feelings sometimes follow loving actions.
See if that doesn’t work for you. Act in a loving way toward the person with whom you are at odds. And see if your appreciation and your affection do not grow toward that person. Or pray for the person with whom you don’t see eye-to-eye. What a loving act that is--to pray for another! Ask what God would have you to do with them, for them. Ask God to show you how to love that person. Follow up on any guidance you receive from God in that area. And see if feelings of tenderness develop.
If we act in a loving manner, the loving feelings will often follow!
Paul says, “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” And then he adds: “For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
What law was Paul talking about?
Well, Paul was referencing that law expressed in commandments like these: “you shall not commit adultery”, “you shall not murder”, “you shall not steal” and “you shall not covet.” You recognize them, of course. They are four of the Ten Commandments.
Now when Paul says that the one who loves one another has fulfilled the law, he wasn’t offering his readers a substitute law—the law of love--that they might do in lieu of trying to keep the Ten Commandments. Paul wasn’t saying that if you don’t want to buckle down and keep the Ten Commandments then just love--live spontaneously, warmly, and affectionately with one another. No! Paul was saying that if someone loves in the Christian way, acting in a loving manner with the interests of the other person at heart, that person will end up keeping those Ten Commandments!
How do you figure?
Well, if you act in a loving way toward your parents, how could you not by your love honor your father and your mother?
And if you act in a loving way toward another, how could you possibly intentionally take their life. You would never commit murder.
And if you truly loved a married couple, you’re not going to want to do anything that would interfere with the integrity of their marriage. To interfere with the integrity of their marriage is not a loving thing to do. So you’re not going to commit adultery.
And if you truly love a person, you’re not going to take from them what belongs to them, are you? You’re not going to deprive them of their property. You’re not going to steal.
And if you love a person, how can you spread lies about them? How can you bear false witness against them? If you act in a loving way toward a person, how could you say things that might hurt them?
In each of these specific circumstances to act in a loving way toward a person will end up with the same results as focusing upon obeying the particular commandment in question. Do you see how living out the New Testament law of love comes to the same end as obeying the Ten Commandments? Do you see how the commandment to love is a fulfillment of the moral law of the Old Testament?
So we reiterate the words of the Apostle: “Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
So that is the debt from which we are never to be free. We are never free from the obligation to show Christian love to another. As long as we live, we are to be debtors to love. We never arrive at a stage or station in life where that debt does not apply. Whether we’re four or eighty-four. Whether we’re brand-new Christians or tried-and-true saints. Whether we’re officers of the church or just foot soldiers in the Lord’s army. We’re always in debt. We’re never paid up. There is always yet more to do.
Stay in debt. Stay in love.
The good news is that we’re not in this alone. Jesus, our spiritual friend and companion, is by our side to help us. Jesus is the spiritual source of our love. Love is Christ’s work of grace in our lives.
You see, when we put Jesus in our tank, when we let him fuel our life, then the sentiment of that old gospel hymn begins to become reality:
“Makes me love everybody,
Makes me love everybody,
Makes my love everybody,
And it’s good enough for me.”