Goin’ For Broke

UNSHAKEABLE: By and large, debt is a crippler, and we ought not to get enslaved to it. In fact, we ought to do everything we can to get out from under it. My advice: Get yourself educated about money management, get ruthlessly disciplined with your finances, develop a strategic plan for debt reduction, and then go after it with reckless abandon. You will never regret debt elimination, but you will always bemoan indebtedness.

Unshakeable Living // Romans 13:8

Owe nothing to anyone — except for your obligation to love one another. If you love your neighbor, you will fulfill the requirements of God’s law.

American history is littered with scores of humorous tombstones, and one of my favorite epitaphs simply reads, “Owen Moore Passed Away — Owin’ More Than He Could Pay.” From the beginning of time right up to the present, the reality of debt aptly describes far too many people in our world, and it is certainly weighing heavily on our collective minds currently as we think of what the burgeoning national debt might to this great country of ours. Debt is a real and present danger!

In the 1950s, Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded a song describing the dark and difficult challenges of the lives of coal miners. “Sixteen Tons” became a number-one hit and its most memorable line was one that people can still relate to:

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.

Maybe that is how you feel — you owe your soul, and everything else, to the “company store”, or whoever it is that holds your debt. Perhaps Owen Moore’s epitaph aptly describes your life right now.

By and large, debt is a crippler, and we ought not to get enslaved to it. In fact, we ought to do everything we can to get out from under it. My advice: Get yourself educated about money management, get ruthlessly disciplined with your finances, develop a strategic plan for debt reduction, and then go after it with reckless abandon. You will never regret debt elimination, but you will always bemoan indebtedness.

Now let’s be very clear about what Paul is saying here, because his words are often used to wrongly hammer anyone who borrows money. So to add balance to the above paragraph, Paul is not prohibiting borrowing, especially since the Bible makes provision for it. Deuteronomy 23:19—20 and 24:10-13, as well as a host of other Scripture, assumes lending and borrowing and provides very clear guidelines for both. What Paul is simply saying is that believers are to pay their financial obligations when they are due — including their taxes (Romans 13:7) as well as payment on their debt. Obviously, other scriptural teachings on finances come into play as to the wisdom and limits of healthy indebtedness.

But Paul has a bigger point to make here: The biggest debt we owe, and it is definitely an unrepayable one, is the debt of love. And his advice is challenging yet compelling: “Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other.” (MSG)

Now understand, this debt derives from our indebtedness to God for his unmerited love for us, most graciously and tenderly demonstrated in Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. Romans 5:8 powerfully reminds us of this love, and by extension, the debt of love we owe to God:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

The conditions of our debt repayment are clearly spelled out both in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18), and by Jesus, himself, in Matthew 22:39,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here’s the thing about this love debt: You cannot love God with all your being without loving your fellow human beings with all your energies, and you cannot love your fellow human beings properly without loving God as he deserves. But if you get love for God and love for people right, you have nailed the laws of God governing human relationships (Rom 13:9) and are well on your way to paying your un-payable debt of love.

But just remember, you will never pay that one off — and that’s a good thing. So in the love-your-fellow-man department, you might as well go for broke.