How many of you have ever been in debt? Even if it's just a small amount of money, it can be overwhelming. I remember when Shiloh and I signed the papers for our first home loan. I was almost physically sick knowing I would owe someone SOOOO much money for 30 years.
When you're in debt, it can often create a pit in your stomach that eats away at you. You feel this sense of urgency to remind you to get out of debt. Or you can be completely overwhelmed by both the feeling and the debt. You work harder or pinch extra pennies to pay it off. Whatever the case, when we are in debt, we FEEL it.
Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love, for whoever loves has fulfilled the law. -Romans 13:8
As I read Romans 13:8, I think about how the debt to continuing to love makes me feel.
Because all too often it produces no urgency.
No extra work.
No sense that I have to do something now.
It is really easy to forget that we owe a never-payable sized debt to God for the love that he showed us in Jesus Christ. And we pay it back by loving others. (I am in no way suggesting that we can pay it back or that it earns our salvation. Just that it is a debt we owe that we can only make payments on with our love.)
This isn't a "be nice to others" love, either. It isn't easy. It is self-sacrificing. It chooses to see, and then know, people that are invisible in our culture. (If you don't know where these people are, go to wherever the low income housing assistance in your community is located, and buy someone there a meal.) We need to feel the urgency and love others with radical abandon.
What a beautiful debt to owe! May kingdom-sized love abound in your life!
How are you loving others?
"Give me Christ or else I die!"
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