Thoughts From Romans 13 - Part 1

  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. Rom.13:7,8

         These are the go-to verses people use for debt free living. I will agree, it's good to pay cash for everything if you can. I just heard that if you buy a $450,000 house on a 30-year mortgage at 6.75% interest rate, over the 30 years you will have paid 1 million dollars to own that house. No wonder first time age of ownership of houses has skyrocketed from 29 years old to 45 years old. Trump is now proposing a 50-year mortgage which would change the previous bank payment from $550k to $1 million. If nothing else, that is bad stewardship of the money God has entrusted you to manage. If Marty on Ozark did this, he would lose his eyes. Fortunately, God is merciful to us dummies, but he might start giving His resources to better stewards to manage.

        Is this passage really forbidding taking out loans, though. The word outstanding in "let no debt remain outstanding", to me seems to say, if you have taken out a loan, don't miss your monthly payments. If you are renting, the landlord deserves his monthly checks. If you have workers, they deserve their wages on time. This is part of Christian integrity. It's part of being responsible, trust-worthy people that reflect well on Christ and don't allow people to say, "If that's a Christian, I don't want to be one."

      The one debt he says that has no 15, 30, 50- year end is the debt we owe others to love them. We owe people love. God gave us an unbelievable amount of love by sending His son Jesus to die for us and He is telling us that we are to do likewise. We owe a debt of love to God and He expects us to pay it back by loving others and it's such a huge amount that it will take our whole lives to give it back.

       We as humans are owed very little. We don't deserve health care, education, retirement, life liberty the pursuit of happiness - the only thing I believe we deserve is judgement for our sins. But God, rich in mercy, sent Jesus to take what we are owed. Now, we owe it to others to serve them. For example, as a doctor, if someone comes in thinking "I deserve medical care" they will be demanding unthankful and usually unsatisfied. This is also seen in the midst of the government shutdown as people aren't receiving their food stamps. One eighth of Americans feel they are owed these and are angry they aren't getting them. As a Christian doctor, I owe people health care, it comes from me. If people think they don't deserve it but I out of love am giving it to them, what a difference in attitude that makes. If people would think that they aren't owed food stamps but we as Christians owe the poor food and we feed them, what a change in attitude!

       Let's dedicate our lives to meeting the needs of others and sometimes to do that we should have less debt to free up more of God's resources to redirect.