Text: ROMANS 8: 1-17

Forgive us our Debts  

Debt is the new American slavery. You take out loans or charge up your credit cards and you are owned by the bank until you pay them off. If you own a house, you are owned by that mortgage until you pay it off. 

If you have credit card debt, it goes on until you pay the last penny, with lost of interest. 

When we say the Lord’s Prayer, we are right to say “debts” instead of “sins” or “trespasses.” “Trespasses” is the result of translating Greek to Latin before it comes to English. “Debts” is the Greek, and it makes perfect sense. The Jews believed that when you sinned against someone, you were indebted to them. We feel this. When we let someone down or otherwise do  someone wrong, we feel indebted until things are made right again. When we sin, we let God down, and are right to feel indebted to Him. We pray for forgiveness of that debt, and God forgives us. 

The Sin of Adam is an enormous indebtedness that we can never pay off. It’s like receiving a letter from your bank saying, “You owe $26 billion dollars and the interest rate is 20% compounded daily.” 

“Could I have possibly been that bad?” you think. No, but you are born an inheritor of that debt. Your family name is responsible for payment because your great, great grandparents messed things up royally. 

“It’s not fair!” you say, “I didn’t ask to be born!” Blame your parents, blame your grandparents, blame society, blame whomever you like, but it changes nothing—you have an insane debt to repay, and until you repay it, you are a slave to that debt, and your heart and soul are enslaved to all the anxiety of bearing that debt. Depression and despair are normal, rational, responses.

So we are born into a fallen cosmos, indebted to the gills from the moment we take our first breath. Born into unspeakably shameful indebtedness. So what can you do? Roll up your sleeves and do your best to start paying it off, bit by bit? Suppose you find, after ten years of 70-hour weeks, after denying yourself every creature comfort and little pleasure of the flesh, after turning practically every penny over to the bank in service to the debt, you find that the debt is…the same. What? After all that work? Yep, all you work—all that money—barely covered the accrued interest, sorry!

Despair. Despair and death are the logical conclusion of this debt. “Why bother trying?” you say, “Why go on?” And your phone, texts, emails, and home mailbox are all clogged up by lines of collection agents. 

Wouldn’t it be great—you fantacize—to win the Powerball? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some anonymous billionaire just came and paid it off? How would that feel? Such relief. 

Robert F. Smith is the founder, chairman and CEO of a private equity firm called Vista Equity Partners. During his commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he announced he would be paying off all the students debts of the class of 2019. The place went wild. Smith followed by urging them to do—in the ways they could—likewise, and to learn from the actions of 'positive role models’.

Can you imagine that feeling? Total relief and freedom—a fresh start—liberation and new life. 

Good News…lite

And then your dream seems to be coming true. You receive a letter telling you that due to the generosity of an anonymous giver, 25.5 billion dollars have been paid in your name—for free! Amazing! Someone—some anonymous multi-billionaire—cared about you and your situation enough to give 25.5 billion dollars toward your freedom! Can you even imagine such a gift? 

As you sight with relief, you receive another letter from the bank. Good news! You hereby owe the bank a mere 500 million dollars—isn’t that great news? No, it too is disparaging. You’re still enslaved to an essentially-unpayable debt. 

This is the Law. This is sin. We are indebted to God beyond what we can imagine paying. All our good deeds, good intentions, and committed devotion can do nothing to pay that debt down—they don’t even cover the interest.  We are fools if we think we make any headway by our own attempts at pleasing the Lord. Our piety is vanity. Our good works as filthy rags.

There is a kind of Christianity out there with a very false Jesus. This Jesus pays 25.5 billion off of our debt, but still leaves us so heavily indebted that we remain enslaved to debt, albeit a smaller remainder. This false Jesus stands at the head of a false Christianity that demands good works of Christians: 

•You must be righteous!

•You must be sincere and authentic! 

•You must serve the poor and outcast!

•You must give your heart to God! 

•You must devote your soul to Jesus!

•You must help Him save the lost!

This is a false gospel built on a false Jesus—one incapable of paying the full debt without your and my help.  It is a false Jesus who needs us. He needs us to follow through, or needs us to love Him, or needs us build His Kingdom here on Earth. 

I tell you by the Holy Spirit: any god who needs is not the God of Scripture. Any Jesus who needs us, or the church, or our good works—is not the true Jesus revealed in Scripture. 

If that false Jesus demands your attention or service, renounce him today. 

Yet another Letter?

You get another letter in the mail. It says, “The entirety of your debt has been paid in full. What is more, your name has been added to a Trust fund worth 70 trillion dollars. The entire amount is yours to share with others named in the trust. You are a full inheritor—the Trust now names you Son/Daughter of the estate.” 

How are things changed? 

The work that you’ve devoted yourself to in order to pay off the debt? No longer needed, no longer required. So much for piety and good works. When you were indebted, you had to serve. Now that you are totally freed from debt, you are also free to serve. 

So what shall we do now that we are co-owners of the Kingdom? How does that Trust change how we view ourselves and what we do with ourselves? 

Now that we are free, are we going to rush into downtown LA, park ourselves under a bridge and shoot up heroin? Not likely (although that is where the indebtedness of sin could lead us). That is the fruit of indebtedness, but now that we are trillionaires, why would we live that way? Paul says the same about the law and sin. Now that we are under grace, why would we serve the Law? Now that we are saved under the Spirit, why would we live according to the flesh? We wouldn’t, which is Paul’s point. 

Since we no longer live under indebtedness, but under the New Trust, our lives are changed, converted. We awake every morning with hope and joy, knowing that we are members of the ultraroyal family of God, who is to us Father.

What we do with our time is now free. We are free to serve, not obliged.

We live in a new world with a new light. This is my Father’s world and I am an inheritor!  I bear the Father’s name. The world, with all of its problems, will eventually become exactly what the Father wants it to be. I am going to spend my days doing what I can to see myself and everything in my limited sphere of influence come into alignment with the Father’s vision of fulfillment. 

How does our Father want things? Where is all heading? How can we help it along? Perhaps we can’t, but we can live and act in accordance with what He likes. 

We can and do feel grateful, privileged, empowered, and freed.

One More letter

You get another letter from the bank. It says, “You have siblings—many brothers and sisters—who are included in this same Trust. They do not know that they are included, but they are. They need to be located and told. As they presently labor and toil in service to the debts they think they owe, hearing that they are in fact part of the Trust should come to them as very good news indeed. Now that you are freed—and effectively unemployed—would you help us locate some of your lost siblings?” 

Perhaps we can help some others who are  under the slavery of debt—just as we once were—to discover their share in Trust and be liberated from toil. 

Condemnation comes from Adam and sin. Christ pays Adam’s debt—in full, not in part—therefore death has no more power. We are free from sin and debt, and free to live our lives in service to the Trust which is our inheritance.

May we come to the Table knowing that we have been made free by the work and grace of Christ, who includes us in the eternal Trust, sharing in His full  inheritance as sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters. 

And may we be diligent in locating our siblings who do not yet know their names are already written into the Trust.  †