It has been a long and full day, Father. Thank You for the blessings of interacting with so many kids and their families at our school’s Open House tonight. May Your hand be upon us all in the up-and-coming year. Amen.

Romans 13:8-10 (<<click here to read the passage)

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. v8 NIV

The first thing that jumped out at me while reading this verse, was the thought of the continuing debt to love one another.

I have some relatives who have worked very hard to control their debt, the opposite of which was to let their debt control them. Far too many of us are controlled by outstanding debt. In our minds, we must have what others have. And the sad thing is that we let very little stand in the way of getting what we want.

When I worked at Kohl’s, over time, we were more and more driven to solicit credit – shoppers were pushed more and more to open a Kohl’s credit card. At one point in time, we just felt like we were getting more and more people saying “no” because everyone seemed to have one or…they just flat-out refused to get one. Personally, I felt that though people seemed to spend lots of money on things, they were maxed out on their credit. With house payments and car payments, not to speak of school loan debt, they knew they wouldn’t be approved. They had so many things, but they were in debt way over their heads.

What kind of world would we live in, if we took the same approach to mounding up a debt of love? Financial debt is quite often piled up to fulfill our wants and wishes. Love debt benefits others. The Apostle Paul encourages his readers to pile up debt to love one another, and in doing so we fulfill God’s law.

Thinking along those lines reminded me of the lyric of a hymn written by Issac Watts in the early 1700s. The line that came to mind was, “The debt of love I owe” which comes from the hymn, Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed. I grew up with the arrangement by Ralph E. Hudson, more commonly known as At the Cross (ca. 1885).

The entire last verse reads,

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.

With the refrain continuing,

At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!

We have a continuing debt of love for what Christ did for us on the cross. He paid a debt He did not owe – we owed a debt we could not pay. And when we accept His payment for that debt, the burden of our hearts rolls away, and joy returns! If we do that, we must perpetuate that debt of love by loving others as Christ calls us to, and may He help us to do just that. Amen!

Aug 23rd, 2023, Wed, 9:14 pm