PURSUED BY LOVE
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1. A debt that cannot be paid
We have heard often enough that we are sinners, but matters are actually much worse. We have a relationship with God that makes us insolvent debtors. God is not indebted to us, but we to Him in all things. He lives and abides forever and every being living must do business with Him every single moment of the day. There are those foolish enough to imagine that they have no dealings with God and so can owe Him nothing. In their own darkened minds, they have concluded that as God does not exist, there can be no question of any debt. It is only the fool who has said in his heart there is no God (Psalm 14:1). Covering our eyes from the sun does not prevent it from continuing to shine. Hiding the truth from ourselves does not make it disappear. God is still there and has gone nowhere. There can be no choice in this matter: we owe God. Everything we do, whenever and wherever and whatever we do impacts on our dealings with Him. Were we to have no tie to God, then the debt would immediately disappear. Everyone has an account open with God and the debt on that account is far more than we can ever repay. Yet we are under an obligation to meet that payment in full. When the High Court bailiffs come knocking at the door, ability or inability to pay is a matter of indifference; payment must be made, so it is with God. The bailiff is at the door and we may deny we know the creditor, hoping thus the debt will disappear. The tie that binds us to God is unbreakable, so the debt cannot be cancelled, it remains and God requires it at our hand.
God did not simply create for the pleasure of doing so. He created us for Himself and so we are indebted to Him. We do not belong to ourselves; we are His for Him to dispose of as He wills. In all things and at every moment, in every circumstance we are to lay all that we are and possess on the altar of His Name and glory. He does not
permit us to live a few days in the week for Him and the rest for ourselves. We are not released from His lordship for a single day, nor for a single moment of that day. The purpose of our existence is always for His glory completely and solely, always and forever.
God says to every living person: I am your God and my due is that you should love me with your whole heart. “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). As we have failed abysmally to render to Him that love without reservation, that makes us His debtors. Once I come to the point of acknowledging the living God, once I recognize that I do have dealings with Him, then I must also acknowledge that He has righteous claim upon me that I have violated. I have a debt that must be satisfied, but which I cannot pay.
For many the question they want answered is this: there is something wrong with me, how then can I be made well? For such people the Christian faith centres in and around their needs and how they can be helped. However, this can never be our priority. We cannot consider ourselves first of all, but our concern should be God and His claims upon us. Of course, it is right and proper that we should long for holiness or to be made whole. Nevertheless, this can only be brought about after the question has been settled as to how I can be restored to a right relationship with and position before God whose rights I have violated. God’s priorities must come first not ours. There is little point in crying out to God unless we have first settled our account with Him and made things right.
Should a thief burst into our home and steal something, he is in debt to us to replace or return what he has taken that is rightly ours. Apart from this, in doing what he did, he has broken the law and a court will find him guilty on the basis of evidence. Punishment will be meted out to him by those to whom is given the enforcement of the law. We have failed to give God what is His due and are therefore debtors. Furthermore, we have broken God’s Law. Jesus Himself summarized for us God’s Law in Matthew 22:37-40.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Had we loved God and our fellowmen as we ought to have done, then we would have kept all God’s commandments (See Exodus 20). Sin is the transgression of God’s Law (1 John 3:4), a non-conformity to God’s divine Law brings with it guilt. In punishment God the Lawgiver upholds His Law against all those who break it. This punishment is death. Punishment for sin is God’s act of resisting encroachment upon His rights, our sinful attempt to rob God of what is rightly His like thieves, depriving Him of what we owe Him, contravening His Law. We are in debt to God to conform to His Law in all things. There is guilt which follows on from withholding from God that which is rightly His. There follows punishment for sin. The problem for each of us is that we cannot conform. It is not our inclination not in our capacity to love God and our fellow men in the way God expects because in our natural state we lack that love only God imparts.
NEXT ALIVE OR DEAD
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