What Do I Owe You? (Friday Devotional)

“Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

- Romans 13:8

I hovered the cursor over the “Pay Now” button, took a deep breath, and clicked the mouse. A congratulatory message appeared on the screen, but I didn’t need it to know what I’d just done: after more than 5 years of diligent budgeting and regular payments, my student loans were completely paid off. A wave of relief washed over me at the realization that I could remove loan payments from our monthly budget, that there was one fewer bill to pay each month, and that our savings account could finally start to grow. But more than from those practical considerations, my relief came from a more existential feeling of liberation—for the first time since graduation, I wasn’t in debt to anyone. I was free.

One of the first tips any financial advisor will give you is to avoid debt whenever possible. They tell you this because of how it affects your financial flexibility, your ability to invest, etc. But the advisors who go beyond the numbers will also warn you about the effect debt can have on you emotionally, even spiritually—the knowledge that you are not truly free, that your future is, at least in one regard, bound to someone else, can be suffocating. If you’re looking out for yourself, they say, you’ll stay away from debt.

Paul seems to echo this sentiment in the first part of Romans 13:8, telling believers to “owe no one anything,” advice that would earn him a gold star in any Dave Ramsey seminar. But then he follows that rule with a notable exception: “except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Love, Scripture tells us, is the one obligation we always owe one another, the one debt that we never stop paying.

What is unusual about this debt of love, however, is that it works differently than all others. When you pay down on it—when you show kindness, or give without thought of return, or extend forgiveness—instead of feeling chained, you feel free. When you acknowledge the love that you owe others, that obligation and duty doesn’t suffocate you, it brings you life.

With all other debts, you want to be rid of them so that you can look out for yourself. But when you embrace your debt of love to others, you look out less for yourself than for your brothers and sisters—and paradoxically, in doing so you find a far greater kind of freedom. If you want to know that sort of freedom, freedom that money cannot buy, then set aside your own selfishness and look first to the interests of others, loving them with the sacrificial love of Christ. You might say you owe it to yourself.