Pay Your Debt!
Today’s Verse:
Then she came and told the man of God. And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and thy children of the rest. ~2 Kings 4:7
As an adult, most, if not all, of us are careful about our credit scores. The big credit agencies such as Equifax, Experian, and Transunion maintain a watch on our debt levels and good credit history. A good credit score increases our ability to borrow money for loans. To be irresponsible when it comes to the handling of our debt results in a bad credit history, a lowering of our credit rating, possible repossession or foreclosure of our assets, and a disdain from merchants or others from rendering credit to us. This morning, we want to see a strong spiritual lesson about the importance of paying our debt—our spiritual debt!
We see the RESCUE from debt.
When we were born into this world, we were born with a sin nature. Our sin nature made us spiritually bankrupt before God. This sin debt needed to be paid in full, but we have no means or resource of ourselves or anything the world provides to meet it. However, the Lord Jesus Christ, in His sacrificial and substitutionary death, paid our sin debt in full through His shed blood and death on the cross. Jesus’ atonement for our sins satisfied the righteous demands of God for sin. When a sinner confesses that he is a sinner and by faith believes that Jesus died for his sin, he is set free from that spiritual debt and has the guarantee of eternal life in heaven. Jesus rescues every sinner who calls on Him for salvation!
We see the RESPONSIBILITY for debt.
After we are saved, we take on a new responsibility. The gospel that saves us from our sins becomes our spiritual obligation to others in this world. “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” Rom. 1:14. Salvation is all of grace from God! As such, when we consider the gospel from a spiritual accounting, we are debtors in taking the gospel to everyone. We are debtors to the cultured and to the uncultured, to the wise and to the unwise, to the rich and to the poor, to the friendly and to the unfriendly. The widow woman in II Kings 4 was under the duress of financial debt. It was so bad that the creditors came to take her sons into slavery. Elisha told her to take the only asset she had—a pot of oil, borrow some other empty pots, and fill them up. She borrowed every pot she could and filled them to the top with this oil. The oil never ran out and she still had more. She was then told to sell the oil and to pay her debt. Those pots filled with oil represent opportunities on borrowed time that God gives us to pay down our gospel debt. We are to live a Spirit-filled life that is consumed with making an effort to get the gospel to anybody and everybody.
We see the REDUCTION of debt.
Our spiritual debt to the gospel is never retired. With whatever time God has given us in this life, we are to make the most of it in proclaiming the gospel. The widow woman had two ways in which she could sell the oil. She would sell it in the open marketplace or she would go door-to-door telling her neighbors. We pay down our debt one person at a time. For this widow woman, the oil never ran out. For us, the Holy Spirit is always available and willing to pour Himself afresh into every life that is yielded to Him. The debt is real, but the opportunities are abundant.
Let’s be renewed in the spirit of our mind and heart regarding the debt we have in getting the gospel to those without Christ. Let’s pay our debt!
Have an enriched God Morning!