“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10)
In this amazing passage, God sweeps away with an enormous wave of profound and heavenly wisdom the pathetic sandcastles of human ethical and political philosophy.
First, He states unequivocally that no one owes his life/liberty to anyone else, save God, as a matter of first principles. This isn’t a prohibition against taking a loan so long as the loan is for some legitimate business or personal purpose. Rather, it’s a prohibition against any philosophy that claims other men and women are a means to an end. A man who owes no one anything – except God – is a free man. This simple proclamation obliterates all, repeat all, contemptible notions that one person owes another something just because…for no objective philosophical reason. Put plainly, slavery of any kind, any sort of caste system or social order that renders some rights to one but not another, and any debt driven society, is in plain violation of God’s command.
God alone has the authority to define reality and render unto each their obligations. And, unlike the weak-sauce Christianity of our time, full of worldly appeasement and divided devotions, we remind one and all that God has not, nor will He ever, cede any authority, in heaven or on earth, to anyone. He says you are free, and free you are! No person, entity, group, organization, government, philosophy, religion or authority on earth has the right to redefine God’s declarative order. When we’re told that we have some sort of obligation we must ask from where that obligation originates. Only in God’s word/law can true, non-contradictory moral obligations find their source.
The source of man’s freedom is, therefore, God and His word/law. Our duty in life is to follow and obey Him (Ecclesiastes 12:13). To that end, we can discover Him for ourselves, so that we may delight in and know Him personally, in the 66 books of the Bible. The Bible, incidentally, is a closed book. The revelation of God to us is finished in Jesus Christ and His word/law. This means that mankind has God’s moral law to live by and that law may not be changed in any fashion or form, neither abridged nor enlarged. It is finished.
But mankind, in rejecting God, insists on playing god for himself – either personally or through some organization, the largest and most dangerous of those being, of course, the state. Mankind becomes, therefore, a hellish lawgiver as he seeks to stamp out sin (by his ever changing and highly subjective definitions) through the eradication of freedom. Look for this in your life, watch for it on the news, listen for it on the lips of friends. What is it? It’s the proclamation of moral laws and duties that God didn’t pronounce. The truth is that it isn’t the Christian life that’s law riddled, but the secular humanist/socialist life that’s regulated in every way. Mankind rejects Christ dying on the cross for sin. Instead, he asserts his own moral law, not from a closed book, but from his own mind and will and he redefines morality – good and evil – to suit himself.
God gave us ten commandments; just last month, Congress passed a new bill that was nearly 6,000 pages! Mankind defies the authority of God, insisting upon his own autonomy and definitions of right and wrong, yet submits to the inexhaustible restraints of civil and social regulation. Modern life is full of secular speech codes, for example, and corporate America is a legal landmine of vacuous and arbitrary ethical requirements. You must use certain pronouns, affirm whatever the latest ethical fad is or be branded a hater, tithe up to half of your income in the form of forced taxation, not have the wrong political opinion, support this and that, and on and on. American life is a life of ruthless and mind-numbing conformity, not to God’s word/law, which is unchanging and morally consistent, but to man’s word/law.
Man’s law makes you owe in perpetuity. Man’s law sets neighbor over against neighbor, dividing human beings by income or race or any other artificial standard over against God’s law. Man’s law is always tyrannical because it defines sin on its own terms and seeks to eradicate it, not through grace and the cross, but through conformity, regulation or raw force. God has set us in a world where we have the freedom to sin. Humanist/socialists despise the Bible as tyrannical and then embark on a quest to abolish sin (according to their authoritarian standards) by endless law.
Socialism has its philosophical roots in humanism, which is idolatry – the worship of self. Socialism is, therefore, the worship of self through the state and this is the impulse that makes politics so acrimonious. Little gods must always be fighting with other little gods. It’s also why modern Leftists hate the Bible more than anything else. The closed law/book of Scripture must be defeated for secularism to reign. The humanist will assure you that your problem isn’t personal sin but some group or another. In this way, the sinner is made safe in their sin, assured that God’s wrath doesn’t hang over their head, that the cross is unnecessary, that Christ is superfluous to real life, and that they, the state, will avenge you against that group. The other group, you’re told, will be made to pay…they owe you. The answer is never grace, always law and regulation.
The state as god is a horrific thing. It’s the Beast of Revelation, demanding worship, crushing dissent. The key to seeing it is simple. The Enemy is deceptive; he will tell you that your problem isn’t personal sin but something else and that he, through the state or some other sinful institution, will fix it by regulating or eradicating that thing. Thus, the root of the error is false religion. In Christ, our problem of sin and the consequence of death, are dealt with on the cross. This is done personally by God. No one else pays. God pays. False religion puts someone else on the cross for us. The modern idolatrous state has a thousand seminaries, schools and universities, teaching its doctrine of false religion. And it has countless movies and songs and other media proclaiming the doctrine of self. Follow your own heart and sexual desires, it tells you, because your problem isn’t sin, but something else. Indeed, it turns you inward, not upward toward God, and promises to get even with those imaginary enemies all while placing you under the boot of tyranny.
What do you owe? To your neighbor, nothing except to love by God’s standards; to God, everything. And in Christ you’re free to live a life of loving service to Him, freed from that great bondage of sin and death. His burden is light, and His yoke is easy; Christ is a wonderful master, so meek and lovely, though Lord of all. The Beast, on the other hand, is a fearsome master. He promises you freedom but then, through the degradations and consequences of sin, strips you of your dignity and that promised liberty. He promises freedom without the cross and then imposes a thousand burdens upon you.
So, you see, this simple concept of “owe no one anything” is a wonderful gateway through which we may see the beauties of the gospel. Take a look around and notice how ubiquitous man’s law is, forever encroaching upon liberty. And notice how the beastly state incessantly devises new evils it must vanquish for you so that you will serve it and that all these evils require the loss of more freedom and the imposition of more duty.
Praise be to God for Jesus Christ our Lord and the forgiveness of sin through faith alone! It’s only in this, and God’s glorious word/law, eternal and immutable, that we may have and hold true freedom because I owe no man my life and labor, and no man owes me his, for we both owe our mutual God everything. This truth, and all truth, leads us to glorify God in Christ’s name. It’s a lie, of course, and not the truth, that leads us anywhere else.
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