Much Obliged, Sir.
My obligations bring me, what exactly?
Paul rapturously proclaims what God does for us. God places us beyond condemnation. He lavishes on us His Spirit, the part of God empowering Jesus and raising Him from the dead. In the Spirit, God frees us free from wrath, sin and death. He condemns sin in us, to help us overcome it. God enters us to dwell in us. WOW.
Now Paul turns to our response.
So what is our response? Paul: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.[1] We stare at the Builder generation to ask, “What is this obligation business? It’s not our style. We love Christ’s love and free stuff! Thanks so much! See ya!”
The Builders knew obligations. The world called on them to lift us from a depression, fight World War II and Communism. The builders responded when the world called. They left their footprints on the moon.
Who now takes their places? Men and women were obliged to mortgage homes to start an economy. They were obliged to teach scriptures, love friends, paint, change light bulbs, and sacrifice driving new cars to give to the Lord. Who now takes their places? People were obliged to sense God’s call on them and serve ‘round the world. Who now takes their places?
Paul says you will take their places, if you love Jesus.
We live with obligations. Do you know the seven dwarves’ song in the original Snow White? “Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!” I laughed to see a bumper sticker on the back of a Benz in Miami. “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!”
Jill’s sister trained employees for Amex. She said new, young ones are a bit scary. They know what they want. They clearly see what Amex can do for them, but have no sense of what they owe the company in return. She found some are hard to train.
This study is about doing God’s work — building His Kingdom as we owe Him so much.
Paul recites God’s amazing works in Christ. We obligingly respond asking God to do great things in us: amazing things through us. Look at vows: If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.[2] The word, issar, is a bond, a binding obligation.
Mr. Marshall’s knees were scarred. He promised God that if he returned from World War II he would go to church … on his knees. He did: two miles. His knee pads helped for 500 yards. He painfully kept his vow. Is your vow your bond? Can God bank on your word? How strong are your obligations?
The sense of obligation springs from early ideas of revenge and law. In a personal offence a transgressor became a debtor to the injured party (I hurt you. I owe you). Only an injured party can liquidate revenge on a debt owed to him. That moved from personal revenge to national law, and the guilty party became a debtor to the law. (Dump oil in an Alaskan harbor, and you owe America. See you in court.) In Israel it also meant a guilty party owed a penance to God. So, if I hurt you, I may owe you, the law (nation), and God all three!
A sense of owing a debt to a virtue derives in Greek thought. I’m obliged to fairness and honesty. Again, Greeks spoke of inner obligations. The Jews owed debits to the Law and God. The Greeks aspired. Jews guilted! “He died. What’s it cost? Two bulls and a ram?) Philo merged both streams so we are obliged to Someone higher. Out of Divine Law, we cherish a sense of the sacred … to be good or courageous.
The Jews got stuck thinking our relation to God is a legal relationship. Indebtedness marks our relation to God. Jesus bridged the gap, even before the cross where He leveled the playing field. Jesus told a story. Do you know it?
The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began settling them, workers brought him one who owed ten thousand talents. (Think trillions.) [This slave] had no means to repay. The king commanded him to be sold, with his wife, children and all he had, to make the payment. The slave prostrated himself before the king, saying, “Have patience with me, and I’ll repay everything!” (In a thousand lifetimes if you never eat or sleep!) And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But the slave went out, found a fellow slave who owed him [a hundred bucks]. He seized him and began choking him, saying, “Pay back what you owe me!” The king calls the forgiven servant to ask, “Should you not also have mercy on a fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, in anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ‘So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.’[3]
Jesus says we’re obligated. Our first obligation forgives others as we have been!
Paul lived out a deep obligation to Christ’s amazing grace. Reread this letter’s opening: I am obliged both to Greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish. [4] Paul begins with his obligation to us because of Christ. Now he includes us so brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. [5]
The verse sounds so odd! It’s a rhetorical tool, a meiosis, where less is said than intended. This meiosis is more than what is not said, in it the direction of the thought changes.
Let’s say I tell you how excited I am for my wedding anniversary: how Jill puts up with me, blesses and loves me. How she makes each day possible. As I build to a climax to say, “Thanks for the years, Jill,” I say, “I owe so much of our years, not to Elon Musk!”
The weirdness hits you. Elon and I are not an item… never married. I owe him nothing.
This meiosis is even stronger. Let’s say I tell you how thrilled I am to leave a hospital after ten surgeries … on being hit by a drunk driver. I thank doctors, nurses, therapists and chaplains. I build to a climax: “And I owe so much, not to the drunk who hit me.” I stop. What you want to fill in screams at you in its absence. Do you fill in where Paul stops?
Read the verses again. Paul never answers the second half! Do you?
Brothers and sisters, we have an obligation ¾ but not to the sinful nature, to live according to it??? For if we live according to the sinful nature, we die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the body’s misdeeds, you will live, because we who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s children! For we did not receive a spirit making us slaves again to fear, but we received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit (my most true self) that we’re God’s children. Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order to also share in His glory. [6]
Sin in me, law, religion, anything less than Christ’s miracle in me, in my soul, is worthless. Paul: I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ![7] If you lose nothing, give nothing, obligated nothing, you miss this truth.
Jesus promises. We leave behind our debts our obligations as we forgave others. And forgive us our debts, (failed obligations), as we forgive our debtors, [8] Jesus’ word is the one Paul uses: opheiletes; a debtor, culprit, indebted, owed as failed obligations!
Jesus explained further: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father also forgives you. But if you don’t forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Jesus hates wrecked obligations. Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If I swear by the temple, it means nothing; but if I swear by the temple’s gold, I’m bound by my oath.” Blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?[9]
Do you think we have a problem with obligations? We thank God for His gifts, yet spend 2% of our incomes on philanthropy. How much are you obliged to God for His gift in Christ to you? Skip smarmy sap. Look at your scheduling app and check book. Read the truth there.
Do you think losing obligations affects us? Bankruptcies fell to 683 thousand last year.
A lawyer friend recently remarked how many people are criminally irresponsible in finances if they have no picture of obligations. Why is all this happening?
Alexander Pope described a man he despised. Pope condemned the man saying he blamed everyone else for his shortcomings. Worse, he made a timid foe and suspicious friend. Even fools and flatterers dreaded him. The worst, though, was that “He was so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d (sic)” [1607]. People have ducked obligations for a long time.
Bankruptcy, divorce, cheating in marriages, workplace theft all show missed obligations.
Is there a minimum amount of obligation…say for moms? Governor Mike Huckabee and the courts agreed with Marie Riggs. She deserved to die. She was executed within two years of her crimes, at her request. She asked for morphine and potassium chloride: she used them on her babies. Marie told jurors: “I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want the death penalty.”[10]
People need at least our minimum obligation in Christ. In Jesus’ story of a failed minimum. a master vested a servant with a hefty amount, one talent. As others doubled each trust, he buried his. Felt bad doing nothing. Fretted over his follow-up interview with the lord. He wasn’t immoral. He didn’t lose it. He sat on it fearing his master. Jesus says the servant of the failed minimum was banished to darkness: with weeping, gnashing of teeth and maybe Marie Riggs?
See another thing. Our highest obligation is a calling to stagger the imagination: those led by God’s Spirit are His daughters. You did not receive a spirit making you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. By Him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit: we are God’s children. Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings we may also share in His glory. [11] What an obligation!
See then a wide range of obligation. In a bare minimum slaves and unhappy people work all the way up to the astounding reaches of being God’s sons and daughters, heirs worth their word!
Blessing: When you find yourself out in life this week, and hear God’s greatest confidence in you, your deepest obligation, be thrilled, “I knew I could count on you, my child.”
[1] Romans 8:12
[2] Numbers 30:2ff
[3] Matthew 18:23ff
[4] Romans 1:14
[5] Romans 8:12
[6] Romans 8:12 ff
[7] Philippians 3:8
[8] Matthew 6:12
[9] Matthew 23:16ff
[10] (USA Today, May 3, 2000, page 4A).
[11] Romans 8:14 – 17
Another Traveler 