Debtor to None
BY JAMES M. BOICE
Romans 11:35 ISRael's great King David was coming to the end of his reign, and his young son Solomon was being left behind to rule the kingdom and build a magnificent temple in Jerusalem. The temple had been David's great dream, but God had told him that the task would not be his because he was a man of war and that it would be built by Solomon instead.
So David contented himself with making preparations for the temple's construction. To do that he took an offering, starting by giving 3,000 talents of gold and 7,000 talents of silver himself. Other people also gave willingly. The total amounted, in today's terms, to hundreds of millions of dollars at least.
For many, the success of a campaign like this would be a cause for self-congratulation. But not for David! He praised God instead. He began his prayer of dedication saying:
Praise be to you, 0 Lord, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Yours, 0 Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, 0 Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all. Now, our God, we give you thanks, and praise your glorious name (I Chron. 29:10-13).He then made this remarkable statement in verse 14, "But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand."This was a very important acknowledgment, which meant, "The people have given generously, but we have been able to do so only by your grace and by returning to you what you have first seen fit to give us."
Brilliant illustration. That prayer of David brilliantly illustrates the text of this message. Romans 11:35: "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?"
We may give generously to our church and to other ministries of God. But what we give is only what God has first given to us. As David knew and stated, "We give thee but thine own."
We have nothing to add to who God is or what He does. Most importantly, we cannot place God under obligation to ourselves by giving to Him.
WE CONTRIBUTE NOTHING
That we have nothing to give God is what Paul has taught repeatedly in earlier parts of Romans. Let me review it briefly.Justified by grace. In Romans 1-4, Paul explains the depth of human depravity and impotence, and that God has reached out to save us completely apart from anything in us.
In our sin, we imagine that God can be won over by some good work in us, grading us and saving us on the basis of some passing moral mark, as it were.
Indeed, there are Christians who suppose that they were singled out by God because of something that God had foreseen in themsome aptitude for God, perhaps, or just faith.
Romans teaches that we are saved by none of these things, not even our faith. True, we are saved through faith. But even faith is God's gift, so that there will be no boasting on the day when the redeemed of the Lord stand before Him. We do not contribute to our justification in any way.
Sanctified by grace. In Romans 5-8, Paul teaches that we have nothing to contribute to our sanctification either. True, there are things we will do if we are truly saved. But that does not mean that we give anything to God.
What we do is a response to what He has already done. God has taken us out of Adam and placed us in Christ, giving us a new nature that possesses new desires. As a result, we follow Jesus and grow in the grace God freely supplies.
In fact, when Paul gets to the end of this section and reflects on the certainty of our persevering in faith, he reiterates that God has done it all for us. This is why he writes:
In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And thoseChosen by grace. The third section of Romans, Chapters 9-ll, teaches that what God is doing in history does not depend on us either, not even in the sense that God is primarily obliged to make us happy. On the contrary, Paul teaches that history unfolds to reveal God's attributeswhich include His power, justice and wrath, as well as His love and graceand to manifest His glory.
he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified (8:28-30).What a transformation that would mean for most of today's Christians, if they could only see this truth.
Mike Horton, a good friend of mine, has written about this in a book entitled Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism. He says:
The older theology tended to produce characterBy the end of the twentieth century, we have become God's demanding little brats. In church, we must be entertained. Our emotions must be chargedWe must be offered amusing programswe gave up a lot to become Christians and what little teaching we do get must cater to our pragmatic, self-centered interests. The preaching must be filled with clever anecdotes and colorful illustrations, with nothing more than passing references to doctrine.Of course, that brings us back to our text, where Paul asks, "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" And the answer is: None of us has. God is in debt to no one.
What a transformation that would mean for most of today's Christians, if they could only see We have forgotten that God is a monarch. He is the King by whom and for whom all things were made, and by whose sovereign power they are sustained. We exist for His pleasure, not He for ours; we are on this earth to entertain Him, please Him, to adore Him, to bring Him satisfaction, excitement and joy. The gospel that seeks to answer the question, "What's in it for me?" has it all backwards. The question is, "What's in it for God?"
WE CANNOT PUT GOD IN DEBT
Yet, often even after we have become Christians and have learned about the grace of God, we continue to think that God sometimes owes us something. Most would not put it this way.But every time we are discontent with what we have, we are effectively telling God that He has made a mistake and therefore owes us something.
For example, haven't you heard people say,"If God had only opened some doors for me, I could be accomplishing something important."? Or, "He made a mistake not giving me a responsible husband."
Whenever we think along these lines, we are presumptuously supplying God with the wisdom we suppose He lacks. And having done that, we think He owes us some extra blessing, or extra allowance for our disobedience. Isn't it foolish?
Remember Romans 11:35 the next time you find yourself slipping into such a moronic thought pattern. "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?"
Job experienced terrible tragedies. But he said, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand" (Job 42:3).
Unjust God? A step further along the sad path of human pride and rebellion is the mistake of accusing God for being unjust, for doing what is not right.
"Why should I be stricken with this disease in the prime of my life?" Or, "I should have gotten the promotion instead of that person. I worked harder for it." I am sure you get the idea.
Remember how Abraham pleaded for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? He knew that if God destroyed those cities, his nephew and his family would be destroyed too. So he said to God in Genesis 18:23-25:
Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thingto kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?We need mercy. It was a good argument. The Judge of all the earth must do right. The trouble with it is that there were none righteous. So, although God did spare Lot and his daughters, the destruction nevertheless did come. The cities were blotted out and their inhabitants were killed.You cannot put God in your debt by crying, "Justice!" Justice condemns! Justice sends people to hell! It is not justice we need from God. It is mercy and grace, the very opposite of debt.
If you think God owes you justice, remember our text: "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" The only thing we have ever earned from God is condemnation.
Rewards. Sometimes, we suppose that we have earned rewards from God by some acts of self-sacrifice or service.
A man asked his pastor, "I have been a faithful member of this church for 30 years, I have been Superintendent in the Sunday School for 25 years, and an elder in the Church for 20 years. Yet, God does not answer my prayer, even though I have prayed for a long time for something that I am confident is according to God's will. Can you explain it to me?"
The pastor replied, "Just because you have faithfully served God for decades does not put God under obligation to answer your prayer. You have been praying in your own name, and God will not hear our prayers when we approach Him that way."
Many people make that mistake. We need to understand that even in Christian service, God cannot be put in our debt by anything we do.
"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" The answer is: No one, not even the most dedicated, most self-sacrificing, most consistent, most devout, most exemplary Christian. Nothing flows to us from God because of debt. A great deal comes to us, but it is all of grace, and grace is a different category entirely.
LIVING BY GRACE
So let's talk about grace again. As soon as we abandon any thought that God is answerable to our ideas of what is wise or just, and when we give up thoughts of earning anything from Him by our service, then we begin to discover what living by grace is.It starts with humilityhumility before God, who is infinitely great, but also humility in terms of our own weak service.
Remember how Jesus said, "Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty'" (Luke 17:7-10).
We will never get anywhere unless we remember the primary relationships of Creator to creature and Master to servant.
But that is not all that can be said, of course, for we also remember how Jesus told His disciples, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends" (John 15:15), and "You are my friends if you do what I command" (v. 14).
Grace upon grace. God owes us nothing. All is of grace. But besides rescuing us from our sin, God, for the sake of His own good pleasure, has also raised us from the status of mere servants to friends of God, children of God, co-workers with Jesus Christ and heirs of all God is and has. All this results in thanksgiving and love for the One who has been so gracious to us.
And it leads to service. For once we realize that God has not only saved us by grace, but sent His Son to die for us in the process, what we most want to do is, as Romans 12:1 commands, to offer to God our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to Him.
Let me say it again. God is not obliged to give you anything. Yet He gives you everything, if you will receive it in Christ. The great wonder is that the people who know this, who know they cannot give God anything that He has not first given them, nevertheless give Him everything. o
Dr. James Montgomery Boice is the speaker of the Bible Study Hour broadcast, 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, and pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.