Wake Up!
Romans 13:8-14
By Harold D. Dinsmore, M.Div.
Ó2008 Harold D. Dinsmore 

Wouldn’t it be great if, next Tuesday, the government decreed that whatever we currently owed to our debtors were forgiven, and we started out on a clean slate?  You say I’m dreaming?  Well, once upon a time, something very similar to this happened in Israel.  Every 50 years, the people celebrated Jubilee.  In Leviticus 25, we discover God’s Word concerning Jubilee and the specific conditions that were applicable.  The main point of Jubilee was that if someone fell into poverty and had to sell his home or land, during the next year of Jubilee, the debt was forgiven and the man could once again reside in his home.

Paul, in his writing to the Roman Christians, suggested in the opening sentence of our particular passage today, that they were to “owe no one anything, except love for one another.”  The year of Jubilee did not negate regular business deals, only in cases of poverty.  Paul was not suggesting incurring debt, but that you not be succumbed by any indebtedness save the debt to love one another.