Dear Friends,

Our culture tends to magnify—if not to identify—people by what they own more than by how they live.  The media overflows with appeals to people to buy certain goods and services, to transform non-essential things to the status of an “essential.”  If the item carries any significant cost, the advertisement will also appeal to a supposedly “pain-free” way to repay the related debt.

If you and I were to draw an analogy of our conduct, as Paul did in our study verses, to a debt owed, how sound would our financial status be?  Would we be financially sound with a balanced budget and funds in reserve, or would we be teetering on the verge of bankruptcy?  Following this analogy still further, how much do we owe, and to whom do we owe it?  Who determines our moral/spiritual debt?  Who sets the terms of our payment of that debt?  How faithfully have we paid our scheduled payments?  Are we growing deeper in debt, or are we slowly reducing the debt that we owe?  All of these questions carry a double weight.  Christians are consistently taught in Scripture to discipline their appetites for “things” so as to live comfortably within their means, whatever that means may be.  They are further taught to be faithful in the payment of their financial debts.  How much would you respect the word of a man who claimed to be a preacher, telling you on Sunday morning to pay your debts if you knew that he wasn’t paying his own personal debts?  The same ethical principle Paul applies in this passage to our spiritual debt to God.  How much are we paying?  How faithful are we in making our regular payments to the Holy Spirit against that debt?

These and many such questions surface as we study Paul’s lesson in these verses.  The analogy is rich with simple and to-the-point truths that provide direction and focus to our Christian conduct.  The Holy Spirit’s exhortation, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” requires that we take our spiritual debt, not to mention our literal financial debts, seriously and to work to maintain both financial and spiritual “solvency.”  Based on Scripture ( Romans 13:7-10 as an example), we shall never fully pay some of our Christian debts, but no Scripture even remotely implies that we should therefore give up on making payments against that debt!  Scripture rather requires greater effort to honor such debts.

May we be found both faithful and spiritually solvent,

Joe Holder

      Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. ( Romans 8:12-14 )

      Never do we find Scripture leaving Christian conduct in the “optional” category.  New Testament teaching consistently affirms that those who have been made alive in Christ have an obligation to manifest that life in their attitudes and actions.  In our study passage Paul compares our obligation to godliness with a debt.  What happens if you owe a debt and refuse to pay it?  You will face the potential of legal action and repossession of the property that secures the debt.

      Given the content and structure of the Roman letter, we should not overlook that Paul rejected as “slander” the false accusation of his critics that he taught that divine predestination caused his righteousness ( Romans 3:1-9 ), but he also rejected the opposite theological view that his conduct earned his eternal life.  He remained faithfully on solid truth, not allowing any criticism or trial to move him from the balanced truth that had been given to him in revelation.  We have that balanced revelation in the Scriptures that Paul wrote.

      Our human nature is prone to leaps into extremes when critics press us.  If they accuse us of “Error A,” either we will immediately brand “Error A” as abominable heresy to evade the criticism or we will stubbornly embrace “Error A” and point the finger back at our critics, blaming them as abominable heretics for their rejection of the error.  Paul set our example clearly.  The truth of God is not extreme, and no amount of political pressure, criticism, or persecution should divert us from that balanced, healthy truth.

      Our chief objective in our study and interpretation of Scripture is constantly to ensure that we follow Scripture and the truth that it teaches, not leading Scripture into private, errant ideas of our own making by perverse and false interpretations of Scripture.

      Students of philosophy and of Christian faith use a rather large word to describe a fundamental principle on which people build their ideas.  What is your respected source of authority for your ideas?  Where do you get your ideas?  How reliable in your eyes is your source?  Do you have many sources for your ideas or only one?  The word is “epistemology.”  We may readily note and reject the dominant Roman Catholic view of multiple epistemology (not only Scripture but as well, the historical teachings of the church, and the word of the pope), but do we also look to multiple sources for our own epistemology?  If we interpret Scripture through our favorite Confession of faith, are we not elevating that confession to the chair of epistemology?  If we begin to research the writings of past generations in the faith and start interpreting Scripture according to their teachings, have we not added an alternate source of authority?  The problem with multiple sources of epistemology should be obvious but it apparently isn’t.  Multiple sources of authority seldom fully agree. So when one source of your authority disagrees with another source, which authority will you accept as your final word?  If I elevate confessions to the role of epistemological authority, I can find some confession somewhere in history that agrees with my private ideas.  If I magnify the writings of past writers, I can eventually find an old writer whose teachings agree with mine.  Once a professing Christian leaves the authority of “Sola Scriptura,” of Scripture alone, not Scripture plus anything else, he/she has left the reliable foundation of truth and will eventually fall into error, error that Scripture rejects.

      Let me give you an example.  The name of Elder James Oliphant is a highly respected name among Primitive Baptists.  The first time I read excerpts from his writings they were brief piecemeal snippets extracted from larger works that he wrote.  The pieces extracted left me with a question as to Elder Oliphant’s belief regarding predestination. Did he embrace fatalistic determinism?  I couldn’t tell from the isolated quotes that I was reading.  Only years later when I began to read Elder Oliphant’s writings, did I realize that he actually opposed fatalistic determinism and wrote against it.  His Thoughts on the Will is a masterpiece against this error.  The people who were quoting brief snippets from him appeared to have intentionally selected these brief quotes to promote the very idea that Elder Oliphant opposed.  I would not have known the difference had I not read him more fully.  This is the problem with multiple sources of authority.  Not only do they inevitably contradict each other, but they are also subject to the reader’s interpretation and potential misuse.  

       Notice Paul’s pointed teaching in our study passage.  Do not forget that Scripture is to be our exclusive source of authority, not one of several.  Paul does not leave the conduct of believers in Christ open to personal choice or human preference.  Christian conduct is a debt that every believer owes, first to God and secondarily to his/her fellowman.  Paul makes a double point.  Once he determines that we owe a debt, he immediately examines the question to know the identity of the one to whom we owe that debt.  We owe no debt to our flesh, a word that Paul and other Biblical writers often use to refer to the sinful disposition of our fallen nature.

      The only legitimate debt we owe is to live to God according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, a leading that will always direct us to follow the teachings of Scripture.  Many groups of professing Christians magnify their private ideas or preferences into a supposed leading of the Holy Spirit, but they seem to have no problem when their claimed divinely informed conduct contradicts Scripture.  If you nudge them to follow Scripture alone, they will accuse you of being a “legalist.”  Since the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture—and He is God and shares in all the essential and incommunicable attributes of God—He cannot possibly contradict Himself.  Thus any claim of Holy Spirit leading that fails to pass the filter of inspired Scripture is de facto not the leading of the Holy Spirit.

      Even if we claim that the Holy Spirit is leading us when we fall into error, Paul’s criteria of debt will rebuke us.  To err and claim that the Holy Spirit is leading us to do so—to borrow Paul’s debt analogy—would be the equivalent of writing a check for the wrong amount of money and then sending it to the wrong company at the wrong address, only to claim in self-righteousness that we have actually paid our debt!

      For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.  Good intentions will not satisfy Paul, nor will they satisfy the Holy Spirit.  …but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.  Paul is writing to believers in Rome , to people who were members of the church in Rome , people whom he has consistently addressed as children of God throughout this letter.  He does not here warn them of losing their eternal life, but rather he warns them of the danger of losing the vitality of life by sinful conduct that honors the wrong moral influence in their lives.  Actions always impose consequences on the person who acts in a certain manner.  Scripture consistently and repeatedly assesses consequences on us based on our personal choices and actions.  We cannot practice sin, the equivalent in Paul’s analogy of paying our debt to the flesh and not the Spirit, and innocently pretend that we do not face the moral consequences of our sinful choices.  We may for a time take advantage of other people’s poor moral perceptions or compromised choices, but the final Judge by which we shall be measured is God.  He is never deceived!

      For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.  I never grow tired of admiring the precision with which the Holy Spirit directed the writers of Scripture to frame their thoughts and words.  John Gill makes the following points regarding this verse.

      Not by the spirit of the world, or of the devil, or by their own spirits: the act of leading ascribed to the Spirit is either in allusion to the leading of blind persons, or such who are in the dark; or rather to the leading of children and teaching them to go; which supposes life in those that are led, and some degree of strength, though a good deal of weakness; and is a display of powerful and efficacious grace, and is always for their good: the Spirit of God leads them from sin, and from a dependence on their own righteousness, in paths they formerly knew not, and in which they should go, in the paths of faith and truth, of righteousness and holiness, and in a right, though sometimes a rough way; he leads them to the person, blood, and righteousness of Christ, and to the fulness of grace in him; into the presence of God, to the house and ordinances of God; into the truths of the Gospel, from one degree of grace to another, and at last to glory; which he does gradually, by little and little he leads them to see the iniquity of their hearts and natures, to lay hold on Christ and salvation by him, into the doctrines of grace, and the love and favour of God, and proportionally to the strength he gives…

      As Gill observes, the Holy Spirit’s leading is precise and predictable.  The criteria for knowing that the Holy Spirit is leading, as opposed to our own self-serving motives or desires, will always appear in the consistency of our conduct with inspired Scripture.  A private “impression” or “feeling” that goes contradictory to Scripture is no more right than a mystical “burning in the bosom.”  The Holy Spirit’s leading will always lead us to honor His work in Scripture.

            The idea that God is “convicting” the unregenerate in a rather incompetent effort to nudge them to save themselves by His powerless moral influence falls distinctly short of Paul’s teaching in this verse.  Those whom the Holy Spirit thus leads “…are the sons of God.”  The emphasis of this verse finds its fulfillment in regenerate elect whom the Holy Spirit leads to faith and obedience to God.  The verse deals with God’s moral government of His own children.

      Dr. Tom Constable affirms this point.

     Verses 14–17 explain the Spirit’s ministry of confirming the reality of the believer’s position as a son of God to him or her. Paul believed that the believer who is aware of his or her secure position will be more effective in mortifying his or her flesh…Unlike sin the Spirit does not enslave us. He does not compel or force us to do God’s will as slaves of God. Rather He appeals to us to do so as sons of God.  

     The word that Paul selected to identify the Holy Spirit’s leading emphasizes influence or guidance, not coercion or irresistible force.

(B) Metaphorically, to lead, induce, incite, guide ( Rom. 2:4 , “to repentance”; 1 Cor. 12:2 , “even as ye were led,” meaning to idolatry, the figure being drawn from pastoral life [cf. Ex. 3:1 ; Is. 11:6 ]). Also, to be led by the Spirit of God ( Rom. 8:14 ; Gal. 5:18 ); by lusts ( 2 Tim. 3:6 ).

    This word is quite distinct from the word that Jesus used in John 6:44 when referring to God’s irresistible divine drawing of sinners to Himself in regeneration.

    Our particular concern is with the figur. use in Jn. In Jn. 6:44 Jesus says: οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐλθεῖν πρός με, ἐὰν μὴ ὁ πατὴρ ὁ πέμψας με ἑλκύσῃ αὐτόν, and in 12:32: κἀγὼ ἐὰν ὑψωθῶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς, πάντας ἑλκύσω πρὸς ἐμαυτόν.

     The basic meaning is to “tug” or “draw” (with material obj.: Jn. 18:10 ; 21:6 , 11 ). In the case of persons (cf. also 3 Macc. 4:7 ; Ac. 16:19 ; 21:30 ; Jm. 2:6 ) it may mean to “compel”…

     Thus Scripture clearly distinguishes the Holy Spirit’s effectual and irresistible force in regeneration from His guiding, leading influence in God’s moral government of His children in their conduct.  God does not drive or drag His own children in obedience!  Such would not be obedience at all.  It would rather be a form of robotic compliance with a greater force, an action that carries no moral value on the lesser power in the person so moved.

            In this way Paul urges us to “pay our debts” to God by a conscious, willing obedience to the leading influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  In so doing we manifest that we are in fact God’s children and that we seek to honor Him with our lives.

            We live in a culture that magnifies debt, but sadly it does not always maintain equal value on the payment of the debts that we owe.  The media is full of appeals for people to spend money on non-essential goods and services, including offers of supposedly pain-free repayment of the related debt.  Economists point out the alarming frequency with which people run up enormous debts for such non-essentials ($50,000 or more is not uncommon for credit card balances). Our nation presently faces a significant mortgage crisis because lenders urged people to buy homes that cost significantly more than they could afford through the use of either “interest only” or even “negative amortization” loans (a term that means your monthly payment doesn’t even cover the interest on your debt, so at the end of the loan period you owe more than you owed at the beginning!).

            If you and I compared our Christian life with Paul’s analogy of debt, what would be the state of our personal finances?  Would we be solvent or bankrupt?  Let’s work at consistently honoring God by “paying our debts,” obviously our literal monetary debts, but more importantly our moral debts to the Holy Spirit to conduct our lives according to His gracious leading.