Debtors — Paris Reidhead

The Bond Slave of Jesus Christ

Now, this morning, will you turn, please, to Romans, chapter 1. It was Paul who said he preached not himself, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. But you will notice this important epistle, perhaps one of the most important in the New Testament, if we can rank them, for it deals more fully with certain great truths than any other.

Condemnation, justification, sanctification are all presented in order and developed fully. This epistle begins with a personal testimony, Paul, a born slave of Jesus Christ. And the word that is used carries you back to the year of the release of slaves in Israel, when one who had been purchased and held in bondage was free to go if he wished.

But not all slaves chose to be released from their bondage, and so it was the right and privilege of the slave to go to the master and say, I choose to be your servant. Then the master of the house would call witnesses, would receive a second affirmation of the voluntary choice of the one that chose to be a born slave.

When this was certified by competent witnesses, then the slave would go to the door, the main door of the house, would take a hold of the lobe of his ear and stretch it out against the pillar, and the master would take an awe and bore a hole in the ear.

And this would mark the slave forever thereafter as a voluntary servant, a born slave, who out of love and affection and appreciation chose bondage rather than freedom. And so Paul declares here and now that he is by his own choice, by the deep longing of his heart, without any resentment or rebellion, a servant, a slave, a born slave of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, called, it says, to be an apostle, but literally by deleting the two words that are in italics, called an apostle.

The Calling to Be Sent

Called a sent one. Apostolos in the Greek is the same word as missionary in the Latin. Mito means to send. An apostle is a sent one. He was not one of the twelve, but he was nonetheless an apostle, an apostle in the sense in which you can be.

He was an apostle in the sense in which with inward revelation to your own heart you see the Lord Jesus Christ risen, glorified, and hear him say, Arise, stand upon thy feet. I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God.

Now, could you change this and put your name into this first verse, whether it be Frank or Mary or whatever it might be, a bond slave of Jesus Christ? You have deliberately, without coercion, but drawn and moved by his love, brought the ear of your heart to the door of his love, and there said, Mark me forever his belonging wholly to Jesus Christ.

If you can, then you can also say, called an apostle, called to be sent. Called an apostle is just, he calls you to him that he might send you from him. You understand, the same one who said, Come unto me and rest, said, Go ye and preach.

And for one to say, The come and rest means me, but the go and preach means another, is to my mind the utmost of dishonesty. Nothing can be intellectually more dishonest than to pick and choose throughout the scripture and say, This, of course, is personal, but that is particular.

Come and rest, oh, that means me, because I had such a burden. Go and preach, that refers only to those that have a special call. Well, if you've had a general call to come and rest, you've had an equally particular call to go and preach.

Called to be sent is literally what he said. I came to go. I was called to be an apostle, separated under the gospel of God. Everyone who names the name of Christ is thus to view himself. Frequently, I have businessmen say something like this.

Well, I am planning on going into full-time service. And the only answer that's appropriate to such a statement is this, Well, if you are not in full-time service now, you must be backslidden. Because he's called all of us into full-time service, and there is absolutely no biblical sense in which we can distinguish between those that are supported by the gospel and those that are under God's providence and direction, ministering also in the midst of their work.

And so every Christian is separated under the gospel of God. This does not mean that one was to live by offerings of the people, for it certainly is true that in the life of Paul, you can only account for eighteen out of thirty-five years spent in full-time service.

Have you ever realized that? That if you will mark down every day, month, year that is annotated in the scripture as being spent in the Lord's work, Paul only spent eighteen out of what we would assume is thirty-five or thirty-six years.

The rest of the time, he abode a great while in that place, and he abode many months in that place, and apparently was not engaged in any public ministry, but simply in fellowship with the church on a local level.

And we know that on one occasion, or for some extended period of time, he supported himself by following his craft to which he had been apprenticed as a tentmaker. And so you can in no wise say separated under the gospel of God as reference to the source of income.

It only has reference to the attitude of heart, that we belong to Jesus Christ wholly and completely, and it's thus applicable to everyone. Everyone has been sent with the message, and everyone has been separated under the gospel of God.

The Foundation of Christian Debt

Well, then we will move down further. After this time of personal testimony, we find that he has based his whole statement to the Church of Rome on three phases of truth, three aspects of the same truth.

If I begin in the thirteenth verse, I'm sure the fourteenth will have a fuller meaning to you. Now, I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let. And so many times reading that, we fail to remember that this is the King James Version, and at the time of the translation, the word let had reference to prevent.

You may recall from times you've played tennis that when the ball strikes the net, it is properly called a let ball. Many times we say a net ball, but that's not actually the word, it's a let ball, for tennis is an old English game, and this is one use of it that's carried over.

And it means prevented from going across. And so Paul was let, he was prevented from having gone to Rome. He desired that he might have fruit among this people in Rome, even as he had among other Gentiles.

Why? Why was he concerned about Rome? Why was he concerned about these people? Because God had given to him a revelation at the very outset of his relationship to Christ. At the time when he became a born slave of Christ, when he was called an apostle, when he was separated under the gospel of God, he discovered that he was a debtor.

Now, it is my firm conviction that this must be the foundation stone in every biblically effective Christian life, that we must have a sense of moral obligation, a sense of responsibility, a sense in which we are indeed, even as this text says, debtors to the Greeks who were the civilized people with the culture of such a high standard, and to the barbarians, the pagan and the heathen, to the wise and to the unwise.

That it was to recognize by Paul as being a personal obligation that he had received from Christ that he could not lightly pass off, he could not put away. Twenty-five years ago today, I began my ministry.

Oh, I had spoken previously. I had ministered elsewhere, but had found it necessary to leave Bible school at the of the first semester of the fall of 1936 and into the semester change in 1937. I had financial problems.

You may recall that that was contagious back in those days, to some of you at least. And it was necessary to work and pay certain bills that had accumulated in school and take the semester off. So in May or early June, I've had an appendectomy, and this necessitated some weeks of waiting.

And I received from the practical work department of the Bible school in Minneapolis a call. Friend of my father's, who was here, incidentally, a year ago, Mr. Frank Bass, called and said, I've just had an inquiry letter from Brother Marquardt up in Long Prairie that there's a church out nine miles from Long Prairie and nine miles from Osakus at the head of Lake Osakus, and they need a pastor.

And so I'm asking you to go. Well, I had just been 18 for about three weeks, felt myself utterly incompetent and incapable, had had dire predictions made that if I stopped school at the end of that semester, I'd never go again.

And here was this man saying God had led him. I brought that request and the letter that I received at his hand in the office home. This was on Monday. And fought what was to me, perhaps up until that time, the greatest battle of my life.

Whether or not a boy of 18 could possibly accept as pastorate, even from a small country church where there were people there that had needed counsel and help and spiritual direction and preaching. And so the matter was a very crucial one, and one that just kept me before the Lord almost day and night during the days of that week.

And I'll never forget when he spoke to my heart from a portion that has been so frequently used by other young men and no sense personal. And I'm confident that every young person that goes to ministry anywhere has the Lord say the same thing to him.

But he said it to me in a very personal way, for I had been arguing that I was such a child and he said, say not thou art a child, thou cannot speak, for I am a child. For thou shall go to all that I shall send thee and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak.

Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. And the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth and he said, I have put my words into thy mouth. And so with that word quickened by the Holy Spirit to my heart, I said, well, all right, Lord, if this is what you mean, then you're going to have to give a message.

You're going to have to give me your word. And as I was praying that day in anticipation of taking the bus on Saturday to go to Long Prairie, this was probably on Thursday of that important week, waiting before the Lord in prayer, this word that's before you this morning, leap to life.

And I was charged then that day to go before these people out in the country in that Minnesota valley and tell them that there were three things that God wanted them to hear, three things which he'd emphasized and placed upon my heart.

I am debtor. I am debtor. Are you aware this morning that you are a debtor? You've lived in that apartment building for years, thinking that God simply wanted to provide shelter from heat and cold and rain and snow for you.

Paying the Debt to People and Places

But have you gone into that door day after day, recognizing your sense of debt to the people that reside on other floors and in other apartments? That you live in a city that is perhaps one of the world's greatest mission fields?

Are you aware that you're not here by accident? That it isn't simply to make a living? You could have made a living back in Long Prairie. You didn't need to come to New York to do it. Your living isn't that much better.

That you're here for some other reason than mere convenience? That you are a debtor? Now should it be that the place of your residence changes, your sense of obligation will move with you. Wherever you go, you are to understand that as long as you breathe the breath of human life and as long as God lets you live on the top of his good green earth, you are a debtor.

And a lifetime of service will never repay it. Twenty years on the mission field won't pay it. Twenty years in Christian work won't pay it. As long as you breathe the breath of human life, you're a debtor to men and women who know not the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now the sense of debt is a strange thing. You understand, of course, that Paul is saying that he's a debtor not to the church in Rome. He's a debtor not to the people at Antioch that appointed him to go as an apostle.

His debt is not incurred to the men of the church. His debt is to those who are without Christ, those that are in need. And he's been released by the church at Antioch so that he can pay the debt as the Spirit of God directs him.

And you are released by the Spirit of God in your community to pay your debt there. You are released in the school you attend by his ordering you to that school to pay your debt there. You are released by your place of residence, by the fact that you live there and go in and out of those doors day in and day out.

You're released by the fact of his appointment to that place to pay your debt in that area. Now, obviously, with eight million people, you're going to have to understand that you have a general debt to all but a particular debt to some.

And you are going to have to get the mind of the Spirit as to the manner in which you pay that debt. There are so many people in this city that if you were to simply run and touch each of them on the shoulder, you'd die long before the last had been touched.

It's utterly impossible for you to go to eight million people with nothing more than the quickest touch, much less an effective witness. But if you are prepared to be a biblical Christian, then you're prepared to recognize that the debt is to be paid in a particular way by the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And you are, therefore, to gladly embrace your general debt to New York City, but your particular debt to the ones that you can touch and reach. By the same token, you can't support all the missionaries on the field, and you can't pray for all the 27 ,000 Protestant missionaries around the world.

And so, whereas you have a general debt to missions, you have a particular debt to certain missionaries, a particular debt to share their needs and to intercede with them and labor together in prayer for them.

You have a particular debt as well as a general debt, and it requires, therefore, the guidance of the Holy Ghost for you to understand the means by which that debt is to be paid. I sometimes think it is far better for you to become an intelligent co-laborer in missionary intercession with a few than to simply have a long list of fifty that you would read over somewhat the way one would read a column in the telephone directory.

I realize that this is difficult, that it's costly, but I would ask you today, have you paid the debt of local witness to the people that you can touch, the people that you do touch? Have you let them know that you care?

Have you put into their hands an effective piece of literature? Have you invited them to come to some place of hearing the gospel? Have you invited them to sit down with you because you have good news to share with them?

Have you been paying your debt on the local level? Some of you have a debt to the ministry of the Sunday school. The Spirit of God has given it to you. He's given you both gift, opportunity, and invitation.

And this is a debt that you pay by your faithful prayer for your students, by your faithful preparation of the lesson, by your faithful identification with them in their need. Are you prepared to recognize that your Christian life is a lifetime of payment of debt, debt that can never be paid by you as long as you breathe the breath of human life because simply breathing increases the responsibility and extends the debt?

Debt to Truth and the Church

But you not only have a debt to people, but you have a debt to the truth of God. Because light always brings with it the moral responsibility to act in that light and to walk in that light and obey that light.

You cannot possibly afford to allow truth to go unobeyed, to neglect it, to overlook it. Dire consequences are given by the Lord when he allowed the writer of Hebrews to say, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?

If truth has come to your mind and heart and it is verified as the truth of God, you have an obligation to act upon that truth and walk in that truth because the fact that light has come has brought with it the moral obligation to walk in that light.

God, in great pains and great effort, has brought the revelation of his truth, and with that revelation comes the moral obligation to walk in it. You not only have a debt to the unsaved, to the barbarians, to the wise and the unwise, the people outside, a debt to truth, but you also have a debt to the Church, the body of Christ.

For most Christians, unless they're in extremely isolated areas, are part of some body. They're either joined by the Spirit of God, by conscious direction, or by some family or personal preference or affiliation.

But they become, by their choice and their identification with the group, a part of the group. And they therefore have a moral and a spiritual debt to that group by acceptance in it and being part of it.

They have a debt to watch after the Church covenant, not adopted by this Church, but generally held by Christians to be an expression of responsibility. The Church covenant is a setting forth of that debt, that obligation to seek the best interests of the other members of the local body, to desire their spiritual growth, to comfort them when they're afflicted, and to rebuke them when they're in sin, and in all to recognize that we care one for another, we're to bear one another's burdens, and we are also to protect the spiritual well-being of the group.

Do you accept that debt? Do you accept the responsibility that your conduct influences the whole body of Christ? There has been on the part of all of us a deep desire to see the arm of the Lord unbared and the mighty miracle-working power of the risen Christ, to whom testimony is continually affirmed by the verse on the wall behind me, revealed.

But I submit to you that the means whereby this can be done is when each of us recognize our debt to the other and the body becomes what the Lord has intended it to be. For we find that when they were of one accord, in one mind, in one place, praying in the midst of persecution, comforting and strengthening the hands one of another, that the place was shaken wherein they prayed, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

And so we have a debt to the lost world around us, we have a debt to the truth of God revealed to us, we have a debt to the church, that member, that body of believers to which the Lord has joined us and which we have then made apart.

Readiness to Serve in Every Task

But it's not only this, it is also that Paul stated, I am ready. So as much as in me is, I am ready to pay that debt. In his case it was to preach the gospel to them that were at Rome also. Are you ready to pay your debt, or do you have to wait for a program to be established with a thermometer put on the wall and captains of teams, and then each team is going to decide that they'll give out so many tracts, and when the one team wins, the other will give a banquet in their honor?

Must we have programs in order to secure fulfillment of debt, or can this be on the basis of a personal relationship with a living Lord, whom we love, whom we adore, whom we serve, and whose approval we seek?

I feel that it is an extremely sad thing when Christian activity, whether it be home visitation or personal witnessing or inviting of people to the church, has to be put on the level of the same way that Fuller Brush Company would secure enthusiastic effort from their salesmen.

I believe this should be on an entirely different level, a spiritual level, because truth has been illuminated to our heart, and the church has become the place of mutual strengthening and encouragement.

Then the readiness to pay the debt is the outflow of a proper and a normal and a wholesome and a healthy spiritual life. Is this the case? Can you say this morning, I am ready, I am ready to preach, I am ready to serve, I am ready to go if the Lord wants me to go, to stay if the Lord wants me to stay, but I recognize the debt and that I must be at all times prepared to be available to the Spirit of God to pay that debt.

If you are ready, then you are going to be recognized that this week is, in a sense, no longer yours but His. Oh, I realize you have an obligation to your employer, and I think that it is most inimicable to your testimony in your place of employment if you use the time for which your employer has purchased to do your personal witnessing and evangelism.

You are going to have to witness by your attitude. Are you ready to do your work cheerfully without complaining, to do it gladly, to accept your responsibility, to glorify the Lord in the tasks that are at your hand?

This is part of the payment of your debt. Are you ready to do your schoolwork with an eye single to His glory, not simply for the scholarship or the honor, but because you are glorifying the Lord by the manner in which you do that work that is now at your hand, realizing that faithful preparation is faithful service?

Are you prepared, therefore, to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ in the most menial of tasks? For this is part of the payment of debt. The only way that you can fulfill your responsibility and pay your debt is to live every hour, every moment with an eye single to His glory, and that every task that comes to hand has to be performed in the light of eternity in the fact that you will reach the reward of that task at the day that you stand before Him.

Are you ready? Is there a readiness of spirit? Do you find it in your heart this morning? Are you prepared to then recognize that every area of your life has been sanctified by the sovereignty of your loving Lord, and that nothing is unimportant any longer, neither your recreation nor your business, but that you are to do all for His praise and all for His honor?

Are you then prepared to realize that perhaps some plans that you've made must be laid by the side in order that you can be available to the Spirit of God, that you may have to spend some time, if you owe a debt to the people in the building where you live, when you meet them in the elevator in the hall and they give you the least little opportunity and you pursue it, then you find that it's going to be necessary to inconvenience yourself and maybe change some plans in order that you can pay your debt?

Is this true? Is your heart responding with Paul saying, I am ready? It was a long, dangerous, arduous trip that he had to undergo, three months, as you know. It was difficult getting to Rome, but he says, I am ready to go.

Any personal inconvenience or sacrifice means nothing, because I am determined that I am going to fulfill my responsibility and I am going to pay my debt. But I notice the last thing in close with it.

Unashamed of the Gospel of Christ

I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Could it be that one reason you've been reluctant to pay your debt is because you are somewhat ashamed of the gospel? I must confess to you that there have been years in my life in the past when I tried to avoid talking with people, because my only understanding of salvation was that if they would accept the plan and agree with me that they had accepted it, that I could then pronounce them saved.

And I had been taught in the school, it says, just get a person to say yes to your proposition, and then you can report that you have a convert. And after doing this for some little time, I saw the futility of it.

And so there were years in my life when I rather sought to avoid talking to people about Christ rather than gladly accepting the opportunity, because I knew that Christ had done something wonderfully real in my life, but I had left behind me a train of people to whom I had given the formula and nothing had happened.

And it didn't seem to be fair to the Lord to brag on Him and then to leave the people with so little and then soon to go back denying all they had. And so I must confess that there were years ago, there was a great reluctance after those first years of enthusiastic witnessing to everyone near and far, bus stop and elsewhere, trying my best to get people to accept the Lord, there came into my heart a sense of, well, it worked for me and I don't know why it doesn't work for others, but I'd just rather not talk about it.

And this is perfectly candid and honest, for I was ashamed of the gospel. It didn't seem to work. But then I began to realize that what I was presenting was not what He had chosen and given me to present, that I was substituting a formula for a person and a scheme for the Lord Jesus Christ and a system of scripture verses put in sequence for the Son of God Himself.

But I assure you today that for many years now, I've had great joy in witnessing because of the fact that I know that if people will meet Him on His terms, there will be a revelation of Christ in them and they will be gloriously transformed by the invading presence of the Son of God by the Holy Spirit.

Are you ashamed of the gospel of Christ? Do you look back and say, well, I've gone through it, I've gotten them to pray and they've reluctantly said a few words after me and nothing happened? Could it be that you've substituted a scheme for a person, a system for a Savior, and you've just had the same kind of disappointment that's come to many others because they've found that their oversimplification actually was a betrayal of the Son of God?

Then I assure you that if you will present the message of the gospel, the gospel is not only that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture and was buried and was raised again the third day, but the gospel carries with it the demand to repent and believe.

And repentance means the renunciation of the right to rule and an utter abandonment to the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ and an invitation of Him to come in both to govern as well as to forgive.

And when one presents Christ on his terms and says to the individual, now when you've done this, He will have come in, and when He has come in, you tell me, you'll find how much your heart is released by the simple fact that you've left to the Holy Ghost the sovereign prerogatives that belong to Him and you have fulfilled the responsibilities that He's given to you.

The gospel does work. It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. The word believe means to commit. The word faith means commit. And everyone that makes a commitment to Christ as Christ is presented as Prince and Savior embraces Him as He is lifted up and as He is presented.

I assure you that the gospel is indeed the power of God unto salvation. Let me ask you this morning, are you recognizing your debt to the children of New York, to the people in the apartments, to the family back home where you live, to the folks that you meet, to the foreign students that invade our shores, to the multitudes that come and go?

Are you thinking and praying for what we will have as an evangelical witness in New York in two years in the World's Fair that's coming to Flushing Meadows? Are you concerned about the fulfillment of responsibility or have you become so involved in certain little things of personal interest that the grand purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ in using you as a witness for Him has been obscured?

Do you see that the field is white already to harvest? Have you allowed the Spirit of God to place upon your heart afresh anew the debt? If you just walk down the streets of New York and look up at the people hanging out of the windows on these summer evenings and seeing the children sitting on the brownstone steps and let your heart go out and say how many of them have ever had anyone love them to Christ, you will have the same feeling that a missionary has when he goes into a village where no one's ever stopped with the gospel of the grace of God.

Recommitment to the Unfinished Task

Today I ask you, are you a debtor? Are you ready? Are you unashamed because you know the Lord Jesus Christ will do everything He's promised to do? I entreat you, I beg you, I implore you to bring yourself with me to a new place of abandonment, a new place of consecration as we can say, for, and you put your name, a bond slave of Jesus Christ called an apostle separated under the gospel of God.

And whatever days God may afford us in the future, might they be lived with an eye single to His glory, accepting freely our debt, prepared by the power of the Holy Ghost to fulfill our responsibility and confidently boasting of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him.

The alternative to this is a slow but insidious hardening of heart and embittering of spirit until we become utterly useless vines that cumber the ground that He must cut down in order that vines of new planting may be established.

There will be to the praise of the glory of His grace. I am debtor, said Paul, I'm ready. I'm not ashamed. Let's together then recommit ourselves to Him for the unfinished task that He's entrusted to us.

And as we come to this declaration of Independence Day, this Independence Day, July 4th, let us remember that the true freedom of the child of God comes only when he is completely and willingly a bond-slave of Jesus Christ.

Paul and you, a bond-slave, called an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. Let us pray. Our Father, we are prepared to accept the responsibilities of our citizenship in this land. We believe, by Thy grace we are.

But we realize that there are far greater responsibilities of being a citizen of the kingdom of God. We realize that there is with this truth that Thou hast caused to burst a light in our hearts, a great sense of moral obligation.

Might we willingly accept our debt today. Give to us, we ask Thee, a sense in which all of us realize anew afresh because of the work of Thy spirit in our hearts as we have met together this hour, that we have an obligation to the place that Thou hast put us, to the apartment building, to the block, to the community, to the tradesmen from which we purchase, to those that serve us and meet us.

We have a debt to family and friends and neighbors and visitors, foreigners that come our way. Grant to us, Lord, a hearty acceptance of it. Then we are to be ready by the power of the Holy Ghost, the equipment of the Spirit of God, the enabling that He gives to fulfill this.

Remember that the Lord Jesus said, After that the Holy Ghost has come upon you. You shall receive power and you shall be witnesses. Perhaps the reason some are unready is because they have never known the fullness of Thy spirit and they are seeking to work in the energy of their flesh and finding weariness result.

And then I am not ashamed. Perhaps the reason some have not witnessed is because they have not seen the dynamite of the gospel released in their own life. And so we pray, Lord, for Thy delivering work in the heart of every professing Christian until the testimony of the Apostle Paul becomes our testimony and this word of unchanging and unchangeable truth becomes a real and operative in our lives.

We come now, Lord, to thank Thee for the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us, who went to the cross for us, who shed His blood there in the agony of Calvary that He might redeem us. And as we come to this table of remembrance, might we do it as did the Apostle, with a heart open to hear the Lord Jesus speak to us.

The first words He said are the words we ought to say, even in this precious moment. Lord, what will Thou have me to do? We know that Thou dost have a plan for every life, a place for every person, and in Thy glorious will, each of us are important.

And so we ask Thee, Lord, as we approach the table, that there may be an utter consecration, complete abandonment, as well as complete cleansing, and that we come, that we might receive, that in order that we might distribute, that we might share with others and so fulfill our debt.

We ask it in the name and for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.