Debt Freedom (prologue)

I was enjoying singing through the wonderful original arrangement of Isaac Watts’ song, Alas and Did My Savior Bleed. I was pondering the last verse, which is the following:

But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe.
Here, Lord, I give myself away
‘Tis all that I can do.

I’ve been doing a word study of “debt” and “obligation” and “owe” in the New Testament, and I am not finding “debt” ever spoken of in this sense. I’ve seen it used two ways so far in my studies of all the passages I could find, and what I can’t find is this: the grace we have received puts us into debt with God.

When the New Testament authors speak of debt, with one possible exception (in Romans 8), it is always 1) the debt against God we owe because of our sin, and 2) the debt against other people we owe because of the grace we’ve received. Romans 8 is perplexing me, but in every other passage what is prized and emphasized is debt freedom toward God, and debt creation toward man. I have not yet discovered any place that speaks of our still being in debt to God. Grace is not a debt-creating thing in relationship to God; it’s a debt-freeing thing in relationship to God. And as we have received that grace, we owe grace to other people.

In the future I want to unpack all the major passages I have found that speak of debt or obligation or owing. I’m inclined to say that the concept of owing God due to grace or somehow making payments back to God is a hazardous way to conceive of our relationship to Him. It’s not without possible benefits, but I think we fall into the holes too easily and wreck what could otherwise be a good analogy.

So, I’ll launch into that later. Maybe someone will be helped by it.