Dear Olumide,
Have you ever taken a loan? Have you ever taken monetary aid perhaps for a profit-making venture? Or just a necessary liability? A loan to get an education, start a business, buy a house or a car, build a future, fix a mistake in the past or lend to another person? Have you ever had to request for money because you didn’t have enough to do something you were infinitely convinced to do? I hope you have because I know I have.
There are many reasons why anyone can take a loan but the terms are often not the same. Some loans come with no interest rates to them, some come with low or high interest rates spread across months, days, or even years. Some loans last a lifetime and others go for the length of a business day.
There’s something interesting about loans. The individual or corporation lending you money would need assurance on some levels. They’d need to know your name and perhaps where you can be reached. They would need to know what the loan is for; I think this is for their records so they are sure you aren’t doing something crazy or immoral like funding the death of others. Stay with me please, I promise this would be worth it. Now where was I? Oh yes, that’s right, they’d sometimes like to know what your track record is with getting loans and paying back; how good your credit score is. They may also want to know how competent you are in the venture you seek to venture into. It is within their rights to ask for these things and most commonly, they want to have a piece of your possession in sight: collateral in case you are unable to pay what you owe them at the time you said you would pay them.
I must add that there are some lenders who seek your information and do not care what you do with what you borrow as long as they have collateral or can get leverage on you to return the worth of what they lent to you. Some people may ask you to avoid such establishments and people, in my opinion, you would be wise to heed such counsel.
Now, aside from ensuring you are a valuable person and you have value to your person, the lender of loans may sometimes require you to do business in a certain way that ensures you are able to pay back the money you are owing. In a very uncomfortable way, the lender may insist that they be a part of the business they have lent you money for until you have paid them the money owed. Some might insist on staying on as investors when the prospects of your venture become profits.
In some agreements, and in some ways, to owe is to be owned; to owe is to have a piece of you given for a piece of your vision to be earned. In some ways when you borrow money, you have no space to waver because you either succeed at what you set out to do or lose something just as valuable. I reckon that a debtor is obligated to the courtesy of the indebted and no lender gives you a loan when they do not think you are valuable or have a portion of value they may have in their possession if their possessions are not recovered at the fulfilment of the agreement. In the same way, I think of loans and debts, I think of sin and the power of sin on the flesh.
The first time Adam and the woman were accosted by the wiles of sin, unknown to them, they were transacting in a currency they had no business venturing into. The words of the serpent were tailored to the language of a lender who craftily hid the terms and conditions and only dangled the reward. The lender in this case knew that they were persons of value – made in the Image of GOD and in the likeness of the creator to have dominion over creation (Genesis 1:26).
The lender knew that they would be curators of GOD’s creation. However, the lender did not say that they would need to put up a collateral of their union with GOD. This lender did not say that to be wise in their own eyes, they would be handing over the ability to see GOD. Ideally, they did not have what it would take to pay back and so while this was a bad loan, it was profitable for the lender because the goal was the collateral of eternal relationship with the eternal GOD and not the earthly wisdom they were lending to humanity. This gain was built on the collective loss of a borrower who did not know the fine print they signed with deliberate disobedience. This is true of how we also succumb to the desires of the flesh and the works of our fallen nature.
When I sin, I’m taking a loan I cannot pay: I’m taking a desire or pleasure I cannot afford and I’m putting as collateral my peace: an eternal piece of GOD’s Nature in me. I’m exchanging GOD’s Design for the design I borrowed and my aim is to experience or encounter a promise which is not programmed for me. When I sin, I seek to have what I have no business or competence managing at the expense of the income of GOD’s Design for me.
When I sin, I take a loan I cannot pay and the terms are simple, I have to live the way the indebted desires in order to stay in their good graces because the only way to be free of this would be death as the Bible rightly says: the wage or payment of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Not just death in the flesh but a death for all eternity. Just as some debts or loans last a lifetime, the debt of sin was billed to last for all existence because until we paid, we were never free and because we could never pay, the plan ensured that we would never be free.
It is with this mindset that I come to appreciate what JESUS did. Allow me to read the entire verse:
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
– Romans 6:23
The salvation we preach and listen to is the description of a debt paid and a loan cleared. When we speak of GOD’s Riches in glory, we speak first of GOD’s infinite capacity to clear our debts and fulfil the terms of the debt of sin. Because of this, we are free to spend from HIS Wealth of design for life. Our income comes from HIS righteousness. What we desire should either be fulfilled by HIM or not desired at all.
Which begs the question: why do we still sin and consider ourselves free from debt? Why do we deliberately take up loans when we are rich enough to live freely? Why do we allow the advertisement of debts to take up the space of our thinking so that we choose debts and slavery instead of the freedom and wealth in CHRIST? Why? Why would we justify sinning because our Heavenly Father is wealthy enough to pay our debts? In the human clime only a foolish child goes on borrowing with the thrill that they come from a family rich enough to pay their debts. Only a foolish child seeks to owe because they wish for freedom to make bad choices in finances. Only a stupid child desires to pay interests that they need not incur since they have enough principal.
I do not seek to make a better argument than Paul did in his writing to the Hebrews in Rome; however, I hope to contextualise the appalling dilemma of sinning when you have the strength and grace not to do so. I reckon we need to spend from GOD’s wealth of Righteousness and this is done when we listen to HIM do what we ought to do.
In the Grace of CHRIST, the truth is we are no longer debtors to the power of sin to (commit) sin, therefore, we should no longer behave like we are helpless when we take up these atrocities in our worst decisions to go against GOD’s wishes. Once we are saved, we are forever bound to live within the means of our heavenly Father which is a very rich boundary without lack for wisdom and fun if we are being honest.
I, therefore, admonish you as I admonish myself to accept the riches of CHRIST which is the righteousness of our thoughts to think, actions to act and speech to speak. We are not poor in the currency of life and peace. We are rich and so we need not borrow from the enemy who seeks our demise and nothing more.
With all the brotherly love I can muster,
Olatunde
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