| The Golden Gate of Prayer |
Chapter 12 |
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To whom do we owe these debts? Are they debts to ourself? In a sense they are. Whenever we sin we rob ourself, take something from our own life which leaves us poorer. Sin always harms the sinner. It wounds and scars his soul. It stains his life. “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul.” Shall we then say, in excuse for our sinning, that our life is our own and that we may do with it as we will? But our life is not our own. It is God’s gift to us and it still belongs to God. We shall have to account for it when we stand before the judgment-seat.
Nothing is taught more clearly in the Scriptures than that our life, with all its powers and talents, is something of God’s, intrusted to us to be guarded by us and then brought back to God at the last. If it be faithfully kept and used, and returned at last without hurt or marring, its possibilities developed, we shall receive a reward. But if it be hurt, or if it be kept wrapped up in a napkin, an unused gift, we shall have a sad and fearful accounting when we stand before Christ. Our life is not our own to do with as we please. We may not harm it or destroy it and think that we shall escape accounting for the ruin we have wrought. It is God’s property we are wasting and he will ask us for it.
Nor can we say that our sins are debts to ourself and that therefore we can forgive ourself, can remit them, absolve ourself from paying them. God only can forgive any sin. Any effort of ours to free ourself from our debts only binds the awful burden more firmly upon us. We are quite ready to try to forgive ourself, excusing our sins, offering apologies and palliations for them, but we only add to our guilt and to our harming. Our sins are not merely debts owing to ourself.
Then, are they debts to other people, to those against whom we commit them? Again, in a sense they are. We are bound up with people in inextricable bonds. We owe duties to every one. The divine law requires us to love our neighbor as ourself. This indicates the nature and extent of our obligations to others, what we owe to them. St. Paul, among the many wholesome counsels which shine in the pages of his epistles, gives this one, “Owe no man anything.” He had seen how the course of debt had wrought its ruin in many lives, and he besought his friends to avoid it. But there was one debt he excluded. “Owe no man anything, save to love.” Love is a debt we never can altogether pay off. Even if, at the close of a day, we could say that we had met every obligation of love to every individual in the world, we would rise next morning to find the debts all waiting for us, and we should have to begin anew to pay them. Elsewhere St. Paul said that he was debtor to every man. He did not mean that he owed money to everybody, but that he owed love — not only to the refined Greek but also to the uncouth and unlovable barbarian. We all have a like debt to pay; we owe love to every one.
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