Redemption has Made Us Double Debtors
For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.
― 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
Horatius Bonar (1808-1898) was a Scottish minister, author, and hymn writer, penning nearly 150 hymns in his lifetime. Today, Bonar is still widely renowned for his work as a hymn writer, as churches across the world continue to sing the hymns he wrote, including “I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say ‘Come unto Me and Rest.’”
Among the many books written by Bonar is God’s Way of Holiness, a work in which Bonar describes the relationship between peace and holiness in the Christian life.
In God’s Way of Holiness, Horatius Bonar writes of the sweetness of Christian duty when it is motivated by love to God.
The word duty is objected to as inconsistent with the liberty of forgiveness and sonship. Foolish and idle cavil! What is duty? It is the thing which is due by me to God; that line of conduct which I owe to God. And do these objectors mean to say that, because God has redeemed us from the curse of the law, therefore we owe Him nothing, we have no duty now to Him? Has not redemption rather made us double debtors? We owe Him more than ever; we owe His holy law more than ever; more honor, more obedience. Duty has been doubled, not cancelled, by our being delivered from the law; and he who says that duty has ceased, because deliverance has come, knows nothing of duty, or law, or deliverance. The greatest of all debtors in the universe is the redeemed man, the man who can say, “The life that I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Privilege is not something distinct from duty, nor at variance with duty, but it is duty and something more; it is duty influenced by higher motives; duty uncompelled by terror or suspense. In privilege the duty is all there; but there is superadded, in shape of motive and relationship, which exalts and ennobles duty. It is my duty to obey government; it is my privilege to obey my parent. But in the latter case, is duty gone, because privilege has come in? Or has not the loving relationship between parent and child only intensified the duty, by superadding the privilege, and sweetening the obedience by mutual love? “The love of Christ constraineth.” That is something more than both duty and privilege added.