ot all the quotations in this issue are from believers. The reason we did this is that our Lord commented that when it comes to finances, the children of this world are often wiser than the children of light (Luke 16:8). At the same time, we ask the reader to remember and consider the source.
Our property is purely a trust fund, and the whole of it is to be used for the benefit of the owner. There is to be no division
at all. There is to be no line drawn between God's portion and our portion. All is God's, and all is to be employed for him. Here
is the only true and safe starting-point for deducing our practical rules of Christian expenditure.
R.L. Dabney
Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.
The third economic danger to debt is that debt always mortgages the future . . the reality is that you may be sentencing
yourself to a lower standard of living in the future.
Ron Blue
Another way in which men unjustly withhold what is their
neighbour's, is in neglecting to pay their
debts. Sometimes this happens, because they run so far into debt that they
cannot reasonably hope to be able to pay their debts; and this they
do, either through pride and affectation of living above their circumstances, or through a grasping, covetous disposition,
or some other corrupt principle. Sometimes they neglect to pay their debts from carelessness of spirit about it, little
concerning themselves whether they are paid or not . . . Sometimes persons have that by them with which they could pay their debts if
they would; but they want to lay out their money for something else . . . When men thus withhold what is due, they unjustly
usurp what is not their own.
Jonathan Edwards
The force of the imperative is that we are to have no unpaid debts; that we are not to be in debt to any. In accord with
the analogy of Scripture this cannot be taken to mean that we may never incur financial obligations, that we may not borrow from
others in case of need (cf. Ex. 22:25; Ps. 37:26; Matt. 5:42; Luke 6:35). But it does condemn the looseness with which
we contract debts and particularly the indifference so often displayed in the discharging of them. "The wicked borroweth,
and payeth not again" (Psalm 37:21). Few things bring greater reproach upon the Christian profession than the accumulation
of debts and refusal to pay them.
John Murray
Object. But I am in great necessity.
Answ. Begging in necessity is lawful; but stealing or cheating is not, though you call it borrowing.
Object. But it is a shame to beg.
Answ. The sin of thievish borrowing is worse than shame.
Object. But none will give me if I beg.
Answ. If they will give but to save your life at the present, you must take it, though they give you not what you would have:
the poorest beggar's life is better than the thief's.
Object. But I hope God may enable me to pay hereafter.
Answ. If you have no rational way to manifest the soundness of that hope to another, it is but pretend faith and hope
for thievery and deceit.
Richard Baxter
. . . it is clear that God warns against our presumption on the future. When we sign a long-term mortgage, we are pledging
to make payments for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years. James warned us about presuming on the future for the next year.
What does this say about forty years?
Douglas Anderson
Qu. 8. How doth the government raise this interest yearly? Ans. By taxing those who lent the principal, and others. Qu.
9. When will the government be able to pay the principal? Ans. When there is more money in England's treasury alone
than there is at present in all Europe. Qu. 10. And when will that be? Ans. Never.
Augustus Toplady
