Chapter Three--Debtor, Disorderly

Lesson Three DEBTOR, DISORDERLY

Debtor The word "debtor" is from the Greek opheiletes, designating a person who owes anything to another. This meaning prevailed from the classical period down through the Koine. Plato speaks of "those who have abundance of land, and having also many debtors" (Laws V.736). Opheiletes is used in the following New Testament passages: Matthew 6:12; Matthew 18:24; Luke 13:4; Romans 1:14; Romans 8:12; Romans 15:27; Galatians 5:3.

Corresponding to the word "debtor" is "debt." One of the Greek words from which it is translated in the New Testament is opheile, meaning "that which is owed." It occurs frequently in the papyri in the literal sense of "debt." It is used in two New Testament passages: Matthew 18:32; Romans 13:7.

The other Greek word for "debt" in the New Testament is opheilema, meaning essentially the same thing as opheile. An example of it's use in classical Greek is the following: "Yet, of course, the doer of the favor is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt" (Thucydides, The Pelopponesian War 11.40). It is commonly used in the papyri. One document of A. D. 269 speaks of "debts recorded and unrecorded," where it is laid down that those who inherited nothing from deceased persons "should not be responsible for their debts or the claims made against them." Recorded in other documents are such phrases as "but the rest we shall give to Leucius as a debt," "but let Totoes pay this debt." Opheilema is used in the following New Testament passages: Matthew 6:12; Romans 4:4.

Akin to opheiletes, opheile, and opheilema is the verb opheilo, meaning "owe, be indebted." In the ordinary sense of "owe money" it is commonly used in the papyri. Some examples are: "if he denies the debt, and swears that he owes me nothing, let him be released," "tell him about his cellar, that it has been sealed up, although he owes me nothing," "you worry about the money which you owe to Agathodaemon: I have paid him in full," "let me tell you that you owe seven years' rent and dues." In one document opheilo is translated as "ought": "therefore we all ought to give thanks to all the gods," the idea being the obligation owed to the gods by the supplicants. In the New Testament opheilo is used in Matthew 18:28; Matthew 23:16; Matthew 23:18; Luke 7:41; Luke 11:4; John 13:14; Romans 15:1; 1 Corinthians 5:10; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 John 2:6; 1 John 4:11; and others.

The most significant use of the foregoing Greek words in the New Testament is in the relationship of men to their Creator. Without God men are sinners; thus they are reckoned as God's debtors. Indeed, the word "sinners" in Luke 13:4 is translated from opheiletai, literally meaning "debtors." The sinner is a debtor to God because the divine law which he has broken demands that a payment be made to satisfy divine justice. This payment is the forfeiture of the sinner's life (Ezekiel 18:4; Romans 1:32; Romans 6:16; Romans 6:23; Romans 8:13). In Matthew 6:12 sin is described as a debt because it demands expiation, and thus payment by way of punishment. Law always demands complete and full obedience, with the curse of God on all who fail to so obey it (Romans 4:15; Galatians 3:10-12). This curse rests on all men since all have transgressed God's law, and thus all are reckoned as sinners (Romans 3:12; Romans 3:23; 1 John 3:4).

But God is not only just; He is also merciful. And it is His mercy that provides a way of paying the debt incurred in man's sins, thus satisfying the demands of divine justice, removing the divine curse from the sinner, and restoring the sinner to God's favor. That way is Christ and His death on the cross (John 3:16; Ephesians 2:4-5; Romans 5:8.11). This is the great gospel of vicarious substitution: Jesus Christ the Saviour dying in the sinner's stead, giving His life for the sinner's life and thus paying the debt incurred in the sinner's sins to restore him to God's favor. Carefully and reverently read the following passages which portray the vicarious substitution of the Saviour for the sinner: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God , sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3); "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3); "Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21); "Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father" (Galatians 1:4); "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree" (Galatians 3:13); "Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24).

It is obvious from the foregoing passages that the sinner's only avenue of escape from the penalty of death incurred in his sins is to rely on the sin-offering Jesus Christ by fully trusting in Him for salvation, thus to be saved by God's wondrous grace or unmerited favor (Ephesians 2:8). If he disregards the saving work of Christ and attempts to satisfy God's justice and come into His favor by law keeping or good works, he would thus set aside the grace of God and reckon salvation as something that God owes Him, as if God were his debtor. This is the plain conclusion drawn in Romans 4:4, "Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace, but of debt." Any person who seeks salvation through his own merits faces certain doom, eternal death, which is what he justly deserves for his sins.

When one accepts Christ as his personal Saviour, to be made free from the debt incurred in his sins, he becomes a debtor in a different sense. He now owes certain obligations both to God and to man in keeping with his new status as a child of God, a disciple of Christ, and in response to the salvation he has received by the grace of God. See Romans 6:17-18; Ephesians 2:8-10.

As one who enjoyed redemption in Christ through divine grace, Paul keenly felt himself under an all-subduing obligation to carry the gospel to all mankind: "I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish" (Romans 1:14). Cf. Romans 15:27.

The apostle was also aware of the debt he and his fellow Christians owed God in regard to upright living: "So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Romans 8:12-13).

Concerning the obligation or debt we owe others to render them humble service, Jesus declared, "If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought (opheilete) to wash one another's feet" (John 13:14). Romans 13:8 speaks of the debt involved in the love the Christian owes his neighbor: "Owe (opheilete) no man anything, save to love one another: for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law." 1 John 4:11 declares, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought (opheilomen) to love one another."

Romans 15:1 stresses the debt the strong owe the weak to bear their burdens: "Now we that are strong ought (opheilomen) to bear the in-firmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves."

2 Thessalonians 1:3 speaks of the debt Paul and his co-workers owed their faithful brethren to give thanks to God for them: "We are bound (opheilomen) to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, even as it is meet, for that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the love of each one of you all toward one another aboundeth."

1 John 2:6 speaks of the debt the Christian owes Christ to live as He lived: "He that saith he abideth in him ought (opheilei) himself also to walk even as he walked."

Disorderly

There are three Greek words translated as "disorderly" in the New Testament, all akin to each other: the adjective ataktos, used in 1 Thessalonians 5:14; the adverb ataktos, used in 2 Thessalonians 3:6; 2 Thessalonians 3:11; and the verb atakteo, used in 2 Thessalonians 3:7.

References to the use of the adjective ataktos in classical Greek are the following: "Afterwards the Eginetans fell upon the Athenian fleet when it was in some disorder and beat it, capturing four ships with their crews" (Herodotus, History VI.93); "At length, however, the Peloponnesians began to scatter in pursuit of the ships of the enemy, and allowed a considerable part of their fleet to get in disorder" (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War VIII.105). The adjective ataktos is also used inclassical Greek in reference to music without rythym and to sensual excess, or inordinate, irregular sensual practices.

An example of the use of the adverb ataktos in classical Greek is in Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War 111.108, where the writer speaks of troops that broke in the face of the enemy and retreated in a disorderly manner.

In their discussion of atakteo, Moulton and Milligan observe, "Like its parent adjective ataktos, and the adverb, this verb is found in the New Testament only in the Thessalonian Epp., where their context clearly demands that the words should be understood metaphorically. Some doubt has, however, existed as to whether they are to be taken as referring to actual wrong-doing, or to a certain remissness in daily work and conduct. Chrysostom seems to incline to the former view , Theodoret to the latter. The latter view is now supported by almost all contemporary evidence from the papyri." These authors then refer to a papyrus of A. D. 66, a contract of apprenticeship in which a father enters into an undertaking that if there are any days when his son "plays truant" or "fails to attend," he is afterward to make them good. They also refer to a papyrus of A. D. 183 in which a weaver's apprentice is bound to appear for an equivalent number of days, if from idleness or ill-health or any other reason he exceeds the twenty days' holiday he is allowed in the year.

The context of the word "disorderly" as used in the second Thessalo-nian letter plainly depicits it with the meaning of idleness or abstaining from productive, constructive activity: "Now we command you, brethren , in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which they received of us. For yourselves know how ye ought to imitate us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; neither did we eat bread for nought at any man's hand, but in labor and travail, working night and day, that we might not burden any of you: not because we have not the right, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you, that ye should imitate us. For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, If any will not work, neither let him eat. For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly, that work not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread. But ye, brethren, be not weary in well-doing. And if any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle, note that man, that ye have no company with him, to the end that he may be ashamed. And yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother" (2 Thessalonians 3:6-15). Notice that the disorderly brethren are those who fail to follow the example of the hard-working apostles. They are further described as those "that work not at all." The word "work" in the Greek is ergazomai, meaning "to labor, do work, to trade, to make gain by trading."

We should be impressed by the fact that idleness or laziness is so odious a sin, the idle, lazy brother is to have fellowship withdrawn from him by his faithful brethren, so that they no longer have company with him. Thus we can see that the idler is placed in the same category as those who are guilty of the worst kind of sins imaginable: "I wrote unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no, not to eat" (1 Corinthians 5:11).

The adjective ataktos, disorderly, as used in 1 Thessalonians 5:14 may refer to any deviation from the divinely prescribed order of the Christian life: "And we exhort you, brethren, admonish the disorderly, encourage the fainthearted, support the weak, be longsuffering toward all."

Questions

• Define the words opheiletes, opheile, opheilema, and opheilo.

• Why are sinners reckoned as debtors to God?

• How does Christ pay the debt incurred in man's sins, vindicating God's justice and restoring the sinner to God's favor?

• How does the sinner rely on the sin-offering Jesus Christ, thus to be saved by God's grace?

• Discuss the Christian as debtor both to God and to man.

• Discuss the use of the Greek words for "disorderly" in classical Greek. How were these words used in the papyri?

• How is the word "disorderly" used in the context of 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15? Discuss the seriousness of the sin designated by this word.

• What may be the meaning of "disorderly" in 1 Thessalonians 5:14?