By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
July 19, 2026
Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Romans 8:12–25 (ESV)
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
We are Debtors, Paul tells us. We are all debtors. This is not the best way to start a message, but I think it is important. We live in a culture of success. If you think about the people we look up to culturally there is a common theme. Patrick Mahomes, Elon Musk, The President, or Messi what is something they have in common? Some are great athletes. Some are brilliant. But all of them are what we would call wealthy.
We live in a culture where success equals wealth. Those that have success are measured based on how much wealth they create. There were some great football quarterbacks that never went to the Super Bowl. There were some great quarterbacks that probably never made it to a division 1 NCAA school. Some of them might have been as good as Patrick Mahomes, yet we have never heard of them. What was the difference between the local high school star and Patrick? What is the difference between Messi and the soccer players in our own community? Is it their skill? Sure, skill has something to do with it, and I am not saying that Mahomes or Messi are not skilled players in their sports. I can only wish I had their skill, but there is something more than skill. Someone saw these men play the sport. Someone gave them an opportunity to go to the next level. Someone gave them a chance.
What about Elon and Trump? Their status is a bit different from that of the sports star. Their success is measured differently, but it is very similar. They had an idea. And someone backed their idea. For Elon, the idea was something he and some of his friends came up with. That idea was that there was a new economy emerging, one where the traditional methods of payment were insecure or not available. So they came up with PayPal. This allowed each of us to be able to purchase things online with extra layers of security, so our account numbers were not just out there for everyone to see.
We see these innovations, and we automatically assume that these people were brilliant. And they are brilliant, but I know many brilliant people. I know a man that has invented a windshield wiper blade that will not allow ice to collect on it in the winter. I want that windshield wiper blade, but it is not available. It is a brilliant idea, but his idea is not available to us, where most of us have a PayPal account. The difference is who Elon knew, and who my friend knew.
We have this idea that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in our culture. That we are self-made individuals. If we simply work hard we will end up like the soccer star, the football MVP, or the tech giant. What is the reality of this? Have you ever tried to pull yourself up by your bootstraps? It is impossible. And that was what the origin of that saying originally implied. We cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps because we are in the boots. We are physically unable to lift ourselves up in that manner because we are standing in our own boots. If we could do this we could literally fly, or we would have some superhuman ability to defy the laws of gravity. What I am getting at is everyone needs community. We all need others to see in us something of value to invest. Someone needs to see our ability, our brilliance, our worth. They need to see us, and they need to promote our value to others, convincing them that we are worth the chance.
We are all debtors.
How did I become your pastor? I was not the only option available. Several names were considered. Yet my name rose to the top. Is it my greater ability than everyone else? No, it is because someone along the way knew me, and they spoke up. I am here not because I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, I am here because the community wanted me. I do not know what criteria they considered, but I have my position not because of me, but because of everyone else.
This is something we often forget in our society. We like the idea of the self-made individual. And there are some things to that concept that I have not spoken of, but the reality is that none of us are self-made. The store owner might have come up with a great idea, but they would not have a store without their customers. An inventor might create a remarkable device but the only way that device ends up in a store is if that inventor convinces a bank, a manufacture, or investors to join the cause. We would not have iPhones or personal computers if a small computer store did not take a chance on a bunch of nerds working out of their garage to sell their machine in his store.
Paul reminds us, we are debtors. We owe something to someone. We were allowed an opportunity to try, and our current position in life would not have happened without it. We owe someone or many people everything.
We are debtors, Paul says, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. What Paul means by this is that this debt we owe is beyond what we experience within this physical existence. It is a debt that we cannot pay because we do not have the ability to even fathom it. Our bodies are bound to our own perception. We are bound by time and space. Those four dimensions are the only things we have ready access to: time, length, width, and height. We are bound or limited by these things. Yet Paul says that we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. This means that there is something else that we have not been fully aware of that is also working within our lives.
“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” This previously unknown dimension of existence working within our lives is what Paul calls the Spirit. We are debtors, not to the four dimensions, but to the Spirit.
I know this sounds ridiculous. We do not like these terms, just as we do not like coming to terms with the concept that we cannot pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. These dimensional philosophies seem like they have nothing to do with our lives. And yet they do. When scientists are working with the math surrounding various concepts of physics they cannot make it work without introducing dimensions. No matter how hard they try to explain gravity, which has been part of classical physics from the dawn of physics, when they look at the universe in its magnitude or at the microscopic subatomic level, their theories break down. The only way they can explain these breakdowns is to introduce a new dimensional theory that influences what we are able to observe. Theoretically they have these dimensions, yet we are not capable of observing them directly. At best, we can only observe their influence upon the four dimensions we can observe.
There is something beyond us that influences life, and without this we will die, but if we have it we live.
I have been asked on multiple occasions to prove the existence of God. I have tried to study this most of my adult life. There is an entire field of study dedicated to this, it is theology. If you break that word down it literally means the study of God, or the science of God. Just like biology is the study of life, or the science of life. When the first universities began in Europe theology was the highest of the sciences, but this has changed. It has changed because we do not have the right tools to study God as we would physics or biology. When we interact with God we cannot apply the same methods, because God does not respond in clear systematic measurable ways. God is unpredictable, those that believe can see places where God has influenced things, but it is like the effects of gravity on time, the math does not always work.
I cannot prescribe certain number of prayers to obtain healing or some other desired result and with absolute certainty know that it will happen. This has been tried, and many have stopped believing because they did not receive what they fervently prayed for. They are debtors to the flesh. They are bound to the flesh. They are looking only to time and space for their assurance. But we are not debtors to the flesh, but the spirit. When we come to God in relationship with Christ, we enter into a different plain of existence, one where time and space are no longer the limits. We live differently.
We live differently. We live in space and time, but we belong with God. We explain this as being a citizen of heaven. And we do not always know what that means. For some it means that we will have a place in heaven when we no longer live. But that is not the fullness of the term. Jesus did not come preaching that the Kingdom of God is there at the end of you life, he taught that the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That means it is right here all around us. We will not only live in that different plain later, we live in it now. And we have that existence because someone looked at us and thought we had value. Someone looked at us and thought sure they may not be much now, but they have potential.
God so loved the world, the Gospel of John says, that God gave his one unique son. The only being in the universe like it, to save the world. That whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. Some might say that this is open to everyone, because it says whoever believes. Some others say that it was predestined from the beginning of time who would be saved. We argue about these things because we cannot directly observe that plain of existence. All we have is scripture, our experiences, and the church. That is theology. We look at those things, we study them, we develop theories, and we come out with traditions of faith. There is something interesting about these traditions, what do they do with the one unique son, Jesus?
Jesus is central to our faith. It is Jesus who made himself a little lower than the angels to be made into the likeness of man. It is Jesus, God wrapped in human flesh. It is Jesus, and only Jesus, that can bridge that gap between God and humanity. Why we might ask. Because only God can make that path.
When God created heaven and earth, and placed our first parents into the garden, he created us in his image. We lived in the plains of temporal and spiritual existence. We have tried to understand what this might mean. Some have said that we have intelligence, but if intelligence was the only factor involved are children full image bears? Our thoughts on this challenge our social beliefs, because how we answer these questions determine how we live our lives. What does it mean to live be created in the image of God? I cannot give you a definitive answer, but from observing scripture, experience, and the church I believe that image is the capacity to exist in a temporal and spiritual plains.
But that capacity became fractured. We have these spiritual experiences but they seem disconnected. They happen in an instant and for the rest of our lives we seek them out only to find ourselves grasping at wind. Yet we have that capacity. A longing to be fulfilled. We seek to fill it with education and knowledge. We seek to fill it with substances that seem to provide spiritual experiences, and as we seek these things out we find that they trap us addiction. We even seek out the spiritual through experiences. This thrill seeking behavior leads us to climb mountains, dive off cliffs into the water, or even seek out adulterous and lustful activities. We do this because we want to feel alive.
That is an interesting phrase, feel alive. We have a longing to feel alive, and yet when we engage the feeling is fleeting at best, and usually we feel less alive after. This is what Paul is speaking of when he says, “we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die.” The ways of the flesh, give a false spiritual experience, and it costs us.
We can get all the degrees a university offers, but it only helps us if we use that degree properly. We can have all the money in the world and still feel empty. We can enjoy the occasional drink but when we use that substance to provide the strength for us to cope with life we will find ourselves addicted. If we seek to find our worth in the arms of a lover we often find that things will change over time. There needs to be more. We need a different dimension to make sense of it all.
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”.
Many look at this term, abba, and liken it to Daddy. This idea originated because it is one of the first words a child is able to say in that language. So a toddler will cry out Abba, just as our children cry out daddy. But this idea tends to fall short because adults will continue to say abba, where in our language we tend to look down on adults calling their father’s daddy. What scholars have concluded is that it is a form of intimacy but more likely refers to my father, or my dad. It is personal, formal, as well as endearing. It is respectful as well as intimate. In English, we do not have an adequate word, nor did Greek which is why Paul used the Aramaic form. I do not know if this is the same in Swahili or not. What Paul is getting at is we are no longer dead and disconnected from the spiritual life, instead we so connected that we can speak about it in intimate familial terms.
“We are children of God, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Paul says, “Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” This is the debt we have. We do not enter into the realm of God on our own, or by our own terms. Our entry into the kingdom of heaven is provided to us by someone else. That being hold the terms and conditions of our debt. We might be able to negotiate to some degree, but ultimately we must submit to their authority.
If we do not submit we do not have a relationship. If you need a loan for business you do not have the authority to change the terms. You might be able to slide something by some, but usually they have teams of lawyers that are looking over every word. If you want the loan you comply with their terms. And when you comply you are in debt to them. You are bound by a legal contract to repay that debt. The same is with Christ. We do not get to make the terms, Christ set the terms and those terms are belief.
This belief is not merely an acknowledgment that God exists, but it is the entrusting our complete lives to Christ. It is devoting yourself, not to rules, but to the relationship.
When we are in a relationship, the thoughts are no longer self-centered, instead we look for the mutual good. We cook what our children will eat, because we need to eat. We often go where our spouse wants to go because we want them to be happy. And hopefully they do the same. Our thoughts, our actions will change not because they must, but we want the other people within our relationship to succeed as much or more than ourselves.
Albert wants to help the family by starting a lawn mowing business. What do I do? I help him. Does it benefit me, maybe or maybe not. But what I do know is that it provides an opportunity for us to extend our relationship. I can teach him differently. He takes on more responsibilities. And in the process we both grow. This change in relationship comes with its own challenges. Albert wants to mow, but his potential clients live farther from us than we can drive the mower. We need a trailer. My dad, also in a relationship wants to help so he offered a trailer, but the trailer was old. We hooked it up to the pickup and immediately alarms began going off. The trailer had bad wires. We spent our entire vacation fixing something that we did not realize would be necessary. We did this not because it was a benefit to us personally, but because we want to encourage someone else. This extends more and more. And soon we have troubles and blessings from all sides. And we begin to wonder is it worth it?
The answer is yes. In Christ, it is worth it. In Christ, we are not bound by what we can sense in the dimensions of time and space. In Christ, we are spliced back into the fullness of the Spiritual life. We suffer because we are all wired differently, but once we are connected to the same source things begin to change. Our minds change, our emotions become tuned, our desires become directed. And our suffering with Christ becomes a joy instead of something we avoid. We change because there is something more. We have hope beyond what the world can sense.
We groan today because we only get a glimpse, only a taste, but we know there is more. All creation knows there is more. That is why we seek the thrill, the education, and the various other things we seek to fill the voids. We groan because creation is cut off from the source, and only in Christ can we bring it back. And we bring it back by living within that relationship Christ has with us. We love God with all that we have available, and then we love our neighbor. We live with and in Christ, and as the spirit saturates us, it splashes out as we interact with those around us. And they begin to wonder what we have. Why we can be content, and joyful even though we do not have the things this world thinks successful people have.
We are all debtors. Not one of us is self-made. Not one of us is complete in ourselves. We need each other, and we need the source of all life, through whom all things were and are created. We need people to see us and encourage us. We need someone to give us a chance, and we need someone to challenge our understanding. We need, but what we need the most is life. Not merely feeling alive, we need life, and purpose. We need to become the beings that God created us to be. Image bearers, living in time and space as well as with God on his plain of existence.
Jesus came to us, reconnecting God to man, and he lifts us back to God, connecting man to God. May that connection define our lives now and forever.
Previous Messages:
War Within
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church July 5, 2026 Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Hebrews 12:1–3, 12-17 (ESV) 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings…
Do We Stand with Him?
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church June 28,2026 Click to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Romans 6:12–23 (ESV) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but…
He Stands With Us
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church June 14, 2026 Click Here to Join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili Romans 5:1–8 (ESV) 1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also…
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