I am a Debtor. Romans 1:14 There are real obligations we owe to others. It's part of what goes along with being in the family of God and a member of the kingdom of God. We are stewards of God's grace and the message of salvation. God has entrusted us with the most important task anyone could ever have. We are to tell people how to come to God by faith. Paul was to take the Gospel to kings and the Gentiles. His obligation was to reach the cultured and the uncultured. That covered pretty much all of the Roman empire as far as the extent of where he was to go. The wise and unwise refer to all degrees of intelligence. The people he was to reach with the Gospel were all people in every place.
To be the trusted bearer of tidings of infinite importance is a high calling. The steward of God's truth is not upset in any way because he is a debtor to all men. He knows the great privilege it is to open people's eyes to the light of the Gospel. Such a person is glad to be a debtor who tells people to "Come, for all things are now ready." He is willing to become "all things to all men that by any means he might save some." Paul was a debtor because God had committed the Gospel to him.
The heart of the apostle Paul was filled with an inward affection for his fellow Jews. That included a determination to present the Gospel to everyone who would listen, whether Jews or Gentiles. He had the heart to press forward to places where the Gospel had not been preached or to places like Rome where he had not been. His heart was longing to do the will of God and to display the love of God to those who did not know Him through proclaiming the love of God through the Gospel message.
“God is love” is not how people now perceive God to be. Love, to most, is a fuzzy kind of emotional response to the needs of people rather than a value put upon a person because of who they are, not how long they have to live in the world. Ancient Greeks perceived God to be beauty. The Romans considered God to be power, so they called Caesar their god. Barbarians would have been the uneducated people who thought God was like an angry judge who would punish people who were bad by withholding rain from dry fields or losing a battle. Practicing Jews thought of God as the law or the enforcer of the law. There are pantheists who think everything that has some life is God whether it be animals or plants. Some scientists think of God as a force like gravity, energy, or a life force.
Those of us who know God know the “God is love” in a personal way. “Herein is love, not that we love God but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins.” God is love; He always was love and always will be love. The essence of God’s being is love; people need to know this. That’s what the Gospel message is all about. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” We live because God is love. We survive day after day because God is love. His love is so great that any and all people who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ can go to heaven after they die if they accept His free gift of eternal life.
The Gospel message given to us to tell others of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is a great privilege in which to be involved. We owe it to people to tell them of the wonders of God's grace, His love, and forgiveness. It is our obligation to pass on the simplicity of salvation because of the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. They need to hear the truth of the resurrection, ascension, and coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. People need to know of the unsearchable riches of Christ. We are debtors with the great privilege of being stewards of our Lord, telling the world, "All things are ready, come."