Most Christians carry a quiet sense of guilt about the people in their lives who don’t know Jesus. The neighbor who waves from across the street but has never heard the gospel from you. The coworker you’ve known for three years but haven’t once mentioned your faith. The sibling still outside of Christ. That weight is real, and it does not go away on its own. But Paul once stood before a group of believers and said something remarkable: “I am innocent of the blood of all men” (). He was not boasting. He was describing what it looks like when someone has genuinely given the people around them what they were owed. That raises a question worth sitting with: what does it actually take to reach that point?
What You Owe, and Why It Matters
The apostle Paul opens Romans 13 with a call to pay what you owe. “Render to all what is due them,” he writes, before landing on this: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another” (). The principle reaches back through the whole arc of Scripture. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes warns that it is better never to vow than to vow and fail to pay (). God expects his people to follow through on what they owe, to make good on their obligations. And that is not limited to money or social debts. It extends to the lost people around us.
So what, exactly, do we owe them?
Your Example Is the First Debt
Jesus described his disciples as the salt of the earth and the light of the world (). Salt that has gone flat is useless. A lamp hidden under a basket does nothing for anyone. Jesus was not handing out a compliment here. He was naming an obligation. The people around us are owed the sight of a life that has actually been changed by the gospel.
Being salt means being genuinely different. Not performing Christianity while living exactly like everyone else, but letting the transformation show in the places where it costs something: how you handle conflict, how you build your marriage, how you raise your children, how you relate to money. People notice when that difference is real. They feel it when someone responds to a hard situation in a way that does not fit any pattern they have seen before.
Being light means not hiding that difference once you have it. It is entirely possible to be a changed person and still keep that change invisible whenever it might make things socially uncomfortable. Jesus says that is not enough. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden (). The people around you are owed the sight of your light, not just the quiet fact that it exists.
A Defense for Your Hope
Peter pushes further. “Always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence” (). Many people read this and think of debates or arguments for Christianity against skeptics. But Peter is pointing at something closer to daily life.
He is writing to believers enduring real persecution for their faith, people who are staying with Jesus when walking away would be far easier. And he says: when others see you holding on, when they watch you live with peace and purpose in conditions that make no sense unless eternity is real, be ready to explain why. Be ready to give a defense for your hope.
That means actually living like a person who has hope. The good news cannot sound like good news from someone who seems to have gotten nothing out of it. If Christ has genuinely changed your life, that change should be visible in how you carry your days, and you ought to be ready to say plainly why you carry them that way.
The Debt That Never Reaches Zero
Paul says to owe nothing to anyone, except love. And this is where the instruction changes shape. He is not saying love is optional. He is saying that no matter how much love you give, there is always more to give. It is the one debt that never reaches zero.
That is actually good news. It means the goal is not perfection in outreach. It is not finding exactly the right words or engineering a spiritual conversation at exactly the right moment. The goal is the posture: I have loved them deeply, and I can love them better still. “For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” ().
Paul’s confidence in Acts 20 was not arrogance. It was the testimony of a man who had given the people around him what he owed them. He had set an example. He had offered a defense. He had loved without holding back. He could say he was innocent not because everyone believed, but because he had not shrunk from declaring the whole purpose of God ().
What This Looks Like
When you look at the people in your life who are still outside of Christ, you do not have to carry that sense of debt as something crushing and unpayable. The debt is real. But it is payable. Show them a life that is genuinely different. Tell them, when they ask, why you live with such settled hope. Love them better today than you did yesterday.
That is what you owe the lost. And when you have given it faithfully, you can say, not as a boast but as a quiet testimony, that you have been faithful to what God asked. The rest belongs to him.
