Debit and Credit by Philip Giddings

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 21, 1915

Debit and Credit

By Philip Giddings

PHILIP GIDDINGS

In bookkeeping, what we get is our “debit;” what we give, our “credit;” so in the heavenly ledger the two sides of the account must be justly balanced. The extent of our “debit” to God must measure our “credit” to our fellow men.

Talents of gold and silver, of intellectual or moral strength, are our Lord’s goods to us for disbursement. “Of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.” John 1:16.

Our opportunity is the measure of our responsibility. The extent of Paul’s receipts had rendered him “debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” Rom. 1:14.

As our strength so must our day be. “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If any man speak

as the oracles of God; if any man minister, let him do it as of the ability which God giveth: that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 4:10, 11.

That fact borne in mind would be a prevention and a cure of vanity and selfishness, of national, racial, social, intellectual, and any other kind of pride. Knowing by the “gifts” that we are “debtors,” how evident would be our folly to boast of our “debts” instead of discharging them? “For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” 1 Cor. 4:7.

Are you wealthy? Who gave you life and power to get wealth? Can you sing? Who gave you voice? Are you intellectual? Who furnished brain cells? Are you spiritual? Who gave you grace?

Our personal selves and all we are and have are gifts—streamlets from God’s ocean, meant to course through right and left banks of usefulness to our fellow men, as gratitude back to the Giver. Eccl. 1:7.

Our due points our duty. We are simply doing honest bookkeeping by daily balancing the debit by the credit.

“If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth.” Eccl. 11:3. And “the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God.” Heb. 6:7.

“Give, and it shall be given unto you.” Other conditions being equal, rain falls most by watercourses. As the evaporation, so shall the distillation be.

You are blessed to be a blessing, given that you may give. An inlet of blessing without its outlet, stagnates.

If we are ministered unto, it is that we may administer. ’Tis more blessed to give than to receive. To receive blesses one; to give blesses two, and as many more as we give unto; for, like happiness, passing it on to others does not lessen our share of it, but rather increases it. Here is a divine law contradictory to that of human subtraction. Instead of 1—1 = 0, 1—1 = 2; while the self-absorbing 1 + 1 = 0, or worse still, —2; or, in other words, 2 less than nothing, yea, as many more less as there might have been more; for we are accountable to the extent of not only what we are, but also what we might have been. So then according to this “more blessed” arithmetic, “there is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him: but blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.” Prov. 11:24-26.

The comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God is meant by God, through us, to comfort others. 2 Cor. 1:3, 4.

Unless we are misers (and that is the same word from which come misery, miserable, etc.), is not our happiness increased by sharing with others those things that make us happy?

Let your light so shine that it may enlighten others to the glory of God. If you absorb the light without reflecting it, you are preparing yourself to be cast into outer darkness. Matt. 25:30. If you let another lack what you have, what God has given you to impart; if, like a miser, you hoard up what should be dispersed abroad; if, like the unreciprocal servant, you dig in the earth and hide the Lord’s money, hide your talent in the earth, instead of putting the same to heavenly exchangers, in the auditing of your account on the day of reckoning it will be shown what a one-sided business you did—unbalanced forever; weighed against the scale of your “debit,” your “credit” found altogether wanting.

What a miser! What a miserable, self-afflicted monomaniac, blessing-cursed and soul-eaten by the canker and rust from the slothful nonuse of the very riches of God!