By Joe Chesser
Years ago when the final
payment was made on an installment loan, the bank would stamp in large letters
on the original application “Paid in Full!” In this electronic age I don’t know
if financial institutions still do that, but even if we don’t get a piece of
paper with the “Paid in Full!” stamp on it, when a loan is finally paid off, it
sure feels good. Making that final
payment and having a debt “Paid in Full!” is just plain exciting.
Jesus told a story about
a man who owed such a huge debt that he could never have paid it off (Matthew
18). I mean he owed a man millions of
dollars, and that was in the 1st century!
When the debt came due, all the man could do was fall on his knees and
beg for mercy. Try that at your
bank. It doesn’t work. But that time the unheard of happened. The man felt sorry for the one who owed him
so much and stamped the parchment (or whatever) “Paid in Full!” He cancelled the entire debt! The balance was now $0.00. If that had been you, how grateful would you
have felt?
And that’s just about
money. We owe a debt that we can never pay.
Even if we have millions of dollars, billions of dollars, we could never
pay the debt we owe. It simply is not
within our power to pay off our debt because our debt is not about something as
frivolous as money. Our debt involves
sin, which by nature makes us objects of God’s wrath (Ephesians 2:3). And yet, because of the love and mercy of
God, our enormous debt can be stamped “Paid in Full!”
I said “can be” because
not everyone’s sin debt will be cancelled.
The other day I heard someone say that, although everyone will die with
their debt of sin entirely paid, how sad it is that most will die without having
their personal debt cancelled by Jesus (Matthew 7:13-14). The cross has the potential power to cancel
every sin committed by every person who has or will live on this earth. Unfortunately, only a relatively few will
accept the offer of forgiveness and obey the gospel to access this grace. While
the cross “Paid in Full!” the sins of everyone, only those “in Christ” (see
Galatians 3:26-27) receive the actual cancellation of the debt of sin: “in him
we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance
with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us …” (Ephesians 1:7-8). I
dare say that no one would refuse to have their mortgage paid off by doing
something as equally simple as God offers us to have our sin debt “Paid in
Full!” by obeying the gospel. It is shocking what we will do for a few dollars
and won’t do for forgiveness of sins!
But
for those of us who choose to see the bigger picture, for those of us who do
know that saving our souls by the blood of Jesus is the most important thing we
can accomplish in this life, how very grateful we should be that Jesus was
willing and able to cancel our debt and mark it “Paid in Full!” We cannot thank him enough. But we can keep him the focus of our present
life and the hope of our future life.
And we can do whatever we can to help as many other people come to know
the awesome blessing of the cross.
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