God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. [Colossians 2:13b-24 (NIV)]
According to the Boston Globe, the college class of 2015 graduated with an average of over $35,000 in student debt. That’s a mammoth $56 billion in student debt, giving them the dubious honor of being the most indebted class in history. It’s likely that honor will pass to the class of 2016 come June. While a few occupations may qualify for student loan forgiveness programs, one way or another, that debt must be repaid. Recent college grads aren’t the only ones in debt. According to NerdWallet, the average American household carries nearly $131,000 in debt for such things as student loans, credit cards, mortgages, and both auto and personal loans. Even if we are fortunate enough to have no personal debt, the national debt of over nineteen trillion dollars still weighs heavily on each and every one of us. With a nation that has clearly spent more than it can afford, it’s too bad we no longer follow the laws in Deuteronomy for the Israelites that prohibited charging interest and canceled all debts every seven years.
Even if this was the seventh year and all of our nation’s debt was cancelled, that financial forgiveness wouldn’t come close in comparison to the debt payment Jesus made for all of mankind. Far greater than the national debt, that debt had nothing to do with dollars and cents but everything to do with sin. No amount of work, tears, shame, guilt, or even repentance could cancel it. No matter how few or great our sins, regardless of what we did or how long we worked, none of us could do enough to make things right or pay the debt of sin to God. The good news is that, when Christ hung on that cross and triumphantly announced, “It is finished!” that debt was paid in full. When the Lamb of God was sacrificed to take away the sin of the world, His work of salvation and redemption was complete; Jesus satisfied man’s debt to God. By dying on that cross, Christ paid a debt He didn’t owe because mankind owed a debt they couldn’t pay. His payment plan isn’t based on works but rather on grace through faith. Like any payment plan, however, there are strings attached—to qualify for God’s debt forgiveness plan, we have to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and be willing to forgive the sins of others. That seems a small price to pay for salvation and eternal life. If someone came along and offered to make you whole with everyone to whom you owe money, you’d probably jump on that proposal. Why, I wonder, are people so hesitant to accept Christ’s offer of making us right with God?
By his death he paid our debt, in his resurrection he received our acquittance. [Matthew Henry]
I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to unplug the televisions until after the elections in November. It doesn’t matter which party or which candidate, the conduct and rhetoric has become nearly unbearable. Today’s Bible reading took me to Matthew 5 and the Beatitudes—those declarations of blessedness given by Jesus at the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount. I couldn’t help but contrast His words with the behavior of our politicians, their supporters and the news media. I then remembered A.W. Tozer’s observation that, if we were to take the Beatitudes and turn them inside out, we’d have the “very qualities which distinguish human life and conduct.”
Having been raised in the Episcopal Church, I’ve always observed Lent and practiced some sort of self-denial during the six weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter. According to Christianity Today, nearly one in five Americans observed Lent in 2015. In a survey this year, more than 400,000 tweeted about their fasts and food or drink and technology were the most popular categories of denial.
Devotions of the Heart 