John Muszynski got the surprise of his life recently when he used his Visa debit card to purchase a pack of cigarettes. A few hours after the purchase, he was online and decided to check his account. He discovered that he had been charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 for his smokes. If your math is a bit rusty, that is over 23 quadrillion dollars. Talk about inflation! I’ve heard that smoking is an expensive habit, but that is ridiculous! Obviously, someone had made a mistake somewhere. While being interviewed by a TV station, Muszynski quipped, “I thought my card had been compromised. I thought someone had bought Europe with my credit card.” Thankfully, the billing error was corrected the very next day (Fox News, 7-15-09).
Disciples of Jesus Christ are also familiar with unpayable debts. Prior to being forgiven, our personal sin debt was huge. Our situation was hopeless. Our currency was worthless. In fact, our feeble efforts at repayment were actually useless because we were spiritually dead – dead in our sin. One unalterable rule of spiritual economics is that dead people are incapable of repaying debt. Our only hope, then, was for someone else to step in on our behalf and pay the debt for us. Thankfully, that is exactly what Jesus Christ did for each one of us.
Notice how Paul describes the transaction in his letter to the Colossians: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-14).
The words of the song are true: “He paid a debt He did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay, I needed someone to wash my sins away. And now I sing a brand new song – “Amazing Grace.” Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay.” Thank you, Jesus!!!
God loves you!
Mike
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