A DEBT THAT MUST BE PAID
Dear Champions,
The short excerpt is by Tim Keller, and the Scripture is 1 Peter 3:18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
This idea of a debt that has to be paid for, surely if there is a God, can He not just forgive it? No, He can't!
If someone really wrongs you, there is a debt. It cannot be washed away or ignored. There are only two things you can do with a debt. You can make them pay it down by hurting them or by finding ways of making them suffer. As you see them paying for their debt, you can sense the debt being paid down. At a certain point the debt is gone.
The other thing you can do is forgive them. To forgive means that when I want to hurt someone, I do not do it. When I want to slice up their reputation by talking to other people, when I want to just think hateful thoughts about how they have done awful things, I do not do it. If I do that, I'll find as time goes on that my anger slowly subsides because I am paying the debt down myself. It is costly and difficult, but someone has to pay the debt.
There is no one on the face of the earth that can face an evaluation of how they have lived their lives. We have wronged God and our neighbor, and there is a debt that must be paid. When Jesus Christ cried, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me," the Father paid the debt! Jesus had to die.
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