Understanding God's Justice: The Significance of Canceled Debt

Speaker A00:00:00

Foreign. Hey, welcome to the Prodigal Journey, where we celebrate Christ's power through our weakness. Thanks for tuning in today.You know, I really want to start doing some of these shorter episodes, apart from the interviews, to just share my heart with you and things. God is doing things. He is teaching me. So today we are going to talk about the theme of canceled debt. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.It is done. Conquered on the cross through the Son of God, the Son of Man. You know, scripture is filled with applications and vivid pictures for us.You know, many of those were meant for the people in their original context, but there are many that have significant meaning for us as well just because of our life experiences.Now, whether those experiences are from, you know, hurt that was done to us or hurt and pain that was caused by us, we make connections to those pictures. For instance, a very good friend of mine, she loves to be outside and garden.So for her, all the different references in Scripture to land, soil, and planting, those have significant meaning to her. And she might understand those in a better way than someone else might.So whatever that may be for you, maybe there's a picture that you may understand better than someone else might because of your life experiences. So this practice has had a huge impact on my spiritual life and my study of Scripture that I started to look for themes in my own personal study.And it has just helped strengthen my belief about who God is and what he has done in my life. So the theme that I want to talk about in this episode is the theme of canceled debt.You know, if you have listened to any of the beginning episodes where I share parts of my story, then you know that I have spent time incarcerated.So for me, the scriptural theme of canceled debt is something that rings very true to me and is a very vivid picture based on some of my experiences and consequences of my sin. I want to share a couple verses with you.Colossians chapter 2, verses 13 and 14 says, you were dead because of your sins and because of your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. The ESV says, canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. Now, what were those legal demands?Well, it required a sacrifice for our sins, and we could not personally meet those legal demands. And when we sin, it creates a debt between us and God, and it creates a debt in our relationships to other people.So because the law was broken, justice demands that the crime be paid for. Think of it this way.If a judge has someone come into his courtroom for a crime and you were the one that the crime was committed against, you would probably be pretty upset if the judge listened to all the evidence and just said at the end, okay, you're free to go, just try not to let it happen again. We would be absolutely outraged and we would think that the judge was unjust and unrighteous in his judgment. It's the same way for God.If God had looked at all of our sins and said something similar as the judge had said, then God would not be just or righteous. But because God is just and righteous, there has to be a penalty for his law being broken.But the good news is that he took that debt on himself for us. He was the only one that could be the sacrifice to satisfy the demands of the broken law.How awesome is that to think about that Christ loves me so much. That Christ loves you so much that on the cross he took on Himself all of our sins, past, present and future.He took them on Himself, and we stand before him as clean washed in his blood. This vivid picture is so meaningful to me.You know, I've often thought about what my response would be if one day, lets say I just got a letter in the mail with some type of official paperwork saying something like, we've reviewed your case and we have decided to completely cancel all of your record. But that's what Christ did for us. Not only is our debt completely forgiven, it is completely gone. There is no trace or any record of our debt at all.You know, in Psalm 103, verse 12, it says, he has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. Have you ever thought about what the psalmist, why he used the phrase east and west in this picture?I did some research on this and I don't know how true it is, but it definitely fits this picture here on this verse.So when you think about the different directions, north meets south at the South Pole and South meets north at the North Pole, but east and west, they never meet. That is so amazing to think about, isn't it? If you head straight north, eventually you will be heading south.But no matter how far you travel east, you will always be traveling east, because north and south, they are definable points, but east and west never meet. This just speaks to the absolute commitment and promise from our God to forgive our sins and, and his unfailing love toward us.It is so amazing to think about, you know, when he says that he will remember our sins no more, but so many times we remember them and we don't trust his promise. You know, I want to leave you with some application to think about. The first one is, do you really believe that Christ has cancelled your debt?Think about it. Do you really believe that? And does it play out in your life? Which leads me to my second question for application.How are you living out the truth of those verses that we talked about? In what real ways is that belief playing out in your life?Because this is where the truth of Scripture meets our life, is how we live it out in the day to day. The verse that says, you know, be doers of the word and not hearers only. So how are you living out the truth of those verses?You know, maybe you're stuck in the mindset that your sin is just too big or too shameful for God to forgive. Or maybe you're stuck in an endless cycle of trying to forgive yourself for your sins. And I just want to close by speaking to that mindset.This is such a huge misunderstanding that we have about forgiveness and it's just not biblical because only God can forgive sins. I mean, think about it. If we could forgive ourselves or forgive our sins, we would have absolutely no need for God.It would mean that Christ's sacrifice is not enough to cover our sins and free us from all the guilt and the shame. This thinking is actually very arrogant of us and I speak to myself as well because I have wrestled through these same questions.But we can rejoice in the fact that Christ sacrifice was perfect. So there is no sin that is not covered by his shed blood for us on the cross. For us, this should be very freeing.So let's take this journey and live in light of God's complete forgiveness for our sins. Thanks for tuning into this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and share it with others like you can reach out Ben at theprodigaljourney.Com. We'd like to hear from you and any themes you'd like to talk about. Tune in next time to the Prodigal Journey.