“Oh praise the One Who paid my debt”

For a brief time in college, I was an accounting major. It was brief because the only thing I managed to understand was credit and debit—and that you wanted more credits in your ledger than debits.

That’s a very simple (and possibly incorrect) view of accounting, but it’s a realistic way that most of us live our lives. We try to have the good outweigh the bad. You want more money coming into your bank account than going out. You don’t want to “owe” anyone too much social or relational equity. There’s also a tendency for us to approach our relationship with God the same way—we try to have our good works outweigh our bad deeds.

That’s an admirable goal—you know, just trying to be a good person. But trying to have our good works outweigh our bad in God’s eyes is not a biblical way to live. It assumes that we can earn our way back into the good graces of God, when in reality, we have racked up a debt we can never repay.

One time, when I was preparing to preach on the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:21–35), I tried to contextualize the two debts listed in the parable:

• The one debt of ten thousand talents — which was forgiven by the master
• The other debt of a hundred denarii — which was not forgiven by the servant

I tried to take it out of financial terms because we tend to think we can always make more money. The analogy I came up with was this: the second debt was essentially the thickness of a single sheet of printer paper; the first debt was a stack of paper that reached about 70% of the way up the Statue of Liberty.

Even if my math is wrong, the point of the two debts is to illustrate that the master forgave a debt that was insurmountable—impossible to work off over an entire lifetime.

That’s the kind of debt we’ve racked up against God. No matter how many good things we do, we’ll never be able to earn our way back into His good graces.

Thankfully, God had a plan for that. He sent His Son as payment for our sins.

Colossians 2:13–14

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

As Tim Keller so often said in his sermons:

“On the cross, Jesus was treated as we deserved, so that when we believe in Him, we are treated as He deserved.” (Paraphrase)

Because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we now have a credit of righteousness in our account that will never be outweighed by the debt of sin again.

Romans 4:1–5

“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

We are seen as righteous—not because of anything we have done, but because of what Christ did for us on the cross.

Ephesians 2:8–9

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

Our debt has been wiped clean, and we had nothing to do with it.

This Sunday, we’ll close our service by singing “Jesus Paid It All.” The version we’ll sing is a modern rendition of the traditional hymn.

The hymn has the familiar refrain:

“Jesus paid it all
All to Him I owe
Sin had left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow”

The modern version adds this bridge:

“Oh praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead”

Praise is the only appropriate response—because Jesus paid all of our debt! Not just some, not just a little bit, but all of it: past, present, and future. Through Him, we are forgiven, welcomed into God’s family, and given the joy of fellowship with Him.

We are seen as righteous, not because of our own deeds, but because the righteousness of Christ is imparted to all who believe.

Oh, praise the One who paid my debt!

Adam