No debt to pay

I use a popular software to keep track of my income and spending. Without an accountant’s mind, this helps me with accuracy and the simple reality that if spending exceeds income, the numbers turn red.

The New Testament uses accounting language in a few places. For instance, I’m to consider myself dead to sin and alive to God. That means putting my old life in the debit column and my new life in the credit column. These two verses hint at the same idea:

“But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:22–23)

However, the way we keep track of money is not quite the same. It only gives a visual picture of what is gone and what is now ours. Tozer puts it this way: Counting is not the language of poetry or sentiment but of cold, unerring calculation. It adds up the columns thus: sorrow, temptation, difficulty, opposition, depression, desertion, danger, discouragement . . . but at the bottom of the column God’s presence, God’s will, God’s joy, God’s promise, God’s recompense.

A sinful life fills the death column. The gift of God fills the life column. Yet as Tozer says, no Christian can boast about what they gave up to become a follower of Jesus Christ. Anything I had, or was, or possessed is nothing compared to what the Lord has called me to, has gifted me in the column called life.

Some Christians have trouble speaking of their old life, as if they have lost or forsaken a good thing for a better thing. How can that be? How can we not realize the wonder of salvation, the wonder of knowing Almighty God and walking with Him? How can anything be compared to fellowship with Him and His family? I would be a fool to lament the loss of all things to gain Christ. Paul wrote the same idea:

“If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:4–11)

Paul went from a life of religious zeal to living in the power of Christ. For those who God calls, this reality is mind-blowing, an adventure beyond human imagination. Even without a calling like Paul’s, the humblest believer enjoys the blessings of grace, forgiveness and peace that cannot be compared with the best that this world has to offer.

^^^^^^^^^

Jesus, I am so thankful for my salvation, for the wonder of those assets You have written into my ‘credit’ column, and the grace for those debits You have cleared from my record. I owe God nothing for You have paid it all. Considering anything as loss is in reality a bill no longer outstanding. You have paid all my debts and I have been set free.