Paid In Full

This is about a pleasant experience. We have all bought something on the installment plan. It may have been something small as prices go, like furniture or clothes or a present. Perhaps it was something more expensive like a car or boat, or that largest of expenses, a house. We make the payments each month, regularly as we agreed, until we finally get to the last payment. Once we send in that last payment, we give a sigh of relief and wait for the response to come back, the invoice or contract or title that is marked, “Paid In Full.” Whatever it is, it is now ours free and clear. Whether it was a matter of just a few months, or the five years to purchase a car, or the 30 years that some people wait in order to pay off the last mortgage payment and burn the mortgage contract, it is still a moment of joy at having paid off the debt.

As the children of Adam and Eve, we have inherited their debt, the one they owed to God for making mankind’s first sin. To that debt, we have added our own sins as a purchase that needs to be paid for at some point in the future. When we turn our back on God, which is what sin does to us, we incur the debt obligation to pay off at some time later. It is said that the wages of sin are steep, meaning the cost we have to pay is at least proportional to the gravity of the sin. For some of us that may not be a great price; for others it may be quite high indeed.

When God created us humans and those first of us fell to sin, he came up with an installment plan to help us all pay our debt to him. He spread out the payments over hundreds of years of service and loyalty to him. He took His payments in the sacrifices laid out in the Old Testament, whether they were precious metals, livestock or produce. They were all offerings to him in payment and homage to him. One of the things that he promised was that there would be one final payment, one payment that would ease our burden, forgive the sins of all of those who came before and all who will follow.

God’s repayment plan was simple in concept. In order to make sure it was done correctly and would be everlasting, He sent someone to make sure it was done in such a way as to pay for all of the sins we have committed or ever will. He sent His only son, Jesus Christ. Since the sins were created and committed by us humans, Jesus Christ had to be one of us. He had to be not only God, the Second Person of the Trinity, he also had to be human. While God could certainly put Jesus on the earth as a human adult, he instead started him out in the same way that we start out. Jesus was born of a mother with God as his father. He grew, as the Bible tells us, in “wisdom, age and grace.” When enough time had passed, he was before us as an adult and a teacher.

It was a dark and ugly day for the final installment payment to be paid. It was the task of Jesus Christ to take on all of the sins of all of us, to accept that unbelievably heavy burden. It was his responsibility to make sure that God was properly paid for the sins of us all. In order to do that, Jesus had to die in a most horrible way; he had to die on a cross. This was mankind’s final payment. Now at last, God could stamp the debt “Paid In Full”.

Paid In Full. What a wonderful thought! What it means to all of us is the sins we commit and for which we receive forgiveness just for the asking of it, have already been paid back. Just as Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us, that once and final last payment, so too does God forgive us our sins without any future debt. His forgiveness is limitless. He has been paid for all of the debts we could ever incur. The bill has been paid off and there will be no more for us who receive the gift of his forgiveness. All we have to do is ask and we will receive.