Repayment – September 30, 2020

“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’”
Matthew 18:26

Repayment

Jesus was telling a story about forgiveness. He described a servant who owed his king far more money than he could have ever repaid. Think in terms of a man making forty thousand dollars a year and owing billions of dollars today.

And, in today’s Bible reading, we hear the servant promising to pay it back.

“Yeah. Right.” There’s no way a servant could possibly pay back a debt like that!

This was precisely Jesus’ point. Just as that servant could never have paid back his king, you and I could never pay back our God for all the times we have sinned against him. In fact, it’s foolish—and sinful—for us to even think that it’s a possibility. To think that something I do could satisfy God could somehow serve as a “repayment” for the enormous debt of sin that I owe means I am either unaware of just how great my debt is, or I am arrogant enough to believe I could pay it off.

Thankfully, as enormous as our sin is, even more, “enormous” is our salvation. Since no mere human could make a sufficient payment for sin, God stepped into the mix himself. God himself took sin upon himself, God himself went to the cross, God himself paid the full price, and announced, “It is finished.”

Wow. That’s enormous.

Prayer:
O Lord, lead me to trust wholeheartedly in your enormous saving work. Amen.