“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors.” — Romans 8:12
As God’s creatures, we are all debtors to Him: to obey Him with all our
body, and soul, and strength. Having broken His commandments, as we all
have, we are debtors to His justice, and we owe to Him a vast amount
which we are not able to pay. But of the Christian it can be said that he
does not owe God’s justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt His
people owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love. I am a
debtor to God’s grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor to His
justice, for He will never accuse me of a debt already paid. Christ said, “It
is finished!” and by that He meant, that whatever His people owed was
wiped away for ever from the book of remembrance. Christ, to the
uttermost, has satisfied divine justice; the account is settled; the
handwriting is nailed to the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors
to God’s justice no longer. But then, because we are not debtors to our
Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than we
should have been otherwise. Christian, pause and ponder for a moment.
What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty! How much thou owest to
His disinterested love, for He gave His own Son that He might die for thee.
Consider how much you owe to His forgiving grace, that after ten
thousand affronts He loves you as infinitely as ever. Consider what you
owe to His power; how He has raised you from your death in sin; how He
has preserved your spiritual life; how He has kept you from falling; and
how, though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been able
to hold on your way. Consider what you owe to His immutability. Though
you have changed a thousand times, He has not changed once. Thou art as
deep in debt as thou canst be to every attribute of God. To God thou
owest thyself, and all thou hast — yield thyself as a living sacrifice, it is
but thy reasonable service.
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