"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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