You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. Colossians 2:13-14
What if you’ve been working your whole life to pay a bill that has already been settled?
Francis had attended church for thirty-one years. He tithed. He served. He fasted. He gave generously to visiting ministries. But alone, in quiet moments, he carried a persistent unease. “Have I done enough?” he wondered. “Is God satisfied with me yet?”
That question—sincere, exhausted, and tragically common—reveals something important: Francis had never actually heard the Bible’s good news clearly. Not in a way that reached the place where he was quietly keeping score.
Every person carries a debt they cannot repay—the weight of a life lived apart from God, of wrongs done and good left undone. The debt is real. And there is nothing we can do, no amount of service, sacrifice, or religious performance, that comes close to settling that debt.
But here is the news that changes everything: someone else already paid your debt. Jesus, fully God, fully human, lived the perfect life none of us could live, then took the full weight of that unpayable debt onto Himself. He settled it completely. The Bible explains that “… he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of charges against us” (Colossians 2:13b-14). This means that your debt is canceled—not reduced. Completely satisfied and gone!
But this repayment isn’t the reward at the end of sufficient religious effort. It’s a gift given to anyone who turns to Jesus, believes what He said and accepts what He has already done.
The good news isn’t that you can finally pay the bill. It’s that Jesus already did.
