Of Grace and Debt

Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses. (Matthew 18: 33 – 35)

Today you will allow me to walk on eggshells as I wade into a landmine of ‘controversy’.

And it is because I feel God wants us to appreciate something we many times choose, or have been trained, to overlook.

What happens to our sins for us to get saved? What happens to them after that?

But I think the primary question we should ask is, does God have a memory? Does He at any time format or delete that memory?

Call me a fool if you want. But allow me to share what God’s word clearly teaches if we allow it to speak without our biases and traditions.

That is why I want us to deal with debt since as we well know sin is a debt we owe, a debt that was paid for by the death of Christ since we had no capacity to pay it.

What makes one creditworthy? How does one increase their creditworthiness?

It is the record of the debts he has taken and paid. It is not the absence of any record of past debt.

That is why someone can go to a bank and be allowed to take a loan on top of another. They can be trusted to repay it due to their past record.

Look even at shopkeepers.

You might find someone earning so little being allowed to take much food on credit even as someone who earns many times more is denied that privilege.

Allow me to say something else.

When you leave employment, your file is not destroyed. It is closed and archived.

It is of no immediate use to the organisation that had employed you, but it might later be needed.

Justification means that my sins have been paid for and that the record of the same has been archived, allowing me to start living a debt free life, yet acutely aware of the amount of debt that has been paid for.

That was the problem of the person in this parable Christ gave. He was completely forgiven of his debt and set free from any obligations concerning it.

But he quickly forgot that he had been forgiven and started behaving as if he had never owed anybody anything, even started becoming brutal with someone whose debt was incomparably small compared to the one he had been forgiven.

What then happened?

His debtor very quickly unarchived his debt, restoring him to what he was before that forgiveness.

We see the same when we get to the passage from which this next verse is taken from.

Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. (Luke 7:47)

Could this be possible if there is no record of what is being forgiven?

Grace is the free extension of forgiveness, the archiving of the file containing my sins.

But grace is also my living with the awareness and reality of that archiving. Otherwise, it becomes presumption.

But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. (2Peter 1:9)

From the passage this verse comes from, it is impossible to grow, or even desire growth, if one forgets the kind of file Christ archived by His death and resurrection.

To say it another way, the lack of growth is the clearest indication that someone has forgotten his archived file, probably even the presence of the same.

The remembrance on my part of my file being archived drives me into the pursuit of godliness and the growth that occasions it.

But it also brings about eternal gratitude. This in fact is the thing that gives me joy in that pursuit like we see Stephen seeming to enjoy his stoning to death, the disciples having a thanksgiving party after flogging, and Paul and Silas singing in prison in extremely uncomfortable and painful circumstances.

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. (Revelation 20:12)

I hope you realise that even in the final judgment people were judged according to the records in the books. And that judgment affected everybody.

The only difference we find is that there is another book, a book of those whose records had been paid for by Christ’s blood. Those files had the stamp of PAID stamped on them.

It is possible, from Christ’s example in the parable, for my archived file to be unarchived. And it happens because I do not allow grace to transform me to live in accordance with that archiving.

This explains some difficult passages in the scriptures.

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. (Hebrews 6: 4, 6)

And

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10: 26 – 29)

And my all-time most quoted

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 21 – 23)

It is clear from these three instances that we are dealing with people like the one in the parable

They had all accessed grace but refused to live by it. They had received grace but refused to be shaped by that reality. They had received grace but forgot about it.

They had simply started living as if grace was their entitlement since they forgot that they ever had any debt that had been paid for by that grace.

At the worst, they assumed grace was free of any cost even to Christ and so lived as if grace was something anybody could pick from the roadside.

That is an affront to grace. It is the demonstration of blasphemy to cheapen grace thus.

No wonder their files were unarchived. No wonder they reverted to worse than they had been before accessing grace. No wonder they were completely deleted from Christ’s records (I never knew you)

All because they lived as if they had no files behind them. All because they behaved as if their forgiveness cost nothing. All because they lived as if that pardon meant nothing to the way they lived. All because they behaved as if the One who had archived their file had lost the memory of that file. All because they lived as if that forgiveness has no direct bearing with how they lived their lives.

By archiving that file, Christ actually bought me and therefore must at all times be controlling my life.

The cost He paid to archive my file of sin gave Him unfettered rein over everything that I call me or mine.

That is why doing His will is the ONLY responsibility He places on me after that archiving.

Doing anything else, however much it aligns with that will is rebellion as we see in Matthew 7.

And as I shared recently on the topic of rebellion, there is simply no grace, or even forgiveness, for rebellion. Simply because it seeks to overturn grace by acting contrary to its dictates.

That is why those ministerial superstars will be heading to hell however godly their exertions were to them or to others.

Why am I sharing this?

An understanding of grace that lacks immense gratitude for the same is defective.

An understanding of grace that shifts the focus of the same to me is misleading.

Grace is all and only about God and His gift of His Son to pardon me.

Losing that focus will make me lose the gift grace is.

It is about God, not me. And I will share a verse many may think is unrelated.

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and FOR HIM: (Colossians 1:16)

It is for His sake that that file containing my sin was archived. Changing that single fact nullifies it.

I hope I am being understood.

Forgetting I have an archived file means that I have no past sin and so did not need any sacrifice.

Starting my Christian life with that error will then mean that I am the one serving God and placing Him on my debt since I do not owe Him anything since the file containing my sin was deleted and completely removed from all memory.

And we hear many teaching a lot about reminding God what we have done for Him which will make sense only when we have forgotten about that archived file and what it means.

And we have a scriptural example of the same, the one they use most.

Hezekiah refused to die in God’s time because he used that tactic on God due to his backslidden state. The Bible talks of pride guiding him. No wonder he produced Manasseh.

Compare that to Josiah. Though he was in the midst of restoring the temple and its worship, we see him responding with humility, crying for mercy instead of making demands. No wonder mercy was extended to him!

We see the same in Isaiah in chapter 6. And Ezra. And Daniel. And Nehemiah.

Don’t we see the same with Abraham when he is interceding for Sodom?

What does grace mean to you?