Debt Paid vs Debtor

"O praise the One who paid my debt,

And raised this life up from the dead" (Jesus Paid It All)

"O to grace how great a debtor,

Daily I'm constrained to be" (Come, Thou Fount)

Question: Is our debt completely paid or are we forever great debtors?

Answer: Yes.

Let me explain. We must rest in the first sense: our debt is completely paid. We were debtors, but no longer since Christ paid our debt. Created by God to be perfect and sinless, we have rebelled and sinned. This puts us in debt to God in the amount of one eternal death. It is what we owe for our sin. In His grace, God put forth Christ to pay that debt for His children. One debt owed, one debt paid. Jesus paid it all.

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." -Colossians 2:13-14

Let me be clear. The debt is not transferred. It is not like you owe a debt to one credit card company and you transfer the balance to another credit card company. In that circumstance, the debt is paid by another, but only transferred so that you are still in debt. Jesus does not pay a debt to the Father so our debt is now owed to Christ. The payment Christ offers in our place is final and complete. It is out of grace and it is a free gift. To live in an attempt to pay back Christ for the debt He paid for you gives birth to the dangerous "debtor's ethic."

John Piper explains the "debtor's ethic:"

"The debtor's ethic says, Because you have done something good for me, I feel indebted to do something good for you." This impulse is not what gratitude was designed to produce. God meant gratitude to be a spontaneous expression of pleasure in the gift and the good will of another. He did not mean it to be an impulse to return favors. If gratitude is twisted into a sense of debt, it gives birth to the debtor's ethic--and the effect is to nullify grace" (Future Grace, 32)

So before moving on, let us lay the foundation of our debt completely paid so we don't fall into the debilitating lifestyle of trying to pay God back.

But there is a second sense of debt found in the Christian life, and in it we find motivation to live for the glory of Christ. We are daily and significantly indebted to the grace of God. See what Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." -I Corinthians 15:10

Your debt for sin is completely paid in Christ; but by God's grace, you are what you are, and to that we are forever indebted. Your debt for sin is not transferred; it is canceled. Your debt to grace can never be paid off, but should always be increased as you grow in the grace of God. See the distinction? Praise the One who paid your debt. But then be forever indebted to grace by which you grow in Christ. Debt canceled, debt inreased, praise God for both.