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.
