Debt

In all actual sins, when the act of sin has ceased, the guilt remains; because the act of sin makes man deserving of punishment, insofar as he transgresses the order of Divine justice, to which he cannot return except he pay some sort of penal compensation, which restores him to the equality of justice.… This restoration of the equality of justice by penal compensation is also to be observed in injuries done to one’s fellow men. Consequently it is evident that when the sinful or injurious act has ceased there still remains the debt of punishment.

He who owes a debt to God has more help toward payment than he who is indebted to man. Man requires money for money, and this is not always at the debtor’s command. God demands the affection of the heart, which is in our own power. No one who owes a debt to God is poor, except one who has made himself poor. And even if he has nothing to sell, yet he has something with which to pay. Prayer, fasting, and tears are the resources of an honest debtor, and much more abundant than if one from the price of his estate offered money without faith.

By offering unto death the body He Himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, immediately He put away death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent. For being over all, the Word of God naturally by offering His own temple and bodily instrument for the life of all satisfied the debt by His death. And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection.