Forgive Us Our Debts

Introduction

Debt is a necessary burden of life. However, when it gets out of control, it can consume your life and your pocket book. Nevertheless, mankind owes a debt to God that we can never pay off in and of ourselves. Because this debt is a sin debt.

(NKJV)

“As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;” (, NKJV)

Think of the largest debt you owe or have owed in the past. For many of us that would probably be our house note. Now imagine that someone knocks on your door and informs you that the note has been paid in full. What would you say and do?

Billionaire investor Robert Smith paid off the debt of the graduating class of Morehouse College class of 2019, 40 million. We have a King that is worth more than we can fathom who paid an even bigger debt for us all.

But Now!

A simple transitional phrase packed with so much! Paul transitions from the doom and despair of to But Now.

What do you believe he is emphasizing with But Now?

(Read 3:21-26)

Leon Morris calls this passage the greatest single paragraph ever penned.

Look at the key terms that Paul emphasizes in this passage.

Righteousness: Godliness, the rightness of God, what mankind should strive to be in order to establish a right relation with God. Impossible for man to achieve in and of himself.

Justified: to be declared righteous, to be vindicated. An act of God only, therefore only God can declare one justified.

Grace: to bestow favor on someone. To give someone a benefit out of favor and kindness. The powerful helping the powerless. GIFT

Redemption: the release of someone or something from bondage through the payment of a price.

Atonement (propitiation): God’s work on sinners’ behalf to reconcile them to Himself. The divine activity that confronts and resolves the problem of sin.

Justice: the standard that God requires. Justice demonstrates God’s righteousness in action.

Faith: A constant outlook of trust towards God, whereby mankind abandons all reliance on their own efforts and puts full confidence in God.

There is NO Difference

“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,” (, NIV)

All Have sinned…(23)

All are justified by His grace…(24)

All are justified by faith…(28)

God is no respecter of status or ethnicity or anything in or of ourselves. (29)

This is the essence of grace.

No Boasting!

“Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.” (, NKJV)

We have no right to boast. For we played no part in God’s work of redemption.

Justification comes by faith apart from the works of the law.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (, NKJV)

“When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”” (, NKJV)

Day to Day Impact

“Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.” (, NKJV)

“What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (, NKJV)

We must understand that we cannot earn salvation.

However, once we are saved, we must strive to live for Christ and honor His word and will.

Our works are a demonstration of the work of redemption that Christ has done in our hearts.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” (, NKJV)

Paul Finebaum’s story of Vietnam veteran on MLK day…

“Jay in Huntsville” explained to Finebaum that he “grew up in Alabama and was raised a racist.” His father was in the KKK, as were all his uncles, and he was proud of it.

But in a decision that would end up changing his life in countless ways, Jay joined the Marine Corps in 1967 and ended up in Vietnam alongside a fellow Marine who he described as the “most militant acting and talking black person that was ever on the face of the Earth.”

They “tried to kill each other for the next couple of weeks, about every day,” until a Gunnery Sergeant took them aside and told them “next time that happens, you’re going home on a bad-conduct discharge.”

They decided to put aside their differences for the time being, in spite of the strong animosity they continued to feel toward each other.

But once they ended up in a fox hole together in the jungle of Vietnam and the bullets started flying, things would never be the same.

“Over the next two years, he saved my life a couple of times and I saved his life a couple of times,” Jay explained. “And didn’t neither one of us want to leave Vietnam… but in ’69, we both had to leave.”

Jay moved back to Alabama to go to school and his newfound “well, I guess you could call us ‘friends'” moved to Detroit.

They kept in touch over the next several years as Jay earned his engineering degree in Tuscaloosa. But things weren’t going quite as well for his buddy in Detroit, so Jay invited him down to Alabama to work under him at the company where he’d landed a job after graduation.

His friend went on to get his degree from UA, but the story gets even better.

“He decided he wanted to outdo me, which he always did, and he went on and got his Master’s degree,” Jay explained, “so I wound up working for him.”

And then the bombshell:

“And 32 years ago come April 3rd of this year… I will have been married to his sister for 32 years,” Jay said, stunning Finebaum. “He was the best man in my wedding. We had two sons a piece. All four of them graduated from the University of Alabama.”

And four decades after they met each other in a war zone on the other side of the planet with hatred in their hearts, they’re best friends and live on the same street.

“We’ve had a good life and he lives about 3 houses down now and we still try to lie as much as we can about our war exploits,” Jay laughed. “But it just goes to prove that anything can happen to a former racist… He turned out to be a lot better than I thought at first, and I hope I did, too.”

A saved life changed a man’s lifestyle.

next week...

10 As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;