3-10-2015

 Good Morning All,

         Romans 4:3; “What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”(NIV)

    Our church purchased a new credit card earlier last month.  It is hoped that this will make life a little easier on the treasurer as I don’t always get all the bills organized and turned in in a timely fashion.  Since the majority of the church’s mail comes to the church I get most of the mail and go through it to figure out who gets it next.  About a week after we got the actual card in the mail and activated it, we got a statement from the credit card company.  It seems that we activated the card with about 3 days left in the billing cycle so we got the statement.  It showed that the church owed $0.00; the minimum payment was $0.00 and that the average amount owed for the billing period ending on 2-17-2015 was $0.00.  I showed the bill to my wife and we thought we should keep it and frame it.  We had never received a bill from a credit card company that showed $0.00 owed.

    Now this statement showed $0.00 because it hadn’t been used but what if you received a statement from the credit card company that you used all the time and it said $0.00?  We oftentimes will hold our breath a little when statement comes in because we know there will be some big numbers on it; sometimes we even cringe when we see it.  It would really be nice if we could open that statement one time and read $0.00 owed someone else paid it off.  I doubt that any of us will ever have a credit card bill work like this but we have a more important bill that does look like this; it is the bill we owe for the sins we have committed.

    When you and I sin, we owe God.  Sometimes what we owe is not money but we owe respect, faithfulness, loyalty, honor and the like.  We owe it to God to do his will and yet we fail.  We owe a penalty each time we miss the mark.  Each time we break one of God’s commandments, we are putting a charge against our credit card and someday the bill will come due.

    But because Jesus paid our debt, our faith in Jesus is credited as righteousness.  So when God opens our bill and looks at what we owe, we owe nothing because it has already been paid.  Since we believe that Jesus died to pay for my sin; our account with God is given a credit of the righteousness that Jesus earned.  It counts as righteousness for us.  We are credited with more than enough righteousness so that our bill will always show a balance owed of $0.00.  The debt is paid and we are free of the requirement.  We are free to be God’s children.  We are declared to be saints because we owe nothing.  For us, faith is the credit we need because Jesus has paid for us all.

Loving Father, you sent Jesus to die for us so that we may receive the promised mercy of forgiveness. Refresh us daily with your love.  Strengthen our desire to do you will.  Strengthen our desire to serve you will our whole heart.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret