Forgive Us Our Debts
By Audrey Stallsmith
In a previous article I mentioned that my dad once wanted to pay off my credit card debt and I refused to allow him to do so. My excuse was that he might need all of his money someday to deal with health issues.
After he was gone, I didn’t have that excuse. But I still found myself hesitating months later even though he would have told me that the most sensible thing to do was to pay that card off right away before it accumulated any more interest.
Although I told myself there could still be bills coming from his latest hospitalization, I knew that Medicare and his pension plan had always covered most of those. So, I suspected that the real reason I was procrastinating was because I still would be using his money—from either inheritance or life insurance. And, deep down, I believed that I should be able to pay my own debts. It was a pride thing.
Of course, the debt itself also was a pride thing, since most of it derived from me not liking to ask for help whenever I was between jobs. So, I used the card during those periods instead. I always assumed that, somewhere along the line, I would sell another book and be able to use the advance to completely clear that debt.
Granted, I didn’t have a problem with Dad paying for my room and board because I’ve been earning that by doing his cooking, laundry, shopping, etc. ever since Mom died. It’s what I didn’t deserve that gave me pause.
And I think the reason so many people refuse to accept our heavenly Father’s handout also is a pride thing. They believe that, if just given a little more time, they can find some way to make things right themselves, to earn their salvation, in other words. But that just isn’t going to happen.
Even though the possibility of my selling another book seems remote at the moment since I’ve been opting for lower paying but easier to market internet articles instead, it’s not entirely impossible. But the only way to pay for sin is with the death of an entirely sinless man and there only ever was One of those.
So, the idea of any of us earning our own salvation literally is impossible. Fortunately, that Man was the polar opposite of the older brother in the prodigal son story and willing to do whatever it took to buy his erring siblings back.
But we still have to be willing to accept the money, so to speak, even though we did bupkis to deserve it. As Max Lucado points out in Unshakeable Hope, “Salvation, from beginning to end, is a work of our Father. . .He does not offer to pay all the debt minus a dollar if we’ll pay the dollar. He pays every penny.”
That is why, as Dallas Willard put it in one of his YouTube talks, “We abandon the project of taking care of ourselves” and “We don’t trust our own efforts. We trust God.” That, according to Willard, will make our burden light because “He is carrying it.”
Such relinquishment, of course, leaves us not a scrap of pride to stand on. But we all need to remember that a Father provides for His children because he loves them no matter how poorly they behave. And that should leave us feeling incredulously joyous over our adoption into a king’s family rather than dejected over our failure to pull ourselves up to such heights on our own.
As one of my favorite country gospel songs “Preacher Berry” by Donna Fargo puts it “Your debts have been paid; he’s cancelled them. . Ain’t that shouting ground? Shout it, people. Hallelujah! A-begging and a-pleading ain’t no way to praise the Lord. Let loose and let Him love you. Hallelujah! Don’t you know He loves you and He died for us all?”
In other words, by rejecting a Father’s help, we are rejecting His love too. So, where’s that checkbook?