Paid Debt and Response

Perhaps you have pulled through a Starbucks drive-through and experienced the barista informing you that the person in the car in front of you has already paid for your coffee. In that moment, your heart is filled with gratitude over a small action. It likely impacts the rest of your day. Grace does that to you.

Or perhaps you have attempted to hand your credit card to a server at a restaurant to preemptively pay your bill before it arrives, only to learn that another person has already covered it. The bill you racked up eating the appetizers, the entrees, and even splurging for a dessert is completely covered.

How do you respond in those moments?

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that we don’t know how to respond to the statement “Your bill has been paid” until we know how big the bill is. The size of your bill determines how you respond to someone who pays for it. You only know how to respond when you understand the size, scope, and magnitude of the bill.

While having my coffee paid for has touched me, I have not chased down the car, lights flashing and horn honking, dragged the person out of their car and embraced them with gratitude. Nor have I fallen prostrate before someone who has picked up the tab at a restaurant. After all, it was a latte and a restaurant tab. A sincere “thank you” seemed appropriate. Of course, if someone paid the full balance of my house mortgage, I would respond differently. The size of the bill dictates our response to the one who pays our debt.

All these illustrations about someone paying our bill or covering our debt, as helpful as they may be, fall woefully short of capturing the magnitude of our sin debt, the scope of our sinful rebellion against our God who is infinitely holy. Christ did not simply pay a dinner bill or pick up the tab on our latte. The bill was one—no matter what we did or how hard we worked—that we could never pay. And in His grace He became our sin, absorbed the wrath of God, and cast our sins away from us.

We have redemption in Him through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7).

Our worship and our adoration will be in proportion to our understanding of the magnitude of the debt that has been paid. May we not live as though He has only covered the price of a small debt.