Spurgeon: February AM
* 02/03/AM
"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors."
--Romans 8:12
As God's creatures, we are all debtors to Him: to obey Him
with all our body, and soul, and strength. Having broken His
commandments, as we all have, we are debtors to His justice, and
we owe to Him a vast amount which we are not able to pay. But of
the Christian it can be said that he does not owe God's
justice anything, for Christ has paid the debt His people
owed; for this reason the believer owes the more to love . I am
a debtor to God's grace and forgiving mercy; but I am no debtor
to His justice, for He will never accuse me of a debt already
paid. Christ said, "It is finished!" and by that He meant, that
whatever His people owed was wiped away for ever from the book
of remembrance. Christ, to the uttermost, has satisfied divine
justice; the account is settled; the handwriting is nailed to
the cross; the receipt is given, and we are debtors to God's
justice no longer. But then, because we are not debtors to our
Lord in that sense, we become ten times more debtors to God than
we should have been otherwise. Christian, pause and ponder for a
moment. What a debtor thou art to divine sovereignty ! How
much thou owest to His disinterested love, for He gave His own
Son that He might die for thee. Consider how much you owe to His
forgiving grace , that after ten thousand affronts He loves you
as infinitely as ever. Consider what you owe to His power ; how
He has raised you from your death in sin; how He has preserved
your spiritual life; how He has kept you from falling; and how,
though a thousand enemies have beset your path, you have been
able to hold on your way. Consider what you owe to His
immutability . Though you have changed a thousand times, He
has not changed once. Thou art as deep in debt as thou canst be
to every attribute of God. To God thou owest thyself, and all
thou hast--yield thyself as a living sacrifice, it is but thy
reasonable service.