“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
(Romans 3:23)
As Christians, we know that this universal sense of imperfection and that our moral failures incur debts are rooted ultimately in our estrangement from our Creator. Paul tells us in Romans 3:23 that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Every shortfall with respect to our earthly law codes springs from our falling short of the law of God.
This failure to live up to the standards of the divine law, in turn, makes us seek ways to repay the debt we owe to the Almighty. The history of world religions is the history of human beings’ trying to come up with the methods that will pay the debt we incur to God. Various forms of penance, pilgrimages, fasting, and so forth are commonly found in the religions of world as means to pay the debt of sin and atone for falling short of the Creator’s law.
The problem with all these attempts is that they do not take the difference between Creator and creature into serious consideration. We can pay the debts we owe to other people for breaking human laws, but how can finite individuals pay the debt owed to the in-finite God? We have transgressed the standards of our infinitely holy Creator, which means that the debt we owe is infinite. We cannot hope to pay this debt ourselves.
CORAM DEO
Our only hope for repaying our debt of sin to our infinitely holy God is for another to pay it in our place. Only the infinite God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, can repay the debt we owe. Because Christ is truly God, His suffering is of sufficient value to satisfy our debt against the Lord. If we are in Him by faith alone, our debt has been paid and our sins are no longer held against us.
– Tabletalk Magazine, 26th July 2018