Day 17: Our Debts
Jesus’ prayer continues with ‘forgive us our debt.’ I love that Jesus is compassionate, humble, and gracious enough to pray this prayer. He was absolutely pure, perfect, innocent and holy. He did not need to pray this for Himself, but rather, as the Good Shepherd He was, is, and will always be, He leads us to understanding more fully His heart and intentions toward us.
In praying this, He is revealing a place of deeply understanding both the reality and weight of our actions. He is encouraging us to see the pain of our debts, but not to sit in that pain. He is calling us forth because He examples not only through this prayer, but through the cross that the goal is for these sins and trespasses to be forgiven and released. It is not something that we need to clothe ourselves with, identify ourselves through, or continue to carry as if it is a burden that we need to lug around for our lives.
Rather, the Beautiful Savior relinquishes this pressure Himself, as the only One worthy of doing so. He reveals this by speaking the very statement that pays all debts in John 19:30. “Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” When Jesus speaks out “it is finished” He is referring to the completion of atoning for all of sin, debts, and trespasses. The phrase in Greek is the word τετέλεσται (tetelestai), which means, “Your debts have been paid.” It is written in a grammatical tense that is called the perfect tense. This tense refers to past tense completed action, with ongoing consequences in the present. In other words, the phrase would really be, “Your debts have been paid and will continue to be paid.” Isn’t that good news!?
Not only this, but this phrase was commonly used when criminals would pay their prison sentences. They would literally owe a debt to those around them and in order to pay it back they would have to fulfill the justice sentence. Once they were done, they could be reinstated into community and society, because their debt had been paid. This phrase, “it is finished” would be stamped on them and people would know they had paid their debt. This is the beauty of this prayer: our debts have been paid and we have been brought back into community!
The good news for us is that our Lord does not just lead us to a place of knowing we have debt, but He teaches us to pray from His payment for our debts. We can rejoice in this prayer because of His atonement for our wrongful deeds. We can also come with sober hearts knowing that it only took place through His painful death on the cross. When we pray this phrase, we experience the bittersweetness of our Messiah’s sacrifice; we align ourselves with the beauty of who He is and what He has spoken as truthful in our lives. Amen.
Action: Today, simply remind yourself of all that God has done. Pray, Jesus, align me with what You have said, “It is finished” indeed.
