July 27, 2025 Text: Colossians 2:6-15
Dear Friends in Christ,
How much debt do you have? If you are the average American household, you have a mortgage, student and auto loans and credit card debt that averages $105, 056. Generation X has the biggest debt. Generation Z has the lowest. What do you think about that?
Other than when we first purchased our house, we have not lived with a bunch of debt. But the Lord sent us to a church where that is all we have been living under. It has been a burden. Less money for missions. Church projects delayed etc. Don’t wiggle in your pew, this sermon isn’t about money. Though I would love to see this church with no debt before I ride off into retirement.
Consumer debt can bring a mixture of shame, depression, frustration, anger, anxiety. Wouldn’t it be great if that debt just went away?
Our focus today is on spiritual debt. It too can bring shame, depression, frustration, anger and anxiety. Wouldn’t it be great if it just went away? It would be a blessing to have a…
“DEBT PAYER”
No doubt we live in a strange world. I just read of man who was looking for trouble, so he decided to cut in front of a car just to provoke a fight. The thing is the car he decided to cut off was an unmarked police car. Let’s be careful out there.
That story is not an isolated incident. Satan is using people and circumstances to try to devour us. Peter tells us that he prowls like a roaring lion, and we must resist him and stand firm in the faith. (1 Peter 5:8-9) Let’s tie that word RESIST into the opening verses of our text. “Therefore, just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (v. 6-7). The only way to resist the attempts of Satan is to nurture the connection with Christ. So how do we handle Satan? How do we overcome this spiritual debt?
We start by lessening our focus on the debt. We get caught up in philosophy and empty deceit. We convince ourselves that we can pay the debt. We can stand strong against the devil’s advances. But we labor under the shame and frustration of not being able to do anything. We lose the focus. It should be on the debt payer. Without Jesus, the debt cannot be paid. Following the world just leads us deeper into the abyss.
Do you remember this story? Dr. Jerome Frank was a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. Years ago, when bombs on board planes were an occasional occurrence and security checkpoints were not even there, he flew on an airplane. He sat next to a man and started a conversation. The man’s mother-in-law had been on a flight where someone smuggled a bomb on, but it didn’t go off. He could not shake the idea that his plane could have a bomb. Dr. Frank asked him how he handled that.
He told Dr. Frank that he went to therapy to help him with this fear. He was told there was only a 1 in 10,000 chance that someone on board would have a bomb. He didn’t like the odds. He then stated this to Dr. Frank. “I reasoned that if there was only 1 chance in 10,000 of a bomb on my plane, there was only 1 chance in 100 million that two bombs would be on board. I could live with those odds.” Dr. Frank said, “But what good does that do?” He replied, “Ever since, I carry one bomb on myself – just to improve the odds!”
Isn’t that the insanity of the world? We trust in ourselves above the Living God. We are human timebombs crawling all over ourselves trying to improve the odds. Paranoia is the living companion of far too many. Debt, Satan, whatever is driving the world insane.
In steps the debt payer. Sent by God. The record of your debt of sin was set aside, when Jesus became the focus of God’s attention as the one paying your debt. He nailed that notice to the cross by doing this in verse 14, “canceling the record of debt.” The record of your debt of sin was nailed to the cross with Jesus. There it died. The proof is in the resurrection of the debt payer. Verse 13 says that “God made alive.” We can hardly escape debt and certainly can’t escape death. But God accepted the debt payer Jesus’ payment made for us and raised him from the dead. Through faith in Jesus, you also have been raised to live a debt-free life.
You know it’s going on my tombstone – he never paid a finance charge. Financially, I almost have a perfect credit score. But more importantly and the same goes for you, we have no debt, no finance charge, a perfect credit score when it comes to our spiritual books. No burdens. Living for Christ in forgiveness and eternal hope.
Amen.