Jesus Cancels Your Debt Series

Title: Jesus Cancels Your Debt

Intro: Have you ever been in debt?

Scriptures:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12,

Hebrews 4:14-16;

Hebrews 5:7-9,

John 18:1-40,

John 19:1-42.

Reflection

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

"When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, 'It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." (John 19:30)

Have you ever been in debt? I am not just talking about money, though many of us know what that feels like. I am talking about the kind of debt that weighs on your soul—the mistakes you have made, the people you have hurt, the things you wish you could take back but cannot. That feeling of owing something you can never repay.

Today, I want to talk about a single word that changes everything. One word spoken by Jesus as he hung on the cross. In English, we translate it as three words: "It is finished." But in the original Greek, it was just one powerful word: tetelestai.

A few years ago, archaeologists made a fascinating discovery in the Holy Land. They uncovered a tax collector's office that was remarkably intact. Among the findings were two stacks of tax records. One stack had a word stamped across the top: tetelestai. Do you know what that meant? "Paid in full."

Can you imagine the relief those people felt when their debts were marked tetelestai? No more sleepless nights worrying about what they owed. No more fear when the tax collector came knocking. Their debt was paid, finished, complete.

When Jesus uttered this word from the cross, he was not just saying his life was over. He was declaring something much more profound: the debt of our sins has been paid in full.

This idea of sin as debt was not new. Throughout his ministry, Jesus often spoke of sin as a debt we owe to God. Remember the parable he told about the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18? A master forgave his servant an enormous debt—something the servant could never hope to repay in several lifetimes. But then that same servant went out and demanded repayment of a tiny debt from a fellow servant.

The message was clear: we have been forgiven an unpayable debt by God, so how can we not forgive the relatively small debts others owe us?

Even in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught us to pray: "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). We understand this as "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Sin is a debt. Forgiveness is cancellation of debt.

Isaiah foresaw this moment centuries earlier when he wrote of the suffering servant: "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities... the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:5-6). The debt of our sins was transferred to Jesus.

Let us be honest about the size of this debt. Every hateful thought. Every selfish action. Every moment we have turned away from someone in need. Every time we have put ourselves first. Every lie we have told. Every promise we have broken.

If we were to count them all up, how massive would our debt be?

Think about it like this: Imagine if every sin in your life added up to a financial debt. How much would you owe? Thousands? Millions? More than you could pay in a lifetime?

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears" (Hebrews 5:7). Why such anguish? Perhaps because he truly understood the weight of the world's sin—your sin and mine—that he was about to bear.

And yet, knowing the cost, Jesus willingly went to the cross. In the garden of Gethsemane, when the soldiers came to arrest him, he did not run. John tells us: "Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward" (John 18:4). He stepped toward his suffering, not away from it.

Picture the scene at Calvary. The sky has grown dark. Jesus has been hanging on the cross for hours. His body is broken, bleeding. The crowd that had shouted "Crucify him!" now watches, some mocking, some weeping.

In John 19, we read how the soldiers divided his clothes, how his mother stood nearby with the disciple whom Jesus loved, how Jesus was thirsty and was given sour wine on a hyssop branch.

And then comes the moment: "When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, 'It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit" (John 19:30).

Tetelestai. Paid in full.

That single word changed everything. In that moment, the debt of all humanity—past, present, and future—was canceled. The ledger was wiped clean. The account was settled.

This was not a promissory note saying, "Your sins will be forgiven someday." It was not a conditional statement: "Your sins are forgiven if you do this or that." It was a declaration: "It is finished." Complete. Done.