He Paid A Debt He Did Not Owe

April 5

“…and without shedding of blood there is no remission.”
Hebrews 9:22

This is what makes the Christian faith different from other ‘religions.’ In most religions, whether you get to heaven or not depends on your relative goodness and good works as opposed to your evil. But the Scriptures don’t focus on our good works, the Scriptures focus on our lostness, the depravity of the human heart.

“The heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked;
who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9

That is the condition of every human heart. We are born in a fallen human nature.

“…for ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”
Romans 3:23

Because of our lost, sinful, and hopeless state, God has provided salvation through the shed blood of his perfect, sinless Son who bore our guilt and carried our sin to the Cross, where he received in himself all the judgment due on all our sin. Other religions cannot lead one to heaven because they lack the key ingredient, the shed blood of the innocent for the guilty. No other religion offers a totally sinless Savior who shed his blood and gave his life as an atonement for all who will receive him.

“He paid a debt he did not owe;
I owed a debt I could not pay;
I needed someone to wash my sins away.
And now I sing a brand new song, ‘Amazing Grace,’
Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay.”