Credit Worth Considering

Credit worth Considering!
By Joanne Mead


I guess many of you have been bargain-hunting recently?  The January sales are prime time to get things you want at a reduced price.  It is all so very easy stand in queue and when you turn comes put your card into the little machine type in your pin and the deal is done.  Plastic cards! How popular they are as people mount up their arrears on the plethora of credit so freely available.

It always fascinates me that the terms “credit” and “debt” have profound spiritual meaning. We don’t have to contemplate a situation where we sin now and pay later.  The price of our sin has already been paid in full.  Salvation is a gift, offered to us by God.  To accept it is to enter into a special relationship that was made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s only son.  It’s the greatest bargain that humankind has ever been offered, but do we accept it gratefully?

When Jesus died on the cross for sins that were not His own, it wasn’t just case of suffering the punishment due to us.  Through Jesus, we are justified; we are restored to a state that is just as if we’d never sinned.  The sheet is wiped clean and our acceptance into God’s Kingdom is assured.  What we are required to do is to repent and believe, and we can then enter into a new relationship with God through His Son.

John 3:16 is a well-known verse to many, but for those less familiar:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (NIV)

I can remember vividly the day when I took that special step.  I was just ten years old.  The spring sunshine pouring in through the windows warmed the carpet under my feet.  I remember feeling like a huge load had been lifted.  I treasure that moment to this very day. It was the day I discovered what real credit was about. Jesus had credited me worthy of being a member the family of God. It became personal “the whoever”  of John 3:16 included the name of Joanne. The best gift she would ever receive unmerited and free.