The Compound Interest On Sin

Credit card debt is a terrible problem in America, particularly among young people. The ease in which a card is authorized all but guarantees it will be used. Credit  cards  themselves  can  be  very  useful  things, provided  they  are  used responsibly. If you pay off any amount you charge before the end of the month, then no interest will be added to your debt. However, many people seem to think credit cards are an additional source of income, rather than a convenient way to spend it. Pretty soon, interest begins to take its heavy toll and people are up to their  eyeballs  in  debt,  making  the  minimal  payments  to  get  by,  but  never  resolving the principal debt.

 Hebrews 10:1"For the law possesses a shadow of the good things to come but not the reality itself, and is therefore completely unable, by the same sacrifices offered continually, year after year, to perfect those who come to worship. 10:2 For otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers would have been purified once for all and so have no further consciousness of sin? 10:3 But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after year. 10:4 For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. 10:5 So when he came into the world, he said, “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.10:6 “Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.10:7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: I have come – it is written of me in the scroll of the book – to do your will, O God.’”10:8 When he says above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you did not desire nor did you take delight in them” (which are offered according to the law), 10:9 then he says, “Here I am: I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first to establish the second. 10:10 By his will we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all."

The purpose of the establishment of the Law was to form and guide a national community of people in their dealings with their neighbors and the God that had rescued them from slavery. Sacrifices and offerings were required by the Law to serve as reminders to the people of the price of their sins, but the sacrifices did not absolve the people of their sin. Instead, they merely postponed the due date for payment until God sent His Son Jesus Messiah to pay the debts, not only of the Israelite community, but the debt of the whole of the human race. Jesus made a payment we couldn’t make, even if we were willing to, because the debt was greater than our ability to pay. But because Jesus was God’s Son, both perfectly human and divine, He was able to pay the debt with the sacrifice of His own body on the cross of suffering.  In addition to paying the impossible debt hanging over us, He sent His Holy Spirit to invade our lives, find our spiritual wallets, and cut up all those sin credit cards we use to add more debt than we already had. Gradually, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to be the master of sin, rather than its slave. In time, we learn what it is to be truly wealthy, using our spiritual resources for good rather than evil.