If you were as old as I am you would remember, as I do, learning to write on a slate tablet in school. One of the advantages of a slate was that it could be wiped clean and then used again and again. I don't think the Apostle Paul used a slate when he went to school but we do know that many people in his time wrote letters and even books using papyrus. One of the advantages of papyrus was that you could wipe it clean and use it again — if it was washed carefully there would be no trace of what had been written there.

Paul, in this verse in Colossians, tells us an amazing fact about what Jesus has done for us if we are Christians. He writes about an "arrest warrant" or a written statement of a debt we owed. But that warrant or statement of debt has been wiped clean — like the slate or papyrus, there is no trace of it any more. The debt was our sin, all of it, and Jesus has wiped it clean so that God does not see it anymore — it is gone for ever. I find that absolutely wonderful, don't you? It is even more wonderful, if that is possible, because of what it cost Jesus to do all of that for us — it is by his death on the cross. He paid our debt so that we are now debt-free. What a Saviour we have!

"Jesus paid it all, All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; He washed it white as snow." (Elvina Hall)

Prayer

Dear Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for your wonderful love and grace to us who don't deserve it. Amen

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