Sign-up for free e-newsletter

Viewpoint from John Ellero 15/11/2013

John Ellero
Green Pastures Christian Fellowship
 

2013 my wife Carol and I reached something of a milestone in our married life: we finally paid off our mortgage. It has not been a smooth or uneventful journey but I suppose it has been typical of many other families. We have had three homes, upsizing and re-mortgaging as we went along. For practical reasons that I will not bore you with we ended up with an endowment mortgage. I’m not sure when the warning letters began to come – I guess 10 years or so ago –but every year another “red letter” came, warning us that the endowment might not cover the intended sum and that we should make alternative arrangements for the shortfall. Certainly to begin with we were not in a position to make any alternative arrangements other than praying about it. But a day of reckoning was coming and it could not be avoided. We needed a plan and we needed to put it into action – the debt had to be paid and that is what we did

But this year has reminded me too that each of us owes a debt that cannot be paid – the debt of our sin. “For all have sinned” (Romans 3:23) Paul reminds us; and Psalm 49:6 tells us it cannot be paid by any means we have. For “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him” This is not a debt that you can “work off” by the good deeds that you do - “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” Isaiah 64:6. This is a debt that can only be paid for by God’s own sacrifice on our behalf. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” John 3:16