Edited by Jim McCrory, Thursday 27 August 2026 at 06:55
Paid in Full
Sometimes people come into our lives who remind us that not everything in this world is negative.
This week, I had my boiler serviced. A next day, the bill arrived. But there was something unusual about it. Where I expected to see an amount owed, it simply said: Paid in Full
I contacted the engineer, assuming there had been a mistake. I told him about it, but his response was simple: “It’s a gift.”
“But I can afford to pay,” I replied.
He wasn’t having it.
During his visit, I had mentioned that I had cancer. He felt that life already presents enough challenges when someone is going through something like that, and he wanted to do something to ease the burden, even if only a little.
It was an extraordinary act of kindness, but it got me thinking about something much bigger.
Some years ago, I was in a European country where a friend of mine visited prisoners in a high-security prison. During one visit, a prisoner asked him a question that has stayed with me.
“I have taken many lives. Will God forgive me?”
We know that feeling when conscience tortures us for our smaller sins. My friend assured him that if he was truly repentant, God would forgive him.
That is an extraordinary thought, isn’t it?
We all carry a debt. We have all fallen short. We are all sinners. Yet the Christian message is that God did not leave humanity to pay that debt ourselves.
Around two thousand years ago, Christ came into the world and gave His life for the sins of mankind.
As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:
“When you were dead in your trespasses...your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, having cancelled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross!”
There is something profoundly beautiful in those words: He cancelled the debt.
The boiler engineer could have sent me a bill. I could have paid it. But instead, he chose to give me a gift.
And that little act of kindness became, for me, a reminder of a far greater gift.
Christ did not merely reduce our debt. He did not ask us to pay what we could and somehow make up the difference ourselves.
Paid in Full
Paid in Full
Sometimes people come into our lives who remind us that not everything in this world is negative.
This week, I had my boiler serviced. A next day, the bill arrived. But there was something unusual about it. Where I expected to see an amount owed, it simply said: Paid in Full
I contacted the engineer, assuming there had been a mistake. I told him about it, but his response was simple: “It’s a gift.”
“But I can afford to pay,” I replied.
He wasn’t having it.
During his visit, I had mentioned that I had cancer. He felt that life already presents enough challenges when someone is going through something like that, and he wanted to do something to ease the burden, even if only a little.
It was an extraordinary act of kindness, but it got me thinking about something much bigger.
Some years ago, I was in a European country where a friend of mine visited prisoners in a high-security prison. During one visit, a prisoner asked him a question that has stayed with me.
“I have taken many lives. Will God forgive me?”
We know that feeling when conscience tortures us for our smaller sins. My friend assured him that if he was truly repentant, God would forgive him.
That is an extraordinary thought, isn’t it?
We all carry a debt. We have all fallen short. We are all sinners. Yet the Christian message is that God did not leave humanity to pay that debt ourselves.
Around two thousand years ago, Christ came into the world and gave His life for the sins of mankind.
As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:
“When you were dead in your trespasses...your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, having cancelled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross!”
There is something profoundly beautiful in those words: He cancelled the debt.
The boiler engineer could have sent me a bill. I could have paid it. But instead, he chose to give me a gift.
And that little act of kindness became, for me, a reminder of a far greater gift.
Christ did not merely reduce our debt. He did not ask us to pay what we could and somehow make up the difference ourselves.
He paid it. And He Paid it in Full.