Nailed to the Cross

What does it cost you to be known?

Paul's picture here is a document. The handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and the word is cheirographon, a certificate of debt written in the debtor's own hand. It was the ancient equivalent of a signed IOU, and its whole force lay in being in your handwriting. You could not dispute it. The charge sheet against you is not a distortion; Paul says it was contrary to us, and he never once says it was inaccurate.

So the question is what can be done with a true record. Not disproved. Not lost in a drawer. Paul says it was blotted out, which is the wiping of ink from papyrus, and then took it out of the way, and then nailing it to his cross. All four Gospels mention that a written charge hung over Jesus' head on that wood. Paul puts yours on the same nail, in public, where the reading of it and the ending of it happen in the same moment. And the verse before is blunter than we usually allow: you were not struggling, you were dead in your sins, and the verb done to you is quickened.

Which leaves the question open in a direction most sermons close too fast. If a true record can be nailed up and finished, what is the status of the true record you are still keeping about somebody else? You have never said it aloud. They know it exists. Every conversation runs through it.

Nobody is instructing you to have that conversation this week. You may not be ready and it may not be safe. But the option exists, and it is worth knowing that it exists: a true account, accurate in every line, can be closed by the person holding it. You have watched it done. You are the reason it was done.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 98 is What Patience Is For (Romans 2:4).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna