That means a zero balance.
DEC 12, 2025
Today marks my forty-third birthday as a Christian.
On December 12, 1982, I walked into a very unusual church—a place I would not attend today. It was full of bad doctrine and circus-like behavior. Yet in the middle of all that chaos, the preacher asked a question that cut straight through the noise and struck my heart:
“If Jesus paid for your sins on the cross, what is left for you to pay?”
I had attended a religious high school, been active in its church, and even studied the Bible. But somehow, this was the first time I truly heard the gospel.
So what is that gospel?
It is this: salvation is a gift from God.
Ephesians 2:8–9 says,
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Grace is God’s undeserved kindness. And even the faith we exercise does not come from ourselves. It doesn’t come from our efforts or good deeds. The Bible uses the word gift—and we all know what a gift is. If you have to earn it or pay it back, it was never a gift at all.
Religion—in the negative sense—is about what you must do to deserve heaven: go to confession, try to outweigh your bad deeds with good ones, or even make extreme sacrifices. Whatever the requirement, it’s still a work. Yet this verse, and many others, declare that salvation is a gift from God apart from our works.
That message changed my life forty-three years ago.
Since then, I have seen God’s hand in my life in more ways than I can count. I have walked with Him as someone fully loved, completely accepted, and totally forgiven—not because of my work but because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross.
This is the gospel I believe.
This is the gospel I have preached and taught for all these years.
And through all of it, God has been faithful to His word.
I am no better than anyone else. Like the Apostle Paul, I could call myself the chief of sinners. It was never about my behavior. It has always been about God’s costly, undeserved love for me.
So I ask you the same question that confronted me four decades ago:
If Jesus paid for your sins on the cross—where He declared, “It is finished”—what is left for you to pay?
Was He telling the truth? The Greek word He used, tetelestai, was an accounting term meaning paid in full.
Your task is to decide whose work you will trust for your salvation—your own, or Jesus’. If you trust Him, you will never be lost again. You will belong to Him forever, an eternally secure citizen of heaven.
This is the gospel I accepted forty-three years ago today. If this offends you, simply move on. But I must declare the truth that changed my life, and I pray it will change yours as well.
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