Paid in Full

Date: Friday, October 30, 2026

Readings: Colossians 2 | Psalm 102:15-28

In 2019, investor Robert F. Smith delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College and announced that he and his family would pay off the student loans of the entire graduating class, an estimated $34 million. Imagine the stunned silence, and then the roar. Those graduates did nothing to earn it. They simply received. Of course, Smith’s gift cost him money, while ours cost God the emotional and physical pain of the Cross. Some modern progressive Christian movements want to condemn the atoning power of the cross because of its violoence. They would rather lean on the example of love demonstrated in Jesus’ life, rather than His death. They are not entirely wrong. But they’re missing the point: The Cross is how we can realate to feelings of scandal, anger, disgust, injustice, betryal. In so doing, we become more connected to God.

Paul says God forgave us all our sins, “having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” The word behind “indebtedness” points to a handwritten IOU, a signed record of what we owed. In the Roman world, a criminal’s charges were posted publicly above the condemned. Paul’s image is that our entire record was posted on Jesus’ cross, and the account is closed. Paid in full.

That’s why Paul warns the Colossians not to be “taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy” (2:8). Some modern Christian ideologies could take a lesson from this. Whether it’s religious rule-keeping, the denial of sin for the sake of inclusion, or today’s endless self-improvement routines, these things are, in Paul’s words, “a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ” (2:17). You were buried with Him and raised with Him (2:12). Nothing needs to be added to what Christ has already done. “In Christ you have been brought to fullness” (2:10), and that fullness is a gift.

Devotional Prompts:

• What guilt, regret, or shame might you still be carrying that Christ has already canceled?
• How might your week change if you truly believed you had already been “brought to fullness”?

Prayer: Merciful God, thank You for nailing the record of our debt to the cross of Your Son. Quiet the voices that insist we must still pay what Jesus has paid in full. Let us live today as people who are forgiven, raised, and complete in Him. Amen.