Judah on Trial

By He Reads Truth

Have you ever been indebted to someone? Maybe you’ve felt the weight of real monetary debt, or you’ve been treated with undeserved kindness by a friend you’ve wronged. Or perhaps you’ve had someone indebted to you, and you’ve had to wrestle with the decision between demanding repayment or wiping another’s slate clean. Regardless of the circumstance, the feeling of being in debt is a heavy, often uncomfortable, weight to carry.

This is why one of the ways Scripture shows us how sin affects our relationship with God is through the concept of dept. The discomfort of owing something to a God who is holy, good, and perfect in every way—a God who is not in debt to us and a God that we can never pay back—is a difficult reality to live in. Yet this is one of the undercurrents of the season of Lent. It asks us to look at what sin truly costs, and in doing so, calls out a well of gratitude in us for what it took to restore us before God—a gratitude that we might not fully grasp if we do not understand the cost.

The season of Lent encourages us to look back before we look forward. It’s about holding our eyes open, looking fully at our sin, and then keeping them open wide to fully comprehend the hope of Jesus that is coming. In this season we’re invited to walk toward our hope, but we must remind ourselves of the beginning. We review our charges and repent of all we cannot begin to pay. And thus, we approach the cross with the gratitude of a sinner forgiven. No longer debtors, but by the grace of God, sons and daughters—coheirs of an eternal inheritance.

In the book of Isaiah, God’s people are asked to do the same. The prophet took the time to show the people of Judah the destructiveness of their sin and its consequences. Line by line, he showed them the severity of their debt. But he also prophesied: someone is coming to forgive it all.

We’re so grateful to take this journey with you for another year—to read the book of Isaiah and the Holy Week passages and acknowledge our mortality. We need Jesus. And as we approach the cross and the resurrection that will surely follow, we have this assurance: God will save His people.