When someone is arrested for a crime and brought into court, the prosecutor will say, ‘The charges against you are…’ At that point, they hope their lawyer can get the charges dismissed. Well, God has a record of every sin you have committed from the womb to the tomb. It details all the bad decisions you have made, the hateful acts, the unforgiving attitudes, the prejudice, the greed, the lust, the lies; He has recorded them all. But you have never seen that record, nor has anyone else. That’s because ‘He forgave all our sins. He cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.’ (Colossians 2:13–14 NLT) Knowing full well that the price for our sins was death, ‘Christ suffered for our sins once for all time… He died for sinners to bring you safely home to God.’ (1 Peter 3:18 NLT)

Notice the words ‘forgave’ and ‘cancelled the record’ of the sins you have committed. The cross is like a trading post. There, at the point of believing faith, God takes all your sins and puts them on Christ’s account, while at the same time taking all Christ’s righteousness and putting it on your account.

Is there a limit to God’s love? If there is, David the adulterer never found it. Nor Paul the persecutor of Christians. Nor Peter the liar. Nor the thief on the cross. And you won’t find it either. When Jesus cried from the cross, ‘It is finished,’ God wrote ‘Paid in full’ over every sin you would ever commit. The word ‘justified’ simply means ‘just-if-I’d-never-sinned’. How good is that?