Debtor's Prison
Sin creates a spiritual debt. Get out of debtor's prison
Debtor's Prison
A debtors prison, ever heard of such a thing? A
debtors prison is a detention facility or jail, where people who ether for the
inability or refusal to pay a debt were kept until the debt was paid. Have you
heard the term, “thrown in the clink.” In London, there was a debtor’s prison
that dates back to 1122 but the 14th century became known as The
Clink. It's now a museum. The name came from the sound of the blacksmith’s
hammer closing the irons around the wrists or ankles of prisoners.
If you had a debt you could not repay you were
liable to incarceration. You had an option to work off your debt in labor or
have someone pay your debt off, otherwise, you stayed in prison. Prison is not
a good place to be today, it was worse for The Clink housed prisoners. Barbaric
conditions, no indoor plumbing, no heating or air conditioning, no internet, no
TV and you ate better if you had someone from the outside bring you food,
otherwise, it was good to catch a rat.
In these United States as early as the original
settlers in the 1600’s up until the early 1800s (1833) many cities and states
operated what became known as debtors prisons. It wasn’t until 1983 that the
Supreme Court ruled that incarcerating a person for their debt was
unconstitutional under the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Prior
to 1833 if you could not pay your debts you could end up in “the Clink.”
Today we don’t have debtors prisons as such but
the legal system has its ways of making your life miserable. Instead of putting
you in jail because you can’t or refuse to pay a debt, the court can find you
in contempt of court when it orders you to pay and you don’t. So you don’t get
jailed for failure to pay, you get jailed for disregarding a court order. If
you ask me it’s the same thing, but then no one asks me.
So let’s say you owe a bill, it gets turned over
to bill collectors, they send a letter informing you that you need to appear in
court to settle the matter. You never get the letter. You don’t appear so the
Court then issues a warrant for your arrest for failure to appear. Bingo you’re
in the Clink for not paying your debt and so much for your rights under the 14th
amendment.
One thing that is true about all prisons, whether
its solitary in supermax or one of those white-collar resorts the rich and
famous seem to get sentenced to, one thing is the same. You lose your freedom.
Did you realize that every human being enters into
this world in the clink?
2 Corinthians 4:4 (NCV)
The devil who rules this
world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe.
“All through the Bible,
the writers are conscious that in this world there is a power of evil.
Sometimes that power is called Satan, sometimes the Devil. Three times John
makes Jesus speak of the prince of this world and of his defeat. (Jn 12:31, Jn
14:30, Jn 16:11). Paul in Eph 2:2 speaks of the prince of the power of the air,
and here in 2 Corinthians, he reveals that the devil rules this world. Even in
the Lord's Prayer, there is a reference to this malign power, for it is most
probable that the correct translation of Matt 6:13 is "Deliver us from the
Evil One." Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)
I have been taught that
the devil took ownership of the planet when Adam and Eve sinned against God,
thinking that equality with God was something they could grasp they disobeyed
and in their attempt to be co-equal with God destroyed the inherent
righteousness of everything and everyone. Now I have not done near enough
theological research to say with any certainty that this original sin created a
transfer of title of not, from humanity to the demonic. So take such an idea as
folk wisdom for now. Jesus did not correct the devil in Matthew 4:8 when all
the world was offered to Him.
Matthew 4:8-9 (MSG)
For the third test, the
Devil took him on the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively,
pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. 9 Then he
said, "They're yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees
and worship me, and they're yours."
The idea here is that the
devil could not give away something that was not his.
Let’s jump back to 2
Corinthians 4:4. The mind of those who do not believe, which would include
everyone, are blinded. I suggest to you that our eyes before they are lite with
the light of Christ are blinded to the fact that this world, this world broken
by sin, is really a debtor’s prison. Those who do not believe are in the Clink
and don’t even know it.
“In the world” the phrase
means “the debtor’s prison” not the earth, not the planet. The scripture
describes what life is like when you live in the world.
You don’t realize how
important you really are: how significant you really are: how much you are
worth. Romans 1: 21 reveals in the world we trivialize ourselves.
In doing so we become
confused and think we know what’s best, how best to live our lives. How has
that turned out for us, being our own authority, being our own judge of
morality? How has it turned out for you?
Romans 1:29-31 (MSG)
And then all hell broke
loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made
life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating.
Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies,
swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking
lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel,
cold-blooded.
Run into anyone that can
be described in that litany of life in debtor’s prison? I have certainly seen
myself in those words. Blinded to the truth, to reality, all this is just
normal, the way things are in this world. We don’t even recognize the prison
walls.
The Bible gives us even
more ugly detail:
“sexual promiscuity,
impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and
grabbing whatever attracts your fancy” (Col 3:5 (MSG);
“bad temper, irritability,
meanness, profanity, dirty talk” (Col 3:8 (MSG);
“cutting, backbiting,
profane talk” (Eph 4:31 (MSG);
“devouring one another,
destroying each other” (Gal 5:15 (NIV);
“They can't think
straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession,
addicted to every sort of perversion” (Eph 4:19 (MSG).
Not a pretty picture at
all. It’s ugly; it is not how God intended. This is what life is like living in
the debtor’s prison. The devil blinds a person’s perception, oh, we may sense
something is wrong, but we are not sure what and have no notion of why, this is
just how it is when you do what you want, when you want, with or to whom you
want, regardless of the consequences.
Galatians 5:19-21 &
26 (NIV)
The acts of the sinful
nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery; idolatry and
witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition,
dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like… conceited,
provoking and envying each other.
You most likely don’t
expect such behavior from yourself, but certainly, you can see it or
unfortunately experienced from someone else.
Then the worst is saved
for last:
Revelation 20:12-15 (NCV)
And I saw the dead, great
and small, standing before the throne. Then books were opened, and the book of
life was opened. The dead were judged by what they had done, which was written
in the books. … Each person was judged by what he had done. … The lake of fire
is the second death. And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of
life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Sadly, those with blinded
eyes never even see it coming.
The biggest clue of this
horrible ending is the realization of broken relationships in your life. If
there are relationships in your life that once were good, but then went bad,
the cause of that is sin. Sin is the fire in which we burn. Sin is the normal background of living in the
world, sin is the regular everyday sights, sounds smells and tastes of debtor’s
prison; always the result of blinded eyes courtesy of the devil.
Time for some good news:
Jesus said,
God's Spirit is on me;
he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to the poor, Sent me to
announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened
and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!"
Luke 4:18-19 (MSG)
Pardon for those in
debtor’s prison, sight restored to the blind. This scripture reveals has
already been done for you. God has acted. He has acted decisively in the incarnation,
life, atoning death and resurrection as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. The cell
to your prison has been unlocked.
1 Peter 2:24 (NLT) &
Galatians 3:13 (TLB)
[Jesus] personally
carried our sins in his body on the cross…Christ has bought us out from under
the doom of that impossible system by taking the curse for our wrongdoing upon
Himself.
This has been done for
you.
We used to sing a hymn in
the church. The refrain, or chorus, of which reads:
Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson
stain,
He washed it white as
snow.
I haven’t heard that hymn
in a long time. There’s a new version. Want to sing it?
The sin debt you owed
that resulted in your incarceration in debtor’s prison has been paid in full. Right
now the cell door is unlocked. God the Holy Spirit invites you to exit.
It is now up to you to
ask Jesus to open your eyes, your spiritual eyes so that you can see how to
live your life to the full, the kind of life God has always intended for you to
live. You have a choice, you can remain in debtor’s prison, or you can choose
to become a disciple of Jesus. Some have said it’s just exchanging slave
masters. I think that’s well said, but do you want to be a slave to the Devil
or a slave to Jesus? Do you want to stay in debtor’s prison or live free?
That’s too easy a
question to answer. Let me put it this way: Today you can choose to continue
doing what you want when you want to with and to whom you want with or without
regard for the consequences or you can deny yourself, surrender the right to do
what you want, bend the knee to Jesus and follow his commands and decrees as
his disciple. Enter fully into a life dedicated to living for others.
Here’s what I think will
happen if you choose to do your own thing. I had a financial debt that was a
real struggle, so I put it on my charge card, figuring I would pay it off over
time. Well, that plan quickly fell apart and I needed a bailout. The bill was
paid in full. But guess what, I went and did it again, I put bills on credit
and now it’s a struggle to pay them off as I also pay off the bailout loan.
That is exactly what happens when having been set free you choose to do what
you’ve always done, you either never leave the prison or you wind up back in the
prison. A word to the wise: Let Jesus open your eyes, follow his way, and you
will stay debt-free.
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