Pastor and 1st Lady Mims

Mims Chapel Church

Week 12, November 23, 2025

LESSON 12

Debt Cancellation

Lesson Text:

Colossians 2:14; Psalm 103:12; Micah 7:19;
Matthew 27:37; Revelation 20:12

Memory Verse
"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross."
Colossians 2:14

Key Terms
Blot Out • To make obscure, insignificant, or inconsequential; wipe out; rub out; erase.
Debt Cancellation • The forgiveness of debt obligations by a creditor.

Indictment • A formal charge or accusation of a serious crime.

Suggested Emphasis

As a sociological phenomenon, debt cancellation has rarely occurred in any context that did not involve armed revolt. Human history shows us that "the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors." We cannot describe this better than anthropologist David Graeber did in the introduction to his seminal work, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. "[F]or the last five thousand years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with the ritual destruction of debt records—tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place...As the great classicist Moses Finley often liked to say, in the ancient world, all revolutionary movements had a single program: 'Cancel the debts and redistribute the land— (Graeber, 2011).

A shared revulsion of the concept of debt may be a reason this week's verse is a favorite of Bible readers: "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross" (Col. 2:14).
That radical vision of debt cancellation speaks directly to most of our lived experiences.

Emphasis 1:

Erasing the Record of Debt

That beautiful KJV language may immediately obscure the meaning of "handwriting of ordinances," but a quick glance at a lexicon reveals that the two Greek words in this phrase amount to "a written record of debt decrees." So, to say a record of debt is "blotted out" is to describe how erasure was performed before there were erasers: the writing would have been smeared with ink which rendered it illegible. Of course, we know the language here is symbolic; the "debt" Paul is talking about was moral, not financial. We had a sin-debt that we could not pay, and there was an incorporeal "recording" of our trespasses that would ultimately bring us to a reckoning. "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. 20:12). Thank God, we believers will bypass the Great White Throne Judgment since our records have been expunged.

Emphasis 2:

Taking the Record Away

The next major clause in this passage sounds innocuous: "and took it out of the way." Don't miss that it is the record of debt that is being physically removed. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us" (Ps. 103:12). "He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:19). The pictures of our heavenly Father casting aside our guilty record are evocative.

Emphasis 3:

Nailing the Record to the Cross

The final clause may be the most vivid: "nailing it to his cross." Of course, this is a figurative way to express that forgiveness of our sins was accomplished by Jesus' crucifixion. But the imagery also illustrated something else to the original audience. When the Romans executed a criminal, they nailed a list of his crimes on the cross with him. The Bible describes an instance of this: "A sign was fastened above Jesus' head, announcing the charge against him. It read: 'This is Jesus, the King of the Jews— (Mat. 27:37, NLT). Paul's readers would have understood that, although there was a specious indictment nailed above His head, there was also an intangible list of all the sins of the world affixed to that cross. Jesus was dying for those charges, and not for any of His own.

Missions Application Questions

Why won't believers in Christ have to answer for "the things that are written in the books" on the day of the White Throne Judgment?
What does it mean that Christ took our record of sins "out of the way"?
How does Paul's assertion that our sin record was "nailed to his cross" relate to the sign fastened above Jesus at His crucifixion?

World Missions Prayer Points

Let us thank God that the record of our sins has been expunged.
Let us pray that we never try to fish out our sins from "the depths of the sea" where God cast them.
Let us pray to remember that the forgiveness of our sins was accomplished at Calvary.