In the second quarter of 2025, the average household in Texas had $12,800 in credit card debt, the seventh-worst in the nation. In all, Americans currently owe $1.3 trillion in credit card debt. With Christmas approaching, the number will only get bigger.

Debt, like fire, can be an effective tool for those who understand its limits. Everyone else gets burned.

The language of finance permeates Holy Scripture. Many of Jesus’ parables dealt with transactions, trade, and work. While the economic realities of first-century Judea don’t translate neatly to today—and the concept of what we now call “free markets” was only just being articulated by Cicero in the century before Christ—debt has been a financial constant.

We take it on knowingly. In the hyper-consumption culture of the 21st Century, we think nothing of taping or swiping a card to get what we want without regard to the consequences. And, for all too many of our neighbors, debt is amassed that cannot be repaid.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that debt has long been used as a description of the practical weight of sin. Like mindless taps for those impulsive baubles or the late-night clicks for the impractical gizmos, we accumulate the weight of sin.

Just as debt will eventually crush someone’s financial future, so also does sin darken our eternal future.

In today’s world, when debt is paid, we get a statement that notes the balance has been zeroed out. The lending institution doesn’t care who paid it off. This was no different in Jesus’ time. Throughout the Roman Empire, the Greek word “tetelestai” would be written in accounting ledgers to indicate that a debt had been paid in full.

Stories abound, then and now, of neighbors and family paying off the financial debt of a burdened loved one.

That word tetelestai is what Jesus used on the cross and is rendered to us literally: “It is finished.” Some experienced observers of crucifixions might have wondered at that. It was never a word used by a dying man crushed in defeat. No, everyone within earshot would have known this word in only the context of relief.

This was a triumphant proclamation that the debt of sin had been paid in full.

It is sadly ironic that the coming Christmas season is an excuse for taking on new debt, because the Man whose birth we celebrate came to relieve us of our burdens.

For all who call on Jesus, that notation of tetelestai is inked in the eternal ledger. Our shackles have been released. The burden removed. Let us rejoice in that freedom.