He Took the Handwriting Out of the Way and Nailed It to His Cross

He can still read it.

That is the whole difficulty, and it is not a theological difficulty, it is a practical one. He believes what he was taught. He would defend it. If you asked him whether he is forgiven he would say yes, immediately, and he would not be performing.

And the list is still legible.

It has about nine items on it. Some of them are twenty years old. He does not go looking for it; it presents itself, usually when he is doing something ordinary, and each item arrives with its full weight and its full detail, and the weight has not reduced by any measurable amount since the day it was incurred.

So he is a man holding a piece of paper that he has been told does not exist, and he can read every line of it, and nobody has ever explained that discrepancy to him.

Paul uses a very specific commercial word for that piece of paper, and then stacks three verbs on it.

The word means a document you signed yourself

Here is the sentence, and the noun in the middle is the technical one.

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, King James Version)

The handwriting. In that world this was the word for a certificate of debt, written out and signed by the debtor in his own hand as an acknowledgment of what he owed.

That detail is not decoration. A certificate written by the creditor is an accusation. A certificate written by the debtor is a confession. And the reason the list a person carries is so heavy is precisely that they wrote it themselves and know every entry is accurate.

Paul chooses the word that means: you agree with this document. And then he says what was done to it anyway.

You are holding something Scripture already named, and it named it as a document you agreed with. Colossians 2:14 uses the word for a debtor's own certificate, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:15, that a person comes to Him as a child rather than as a debtor presenting one.

Three verbs and every one is complete

Now the verbs, and they escalate.

Blotting out. The first is about the writing. Ancient ink sat on the surface of papyrus rather than soaking in, and a wet sponge took it off and left the sheet blank and reusable. The word means erased rather than annotated.

Took it out of the way. The second is about the document's position. It was standing between two parties, and it was removed from between them. Even a blank sheet in the middle of a room is a reminder; this one is taken out.

Nailing it to his cross. The third is about its final location, and it is public. Roman practice was to fix the charge above a crucified man, and here it is the charge itself being fixed there and executed with Him.

Three complete actions, all past tense, all with God as the subject, and not one of them is a promise about the future.

You are looking at three finished verbs, and none of them is waiting on you. Colossians 2:14 stacks blotting out and taking out of the way and nailing, and it is His Spirit, Ephesians 1:13, by whom a believer is sealed rather than kept under an outstanding certificate.

What Isaiah says God does with the memory

The obvious question is why the thing is still legible, and the answer involves who is doing the remembering.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. (Isaiah 43:25)

For mine own sake. Not because a person deserved it. Not on the strength of anything they produced. He gives His own reason, which is the only reason that cannot be undermined by a bad week.

And will not remember. Which does not mean God has misplaced information. It means He has undertaken not to bring it, in the way a person who has genuinely forgiven does not raise the thing.

So there are two memories in play. His, which has undertaken not to bring it, and the man's, which brings it constantly. The discrepancy is not evidence that the cancellation failed. It is evidence that a man's memory was not part of the arrangement.

You are dealing with a memory that was never the record. Isaiah 43:25 has God undertaking not to remember for His own sake, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person is assured of standing rather than by their own recall.

Micah gives the location

If the question is where the items went, Micah gives an answer that is deliberately absurd in its finality.

He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:19)

The depths of the sea. Not the shallows. Not a place with a marker on it. The one location in the ancient world from which nothing was ever retrieved.

And subdue, which is a fighting word. He is described as putting them down rather than only pardoning them, which matters to somebody whose nine items feel less like a legal problem and more like an occupying force.

I like this verse in particular because it is physical and a man can picture it, and the accusing memory is a picture problem more than an argument problem.

You are dealing with something cast where nothing is retrieved from. Micah 7:19 names the depths of the sea, and it is the Spirit of God, Romans 8:2, whose law of life is described as what made a person free.

The word He said from the cross was a receipt word

There is one more piece, and it is the word Jesus said when it was done.

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30)

The word behind it is finished was written across a certificate of debt when it was paid in full. It was a commercial term before it was a theological one, and everybody standing there would have known that use of it.

So the document in Colossians 2 and the word in John 19 are the same transaction described from two sides. The certificate is taken and nailed, and the word written across it is: paid.

That is the sentence to put beside the list at eleven at night. Not an argument about whether the items are accurate. They are accurate. A receipt does not dispute the amount; it says the amount was settled.

You have a receipt rather than an argument, and it does not dispute a single item. John 19:30 uses the word written across a settled account, and it is by the eternal Spirit, Hebrews 9:14 naming His Spirit, that the offering behind that word was made.