Elvina Hall sat in her usual seat in the choir of Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore. It was 1865, at the end of the four-year Civil War in which more than a million Americans had died or been wounded, and she was thirty-three years old. She listened as her pastor thanked God for the great salvation He made available through Christ. She began to think about what Jesus had done for her and started writing on the flyleaf of a hymnal.
Later her words were combined with a melody written by the church organist. And the hymn “Jesus Paid It All” was created.
Hall wrote about how much she depended on Jesus. She had realized that she had little strength on her own. She was a “child of weakness.” But in Jesus, she would find her all in all. “Nothing good” was in her, but Jesus provided everything she needed.
The message was simple: “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.” That message is true today – if it were possible, it would be even more true today! The world is full of wrongs. If we look at ourselves, we see that we are full of wrongs as well. There is immensely good news in that simple phrase -- Jesus paid the price for our sins. It’s through Him, and not by any act of our own that we are forgiven. We are free because He died to free us!
It’s an incredible joy and consolation to remember that no matter what we’ve done, Jesus paid the price.
"In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace." – Ephesians 1:7 NIV
Jesus already paid all your debts.
It's an old promise that we've heard repeated for ages, but the power of it never gets old.
He paid for your freedom from guilt, worries, and fears. Confessing your sins to Him carries a guarantee that you will receive His forgiveness. What an incredible promise it is -- cast your cares on Him and trust Him, and He will wash you white as snow.
And when you sin, don’t pretend you didn’t, don’t panic, and don’t hide. Run to Jesus and receive mercy in your time of need, the kind of mercy He paid for you to have.
Dr. Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies
Thank you for sharing this. It was a blessing to me, what I needed today.