The One Outstanding Charge

You have made your peace with almost everything.

That is worth saying, because it took years. You are not a man at war with himself generally. You have come to terms with your temper, more or less. You have forgiven your father. You have accepted a career that went sideways and a house that is smaller than the one you imagined, and you have done all of that honestly rather than by pretending.

And there is one item left. One. And it is this one.

It sits in you not as a wound but as a charge. Outstanding. Unsettled. The last thing on a docket that is otherwise clear, and its being the last thing makes it worse rather than better, because you cannot tell yourself you are a mess. You are not a mess. You are a man who has dealt with everything except one thing, and the one thing therefore looks like a choice.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with this. It is the item you have gone at hardest and longest, precisely because it is the last one, and you have gotten up after every attempt at it. The reason it is still outstanding is not that you left it alone.

So this page is not going to give you a better method for settling it, and it is not going to name a day.

I want to show you a verse about a document being wiped out, and who did the wiping.

Why the last item is the hardest

Consider why this one has been so much harder than the temper or the father or the career.

Those were resolved by understanding. You worked out where the temper came from. You understood something about your father that let the resentment go. Understanding was the instrument, and it worked, and there is every reason to expect it to work again.

It does not work on this. You already understand it completely. You could give a lecture on it. And understanding has not moved it once, which leaves you with a tool that has succeeded at everything else and fails at this, and the natural conclusion is that the problem must be your will.

You have run out of tool rather than out of will, and no failure of understanding has ever once been a failure of character. Colossians 2:14 says He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a document being destroyed feel like something that happened rather than something described.

And notice what treating it as a charge does. A charge has to be answered by the accused. So the whole matter has stayed on your desk for decades, awaiting a response from you, and every year it goes unanswered it accumulates something like interest.

You have been holding a charge that requires an answer from you, and no matter of yours has ever once been left on your desk by God. The written word says the handwriting was blotted out and nailed to His cross, which is somebody else taking the document off the desk, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an old removal current.

He blotted out the handwriting

Paul writes it in the most physical language he has.

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)

Four movements in one verse. Blotted out. Took it out of the way. Nailed it. To his cross.

That is not a matter being dismissed on a technicality. That is a document destroyed, removed, and then publicly displayed as destroyed, which is what nailing something up meant.

You are looking at a document that was destroyed in public, and no charge against you has ever once survived that cross. Colossians 2 has the handwriting blotted out and taken out of the way, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a first-century public notice something a man can rely on in his own kitchen.

And read the phrase that was against us. Paul does not pretend the document said nice things. It was against us and contrary to us. He grants the content entirely and then reports that it is gone.

You have a charge whose content was never in dispute, and it has never once been the content that determined whether it stood. The Spirit of God is the one who separates the truth of an accusation from its standing, and the written word says it was blotted out and nailed to His cross.

The docket is clear

Now the part I came to say.

Your docket is clear. Not almost clear. Clear. The item carried all these years as the last outstanding charge is not outstanding, and it has not been for a very long time, and the only place it is still listed is on a copy kept in your own handwriting.

That is worth being precise about, because you are a precise man. There are two documents. There is the one in your handwriting, which lists one item and is accurate as a description of your history. And there is the one that determines your standing, which was destroyed.

You have been reading a copy rather than the record, and no copy of yours has ever once had legal effect. The written word says the handwriting was taken out of the way, which is God removing the operative document, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man which of two papers he is holding.

And here is what makes that solid rather than comforting. It does not depend on the item being resolved. The blotting out happened at a moment in history and it did not wait for a report from you on any subject.

You are clear without having settled it, and the clearing has never once been contingent on your progress. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a finished thing feel finished to a man who has been waiting to finish it himself, and Colossians 2:14 is the written word underneath it, where the handwriting is blotted out, taken away, and nailed up as gone.