Bills of Sin

It took a while for all of the bills for Roscoe's medical care to roll in, but I think that by now we've finally received most of them. Thankfully, it looks like none of them will need to be paid. To my memory, we haven't even been asked to pay our deductible. We're still missing the bill from Kaiser for April - June 2014, but ignoring that we had a total of a little over $2 million for his care through mid-April 2014 (as you can see here).

Since then we've received many bills from UCSF for his care for June - July 2014. In this stack of UCSF bills, here are some of the larger amounts:

Almost a million:

Another million:

A fancy house:

A moderate house:

And then his midnight helicopter ride ...

These bills from June and July 2014 at UCSF totalled to another $2,697,477. Though we don't have the Kaiser bill for Roscoe's NICU stay from mid-April to June 2014, we can safely assume it would have exceeded $300,000 (since previously his February to mid-April stay was over $600,000). This means his total hospital bills would have exceeded $5 million.

What astounds me is how much debt we'd have incurred, with nothing to show for it except our memories. I can't describe how strongly this relates to forgiveness in my mind. As I thumbed through the pages of bills, I'd see amounts of a few hundred dollars, followed by a few thousand. Those amounts were insignificant compared to the hundreds of thousands on the bills shown above, yet they still would have taken sizable chunks out of our savings.

A bill is a record of something that occurred, along with the price you need to pay for that occurrence. This is true whether it's phone service, auto repair, or medical care. As I flipped past each bill, I thought to myself that this is how my sins must look. I have some big ones and also some that are less significant by comparison. It made me wonder if, once I reach heaven, I will be asked to thumb through the pages and volumes of sin "bills" that I've accumulated. How would something like that feel?

I recognized several doctors' names on Roscoe's bills, which means I could correlate the amount being billed with the day when it occurred. In the same way, I imagine that when looking at the bills of my sin, I would be able to remember the exact time and place where it occurred. I'd remember what situation I got myself into, how I responded in a way that I shouldn't, and perhaps what I did to cover it up. Despite the fact that it would be a distant memory, the bill would still remain. What would it feel like to hold a record of that debt in my hands?

This reminds me of the parable of the two debtors, recorded in Luke 7:41-43:

"Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

The total of your sin is always increasing. Each time we sin, it adds another bill to our pile with no savings from which to repay that debt. The only option we have is forgiveness. The only way we can be forgiven is by joining ourselves to Christ (Romans 6:3-7). While we remain in Christ, we remain free and forgiven.

If you are like me, this thought makes you hold tighter to Jesus and the forgiveness he carries. My experience with my own son has taught me to appreciate the Son of God: the man who died with no debt to pay the debt that we incurred.