When He shouted “tetelesti” – “Paid in full” from the cross, your sins and mine were paid for, in full. In the Court of the Universe that includes your heart
Colossians 2 Verse 14
“He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
Today we would call this written code with its regulations the list of charges filed with the court; a bill of indictment for crimes we’d been accused of.
In the Lord’s day, following our conviction this list would have been nailed to the door of our prison cell, along with the sentence we’d received. As we served our time, paying our “debt to society” as they called it, the intervals would be marked off until at last we had served our full sentence. At that time we would be handed the list, the Greek word for the phrase “paid in full” having been written across it as proof we had fulfilled the terms of our sentence and as protection from double jeopardy, in case we were ever charged again. (The Greek word they used for paid in full is “tetelesti”.)
If we had been convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death, our crimes would have been inscribed on a placard and affixed above our head to the cross on which we hung, as a deterrent to all who passed by and witnessed our agony. Crosses were mounted along side major thoroughfares for maximum public exposure.
As the Lord hung on His cross, the placard above His head read “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” identifying His crime as treason for all those in the temporal realm to see. But in the spiritual realm a different sign was being displayed. It listed all the crimes against God (sins) that ever had been or ever would be committed from the first sin of Adam to the last sin of the last man. Beside each sin were the names of the people who had or would commit them. It is this sign Paul describes as being nailed to the cross in Colossians 2:14.
