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The Bottom Line

It’s called different things in different contexts, but ultimately everybody wants to get to the bottom line. In investment terms, the bottom line refers to your net worth. While amounts may vary widely, what really matters is whether the bottom line indicates that you have more assets than liabilities or vice versa.

The way the banking system works, those whose assets exceed their liabilities by the greatest amount have access to the most credit. This, of course, has a levelling effect, because as soon as they take advantage of this, their bottom line tilts to the liability end of the range and their access to credit goes down. I suppose the most advantageous position to be in is to have ample assets, which gives you access to lots of credit and all that can do for you, but not using it, thus avoiding the plunge into liability.

When we move into the spiritual realm, we discover some things which are rather startling. First of all, we learn that in spite of our own assessment, God sees everyone with a serious moral liability. Even those who evaluated themselves and rated themselves as virtuous and worthy of God’s positive attention find that their calculation is flawed. In fact, God drops their rating because of pride and they find themselves in a disturbingly low deficit position.

Strangely, many who find themselves there, are so sure that they are right that they fail to take advantage of the mercy of God in averting the disturbing consequences which attend a negative spiritual bottom line. In case you’ve missed just what this is, you need to know we’re talking about eternal separation from God - unending death.

At the same time, those who agree with God’s assessment of their net spiritual worth find themselves with an offer which is out of this world. God allows them to apply their spiritual debt to the account of His Son and then, on top of that, to continue making withdrawals of righteousness without limit.

This combines two biblical concepts, mercy - which wipes out the negative impact of our sin - and grace - which makes the blessings of God available to us freely. Hebrews 4:16 challenges us to “go boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

When it comes to the spiritual bottom line, there’s a world of difference between getting what you deserve and enjoying what God offers through His mercy and grace.

Ron Hughes
© December 2008