A friend of a friend--let's call him "Joe"--finally paid off his car, and he celebrated by getting it a $1700 paint job. The morning after it was finished, Joe was horrified to find scratches resembling a child's handwriting all over the passenger side of his car. He knew this would involve a lot of money and hassles. Joe went in to the house to get his two year old daughter "Katy", and after showing her the damage and much loud complaining to her, she said, "I sorry, I no do again." Poor Joe tried to come up with a way to explain to her just how much she had cost him, but she still didn't fully understand. He obviously couldn't force her to pay for it, so he did, while making sure that Katy would write her messages elsewhere.
Do you wonder why Jesus had to suffer and die for our forgiveness?
This Bible passage tells us that when God saw that every mortal who ever lived had done very costly damage to the moral fiber of the universe, he knew that it had to be paid for (because he is holy), and since there is no way we could pay for it, Jesus paid for us (because he is merciful) by suffering for us on the cross. Unfortunately, most people either don't know that they have damaged "the car", or they try to fix it in ways that only do more damage, or they call the damage "art".
