A Picture of the Gospel: My Experience in Traffic Court

I got a speeding ticket in November.  I admit that I was speeding, but not maliciously.  That isn't relevant in the story except the fact that I was guilty.

I wrote down the court date in my calendar as January 9th.  I wouldn't be able to make it, so I was going to send my payment on Monday, January 8th.  Today, I looked on my ticket to see what form of payment was accepted, and saw in horror the date the officer had written for my court date: January 5th, 2012. Noon.

I had missed my court date by 28 hours.  Frantically, I searched the ticket for what penalty I had just brought on myself: a $300 penalty or 30 days.  I immediately head to the bank, take out the amount the officer had reduced it to- and went to Municipal Court.

When I got to the counter to pay and explained my mistake, the worker behind the counter said that I now owed the original amount, not the reduced amount.  Not a huge deal, but not fun.  And they were adding on 2 more points to the ticket, so it would add 4 points to my license.  My heart sank.  I went back to the bank and got some more cash.

When I returned to the counter, the clerk commented that the computer was slow, and I joked that it was having mercy on me.  The computer finally fired up, and he took my ticket to put in my information.

"Josh Williams?  1753FS?"
"Josh Williams? That's me.  Do you need my license?"
"It says here that you paid yesterday.  You are free to go."

I stood there for a second, and then asked, "What do you mean?"
He repeated himself, "The debt has been paid.  You don't owe us anything."

This happened 20 minutes ago, and I am still blown away.  To whoever paid this for me: thank you.  You went above and beyond any relationship we have, and I owe you so much.

But on my way home, I started thinking- this is the Gospel.  We all have a debt that we planned on paying ourselves.  We planned on taking care of it, eventually.  Christ paid our penalty, so that we would be free men and women.
And when we come before Him to receive Him as our Savior, our Lord, we realize the debt he paid, and the penalty we would have received.

This is the Gospel- that our debt that we sinful humans could not pay, was paid for by a sinless God, that we might live and abide in Him.