There is a word in the original Greek of John's Gospel that tends to get lost in translation. When Jesus cries out from the cross, "It is finished," the word he uses is *tetelestai*. In first-century commerce, this was the word written across a bill once it had been fully settled. Not abandoned. Not paused. Paid in full, with nothing left to collect. It is a strange thing to sit with on Good Friday, this idea that the most devastating moment in the Gospels is also, quietly, a moment of complete release. The cross was not the debt coming due. It was the debt being cancelled. Most of us, if we are honest, do not live as though the account is closed. We absorb from an early age that worth is something you demonstrate, not something you simply have. You work hard to earn your place, to impress, to climb. Love, acceptance, belonging: these feel like things you qualify for, not things you are given. It is almost impossible not to bring that same logic into our faith. We treat g...