Romans 6:23 is the third memory verse in our "Roman Road" memory verses, after Romans 3:23 and 5:8. I encourage you to commit these to memory, and help your kids learn them also. There are only 2 more after these, and all 5 together are a good summary of Romans and the gospel message.
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." This verse sets out a clear choice between two lives, or two ways of living. We can live a "wages" life or a "gift" life.
Adults are more familiar with the "wages" lifestyle. Work, get paid. But it doesn't always work out that way. I took a position at a church once, knowing that 6 months of my salary had been paid by a single donation of stock from a generous donor. About a week into the job, the phone rang at the church and I happened to be the one to answer it. There was a very nervous stock broker on the other end of the phone, saying that he had made a huge mistake on his client's behalf and moved a decimal point one space to the right. He had transferred ten times the intended amount of stock to the church, and he needed to fix it. Little did he know that his "mistake" was supposed to be my salary. I just sat there listening to this man talk, with a sick feeling in my stomach. The story had a good ending, at least for me--the donor told the church to keep the stock and fired his broker! But it was a scary few days. Wages are a promise of something in the future. How often do people work and not get the wages they were promised? Especially in today's economic climate, it's a regular occurrence.
Sin--life apart from God--promises a wage it never delivers. Eugene Peterson translates it this way in the Message: "Work hard for sin your whole life, and your pension is death." You pursue a selfish dream, and then at the end when it's too late, you find out there is no payoff. Sin uses you and throws you in a ditch. Spiritually speaking, that is "wage" living.
"Gift" living is a completely different arrangement. For starters, you don't have to wait for it. Eternal life is not just life after death, it is full life right now. It is the life of a child rather than an adult. Several scriptures talk about the blessings of this life as "deposits" that guarantee and hint at our life with God in the hereafter. "Gift" living is also not related to our performance. Gift living is want to rather than have to. We serve God because we love him and want to please him, not because a wage or punishment is hanging over us. It is life with a different motive.
How do you view life? Is it a gift or a job? Are you still expecting life outside of God to pay off? Are you looking for wages from God or receiving gifts?
No comments:
Post a Comment