I'm Here For My Paycheck, Please!

If you have a job, most generally, you receive a paycheck for that job. Your employer says you do this and if you do, then I will do that. Most Americans get up in the morning and head off to the workplace for a wage. We give something to an employer and in return, he gives us a wage for that work. Simple process.

Well there are also "wages" in the Bible. Look in your Bible at Romans 6:23a and you will see what I mean. This verse says, "For the wages of sin is death," I don't know, does that sound reasonable? Based on the above illustration I think perhaps so. God made a deal with mankind and even gave plenty of warnings about this deal and what the "deal breakers" might be. For instance, in Romans 3:23 the Bible tells us that "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Upon further evaluation we determine that:

• Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4)
• Sin is unbelief; it calls God a liar (1 John 5:10)
• Sin is active rebellion again God (1 Samuel 15:23)
• Sin is also passive rebellion against God (Isaiah 1:2)
• And all unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17)

God said to us that "All have sinned" and the wages for that sin is death (spiritual separation from God for all eternity). Boy it would be nice if our government had those kinds of "checks and balances" (sorry for the political blurb), watching too much news.

However, and thank the Lord, the verse does not end there. It goes on and says in the second part of Romans 6:23 "...but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." So there IS a very accommodating wage involved. Even though because of our sin, our wage, our paycheck should have been eternal death, separated from God, He chose to give us a "free gift" of life with His Son Jesus Christ.

Yes, sin in our lives is all of the things listed above, but Jesus still insisted on giving us a paycheck or more like a gift (because if the wage was earned, we would be in big trouble). There are lots of places in the Bible that tell about how sin came into the world and what we should do with it in order to receive this "free gift" but I am especially fond of The 4 Spiritual Laws. On the left sidebar of this blog is a link that will take you straight to these laws to study for yourself. If you are not familiar with them, pay close attention and if you have any questions, I certainly have time to work up the answers.

There is one other passage of scripture that kind of goes along with this idea as a child of God and it is 1 Corinthians 10:13 saying, "No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it." And there's that word "provide" again. Do you remember a few days ago when I talked about Abraham heading off to sacrifice his only son and God "provided" for Abraham, the sacrifice.

Dave