Daily Devotion

The Gift

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23

One of the main reasons I have decided to go to seminary is to get my own understanding. I love reading the Bible, the more I learn about God, the more I want to share with others. Yesterday before my surgery as I was reading it, I was reading John 9, about the man blind from birth and Jesus made the paste of mud and gave him sight. In John 9:30 the man said this to the corrupt Pharisees: "The man answered, "This is a very strange thing. You don't know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We all know that God does not listen to sinners, but he listens to anyone who worships and obeys him. 32 Nobody has ever heard of anyone giving sight to a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." (NCV) If you don't know who Christ is, where comes from, how can you accept the gift of eternal life from God, when it comes through Christ!

I explained in brief the meaning of the first part of this scripture. In plain english, for the wages--for the earnings, the pay--of sin is death. Wages are something you earn for working. The pay you earn for sin is death, the earnings of sin is death. Here, sin is an act; it is a behavior; it is also a state of mind. When you are born, as offspring of Adam and Eve, we are born into sin--into the mind state of sinfulness, following after our flesh. When you are born again, you are born of God, into the mind state of sinlessness, following after the leading of the Holy Spirit. 1 John 3:9 says "No one who has been born from God practices sin, because God's seed abides in him. Indeed, he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born from God." 1 Peter 1:23 says "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and stays for ever."

Immediately after that the scripture continues to say "but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Obviously but comes as a direct contradiction of the words that preceded it. So through God's sacrifice of Himself the payment we would have received for our sins has been voided. Like a canceled check it means nothing. Through our belief, our faith like the blind man believing that Christ was from God, the punishment for our sins have been canceled. Because we are all children of God, we can willingly accept the gift.