Earned and Given

Isn't it amazing how many times you can read a verse of Scripture and still miss some important truth that lies in plain sight within it?

Romans 6:23 is probably one of the best known, and most memorized, verses in the Bible, but when I read it this morning I had an "aha" moment.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The choice of words here is important.

I earned, by my own efforts, the consequences of my sin. But the forgiveness of that sin was a gift.

I get what I deserve, what I worked for, in the former; I am an undeserving recipient of the latter.

I did the first; Christ did the last.

He fixed what I broke.

The choice of words is deliberate. The Lord could have simply said: "The result of sin is death" but he really wanted to drive home the idea of personal responsibility and the enormity of the grace he was offering.

And I, for one, am happy to have dropped off the payroll of the first, and joined the family of the second.