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Wages and Gifts
Grace to you and
peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Death
is inevitable for all of us. That is the essence of what St. Paul is saying. Even when we know it is
coming, it surprises us when it comes. As much as we may try to prepare
ourselves for it, we are never really adequately prepared. That’s because death
is unnatural to us. We weren’t created to die. When God created Adam and placed
Him in the Garden of Eden, and then formed Eve from Adam’s rib, they were in a
state of perfection. They should have lived forever. They knew God as fully as
human beings can know Him. But they gave in to temptation, and they fell into
sin, wanting to be like God. They wanted to be the Creator rather than the
creature, but that could never be. And once they had fallen into sin, they
could not go back.
And
now, death is inevitable for all of us. Generations and centuries have changed
none of this. When we enter into that realm of sin and its outcome of death, we
are entering into something so profound that we human creatures just don’t have
the mental resources to deal with it. And we never really will because, as the
apostle says, “The wages of sin is death…” Wages are things we earn. None of
us wants to think we have earned death. We would much rather think that we have
done something useful with our lives that would earn an outcome other than
death. But that is never the case.
To
our great blessing, that is not all Paul has to say to us. For as true as it is
that the “wages of sin is death,” so it is equally true that “the
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The answer to
death as “the wages of sin” is a gift
that comes from God. That gift is life where there should be no life; life in the
midst of death itself. For God’s answer to our death, a death for which we have
no answer, no solution, is the death of another—the death of his own dear Son!
This same apostle Paul writes elsewhere, “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in
that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having
now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”
God
is about life; He always has been. And though sin will continue to result in
death, He doesn’t want that to be the final word written about any of us. He
wants to spare us from the wrath we deserve. That is why He poured it all out
on his Son. That is why, again, St.
Paul says of God, “He made [Christ], who knew no sin, to be
sin for us…” Everything that sin is and everything that sin does was
laid on Christ’s shoulders. And He bore them all to the death of the cross,
enduring the judgment and punishment of God the Father, for the sins of the
whole world; for yours, for mine, for Melba’s. And when, three days later, Christ
rose from death, it was to assure us that all He had done was not only true,
but sure and certain. Eternal life had been won, and now it was available to
all as a gift.
And
that is where our hope must rest. We have no answers for these things, but God
does. This world, try as it might, will never find a way to overcome death,
because death is the wages of sin. But God Himself has eternally overcome
death. He has done so through His Son, Jesus Christ. And He offers that to us
as a gift, not something we can earn, but something we can only receive,
through faith in Jesus Christ. If we would find comfort, we will find it there:
in the death and resurrection of Jesus. If we desire peace and rest for Heart,
mind, and soul, we will receive it from those hands that still show the marks
of the nails that will remind us of what that peace and rest cost Him, but
which He will now freely and lovingly give us. For, as St. Paul finally says, “The peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will keep your Heats and kinds through Christ
Jesus.” In the name of the Father and of the Son (†) and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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