This is our third week talking about thankfulness, and today, I want to get to the core of our faith—the foundation of why we have such a great reason to be thankful.
The verse for this week is Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Let’s start from the beginning. Paul tells us in this verse that the wages of sin is death. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all messed up. We’ve all fallen short. And so, if the wages of this sin is death, we all deserve to die for the things we’ve done wrong.
Maybe this isn’t something we like to think about—that we deserve death. I mean, who wants to think of themselves as broken to the point where death is the logical wage for their choices? But from the start of the Old Testament, scripture is clear that there is a punishment for our actions. There is a wage for our sins. And that’s death.
BUT.
“But” is the magical word here, because Paul doesn’t just drop the news that the wages of sin and death, and then leave us to our own misery of our impending demise. There is a pivot here, a beautiful revelation that will serve as a stark contrast to the wages of sin.
“For the wages of sin is death, BUT the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Note the use of the word gift. This eternal life we are offered in Jesus isn’t something we can earn on our own. It’s not something for us to work towards. It’s not like we have to complete some celestial checklist to receive our reward.
Eternal life in Jesus is a gift. It’s freely offered. It’s held out to us now, at this very moment. All we have to do is choose to accept the gift of life in Jesus.
So at the foundation of our faith, we have this beautiful, perfect gift. We have our perfect God sacrificing His beloved Son so that we don’t have to pay the wages of our own sin. Jesus has covered that for us. He has forgiven all those times we’ve messed up in the past.
God has gifted us free forgiveness and free life.
That’s the best gift of all. And that is, without a doubt, something to be thankful for.
Dear God, thank you. Thank you for sending Jesus to pay the price for our sins so we didn’t have to. Thank you for giving life and forgiveness to us as a free gift—not something we have to work toward, but something we can simply ask for in order to receive. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the best gift of all. Amen.
And please, friend… never forget you are onederfully created in Christ Jesus, who offers this gift to you.
Love,
Becca
