Latest / The Daily Word / May 25 – The Gift You Could Never Earn
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: It's May 25th and we are in one of my most favorite passages of Scripture today. Continuing our journey through Romans. We're in Romans chapter 6 today. And wow, what an incredible passage. I hope you've taken time to read the entire chapter. But if you haven't, be sure either pause this podcast and do it right now or make sure you take time to read the short, it's only 23 verses, but You could spend half the day, I think, just meditating, chewing on it. ⁓ The whole concept of this passage, by the way, this is Pastor Jenny, if you haven't figured that out, I'm sure you did. ⁓ But ⁓ this whole chapter is entitled, Dead to Sin, Alive to God, ⁓ really painting a glorious picture for us of what our lives look like once we are ⁓ Baptized what Jesus's death and resurrection did for us gives us a really good visual picture of our new lives in Christ But I want to read verse 23 to you and then I'm gonna kind of give an overview of the chapter of as a whole because there's just so many things to it but verse 23 when I first caught a hold of this and Really unpacked some things from it It was just revolutionary for me and my understanding of the gospel as a whole. And so I, I hope it is encouraging for you today. Paul writes this and I'm sure you've heard it, but again, it spoke to me on a new level many, many years ago. It says this chapter six, verse 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ. Jesus our Lord. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." I'm sure you'd heard that verse many, many times. ⁓ Continue to hear that verse. ⁓ Very well-known verse. But when I sat down and meditated on that verse, I was looking at it and I noticed the wages. What are wages? What do we have to do to get a wage? We have to work. But the gift of God, what do we do for a gift? Generally nothing. A gift is something that is given to us. You know, we have our birthday, we have Christmas. Sometimes it's just nothing at all. Maybe you open your door or come into work and there's just a little gift sitting for you on your desk. So when we read this verse and we think of it, The wages of sin is death. It's so strange to me when we think about that language, to think that we actually have to work to die, but we can accept this gift from God for eternal life. If you just sit in that, think on that for a minute, how upside down that is, even from every other religion. There's no other religion out there that is going to convince you or tell you such a thing. Every other religion is going to be working on a premise of morality or good works or there's something you have to do in order to be in alignment with whether you're aligning yourself for what is to come or in order to be reincarnated or to reach the highest level of ascent for here where you are now or to reach that ⁓ point of peace. here and now, but the Bible is clear, you have to work right now. In all any work you do, that work in and of your own effort only leads to death. But the gift of God is eternal life through not our own work, but through Christ Jesus. When we submit and surrender our lives to Christ, it is a gift, we receive the gift. of eternal life. Wow. It's so profound. And I want to start with that because that is what the chapter ends with, but the entire chapter itself. Again, what did I say? The name of it is, it's called Dead to Sin, Alive to God. This entire chapter is jam-packed about how we are no longer slaves to sin, but we are the language Paul uses for their sake of understanding. is that instead we're slaves to righteousness because there's only really two options in this life. We have to serve someone. There is a master, so to speak. We can either live in sin or we can choose to be a slave of righteousness and present our members, our body, to holiness. And so, when we do that, verse 22 says, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, You have your fruit to holiness and the end is everlasting life. So all of the chapter, there's so many various verses that are just encouraging us. Don't present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being a life from the dead. Your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the law, but you're under grace. And of course it says, well, does that mean we should just, we have license to sin because we're not under the law, but we're under grace? Paul says absolutely not in verse 15. That's not at all how it works. And so it's why I love this chapter because I think people have twisted it and gotten so confused on what true freedom in Christ means and what it means to really live under grace. There's been such confusion with the law. versus grace and what does that really mean? And any talk, I think, of righteousness means, whoa, you're talking too much to the law. That's not what Paul said. Paul didn't mince words at all. He seems to say that there is a difference between the law and righteousness, but that there is no sacrifice of living righteously. That to live righteously, to present your body as righteous in stepping into holiness, is exactly who God's called us to be. And it's not in and of our own strength. We can actually do that now because our bodies have completely died to sin, because our bodies were completely buried and dead and we have been raised to new life. The Bible says we are literally made new creations in Christ. The old has been made new. Like we are no longer who we were. We are completely brand new. So no longer does sin have dominion over us, but there is a co-laboring, there is us working together, there is a presentation, so to speak, we have to continue to work with God. There is still a daily choice of following God that we get to make in choosing to say, am I gonna serve this master? Am I gonna present my body under righteousness? So all that to say, I don't have nearly enough time to keep unpacking this chapter and talking it all through, but that's a little preview for you. Again, if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, please take time today to dig into it because it is a phenomenal chapter. I encourage you to get a study Bible, get online, so many study resources out there. But if you walk away with anything today, walk away with verse 23 for the wages of sin is death. It's work. It's work to send y'all. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Jesus is a gift. He has given us the gift of eternal life, but it is something we have to receive. We receive it and we use that gift. Don't put that gift in a closet and walk away from it. Accept that gift. Use that gift. Use the gift that Jesus has given you today. Well, Lord, we come before you and we thank you for the gift of Jesus. Thank you for the gift of eternal life. Lord, I pray as we go into our day today ⁓ that we would lay aside the natural tendency we have to honestly, sometimes we want to work. We want to do things in and of our own efforts. And when we're tempted to do that, Holy Spirit, would you quicken us and show us that that we are trying to do things on our own, that we're trying to be our own Lord. ⁓ And yes, we may have good intentions, ⁓ but God, anything we're trying to do in and of our own effort and not relying on you, that's not your way. Your way, Lord, ⁓ is what Proverbs 3, 5 through 6 tells us, to trust in the Lord with all of our heart, to lean not on our own understanding. but to trust in you and you will make our path straight. So God, as we learn to trust in you, I thank you that we can ⁓ allow the gift of salvation, the gift of Jesus to lead and guide our path. We thank you for eternal life ⁓ and that we don't have to work so hard for a pathway that leads to destruction. So we speak life ⁓ over every listener today. We speak life. ⁓ over our children, over our co-workers, over our communities. Thank you for your goodness and your faithfulness. In Jesus' amen.