Short and sweet. Paul pulls no punches, makes no
qualifications, offers no refuge. Sin=death. Think
about what he is saying here. If we think of life as an
economy, as if it were a job itself, then we can see
quite quickly that everything we do has some sort of
payoff, a wage. When I sleep at night, the wage is
energy in the morning. When I watch baseball, the wage
is escape. When I worship God, the wage is joy. You
see the relationship; nothing you do is value neutral in
your life. Nothing. Paul, recognizing this, points out
a simple truth. That the wages of sin, the value of it
in our lives, is eventually death. He pulls back the
curtain on our darksides.
All of us do things we should not do. Some of these
things are more significant than others, but nonetheless
we all have them. And they all pay off for us in some
way, or we think we do. But lost amidst our payments
for sin is the greater truth, if we persist in our sins,
accept them as ours and make no efforts to change the
worst parts of ourselves, then the eventual outcome is
death. Not merely the death which leads to a funeral,
but worse, the death of relationships, the death of our
self respect, the death of our relationship with God.
These things have lives, just as we have lives, and when
we allow sin to take root in our lives, we put these
things at risk. And Paul reminds us of that which we do
not want to hear...sin leads to death. When we sin,
things die.
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Prayer: Holy God, please help me to see clearly the areas
of my life in need of renewal and salvation. Help me to see my
failures and my sin, that through my faith in you, I might be set
free from sin, and made alive to what is good. I pray in Jesus'
name. Amen.
[Phillip Blackburn, Fist Presbyterian Church] |
