Day 8: The Paid Gift

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Romans 6:23

From a young age, my parents encouraged me to earn money for the things I wanted. Oftentimes they would buy the stuff I liked, but there were numerous times I would do chores, work at my dads shop, or even do magic (or play guitar) for money. After I got the amount of money I needed for the particular thing I wanted, I wouldn’t have to worry about making any more money again until something else came out that I wanted to buy. As wholesome as this sounds, there was a debt that was accumulating behind the scenes that I did not know of or worry about.

See the wages that I made were not so I can pay off a debt, but so that I can buy into something I had interest in. Often times I would turn around and use that money to buy something so I could expand my capabilities to make MORE money but money would not help me with the debt that was about to be thrown into my face. Day in and day out, money was being made, things were being purchased, and I felt content with how my life had been expanding. I had no steady flow of income, sure, but I was in school and I was living with my parents who provided for me. But the debt that I was accumulating was not one that I was warned about or that my parents even knew about. I was spiritually in debt.

I had been paying my way through this life with sin. The price of sin is surprisingly immeasurable and when you look at your spiritual bank account you are negative for eternity. There really is no way to pay it off. The only choice I had was to work until I died and I still wouldn’t be close enough because of how much debt I had put myself in my entire life. This is where the best gift of all comes in. The wages for my sin is death, that’s the ultimate price. There’s no higher price to be paid than the loss of life. But I say this and now understand the grace that is bestowed upon us when we see Christ.

He has paid His own life for ours. He lived a perfectly sinless life, which means He had no sin debt to pay. And it’s because He had no debt, He is the only one that can pay for our debt, for His account is full. This is also not to mention that He is God, owner of the spiritual bank account in which we have run dry. When Christ pardons your debt, you are debt free forever. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Hebrews 1:3 says, “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;” 1 Peter 2:24 says, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” Do you get the picture?

Jesus died for you. He paid a debt He did not owe and you owed a debt you could not pay. It’s the perfect marriage of grace bestowed to us. He paid your fine and all you have to do is accept it. He died for the sins of the WHOLE world, the payment sits there for you to take, it even nudges you to take it, and all you have to do is humble yourself enough to realize how much trouble you are in, and take the payment as your own. What perfect joy and comfort it is to be debt free. “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” 1 John 2:1-2