Scripture of the Day: Romans 6:23

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Regarding the above scripture, Matthew Henry wrote:

Death is as due to a sinner when he hath sinned as wages are to a servant when he hath done his work. 

As an unabashed capitalist, this resonates with me.  I expect to be paid for any services I render, just as I expect to pay for any services/goods I wish to take for myself. It's a fundamental concept that I understand and approve of.  I can understand, intimately, that when I sin, the price that I must pay is death.

I also understand that this is true of all sins, no matter how "little" popular culture might construe said sin to be. Sin after all is sin, and all sins are rooted in either selfishness or a rebellion against God, and one must always remember that all sins are the same in God's eyes.

But the second part of the equation which the above verse represents provides us hope.  While we must pay the inevitable price which sin exacts, God has a gift waiting for us: eternal life.

The thing is that since we have all sinned, we have all earned the wage of death.  There is no way that we could ever earn the gift God is willing to give us. We could not earn it, nor do we deserve it. It is only by grace that God offers it to us.