Sometimes one sentence in Scripture feels like God pulling back the curtain on all of reality. In Romans 6:23, Paul reminds us that what we earn by our sin and what God freely gives in Christ could not be more opposite. One path is “wages” and the other is a “gift.” One leads to death; the other brings eternal life through Jesus. This verse stands like a crossroads sign over every day of our lives, including today.

The Paycheck None of Us Can Afford to Cash

You and I were born into a world where sin always pays out, and it always pays in the same currency: death. Sin doesn’t seem deadly at first; it often comes dressed in attractiveness and convenience. But Scripture is blunt: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). James writes that “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:15). Sin matures, and its payday eventually arrives—every time.

This death is not only physical but spiritual: separation from the God who is life itself. Deep down, we know something is wrong with us and with the world. The broken relationships, the guilt we can’t quite shake, the fear of standing before a holy God—these are all hints of that death. Left to ourselves, we are working hard for a paycheck that will destroy us. No amount of religious effort, good intentions, or comparison to “worse people” can change the fact that our sin earns judgment. That’s the terrible reality this verse refuses to soften.

The Gift You Could Never Deserve—But Can Truly Receive

Into that dark reality, God doesn’t offer a better wage plan; He offers a completely different economy: grace. Eternal life is not a bonus for good behavior; it is “the gift of God … in Christ Jesus.” Notice the word gift. Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). You cannot earn it; you can only receive it with empty hands of faith.

How can a holy God give life to people who deserve death? At the cross. “But God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus took the wages we earned so we could receive the life He deserves. This is why “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The Son was given, so the gift could be given. Have you stopped trying to pay your way and simply trusted Christ alone?

Living Like Someone Who’s Been Paid in Full

If eternal life is a gift, does that mean we just pray a quick prayer and then live however we like? Not if we’ve really received it. The same grace that saves us also transforms us. Paul says, “So you also must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). God’s gift doesn’t just change your future address; it changes your present identity. You are no longer a slave working for sin’s paycheck; you’re a child of God living from His generosity.

This new life has practical implications. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. It instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11–12). Today, that might mean confessing a hidden sin instead of hiding it, forgiving someone who hurt you, or choosing obedience in a place you’ve been making excuses. You’re not trying to earn life; you’re learning to live the life you’ve already been given in Christ, by the power of His Spirit.

Lord Jesus, thank You for taking the wages of my sin and giving me the gift of eternal life. Help me today to turn from sin and live as someone who belongs to You; show me one concrete step of obedience, and give me the courage to take it.

The question of numbers and their relation to success or failure in the work of the Lord is one that disturbs most Christians more than a little.

. . . There are Christians, for instance, who dismiss the whole matter as being beneath them.

. . .They prefer to sit around the Lord's Table in a select and tight little circle, admiring the deep things of God and, I very much fear, admiring themselves a wee bit also. This is a kind of Protestant monasticism without the cowl and the beads, for it seeks to preserve the faith of Christ from pollution by isolating it from the vulgar masses. Its motives may be commendable, but its methods are altogether unscriptural and its spirit completely out of mood with that of our Lord.

The other and opposite school is the most vocal and has by far the largest following in gospel circles today. Its philosophy, if it can be called a philosophy, is that "we must get the message out" regardless of how we go about it. The devotees of this doctrine appear to be more concerned with quantity than with quality. They seem burned up with desire to "bring the people in" even if they have not much to offer them after they are in. They take inexcusable liberties both with message and with method. The Scriptures are used rather than expounded and the Lordship of Christ almost completely ignored. Pressure is exerted to persuade the people (who, by the way, come to the meetings with something else in mind altogether) to accept Christ, with the understanding that they shall then have peace of mind and financial prosperity, not to mention high grades in school and a low score on the golf course.

The crowds-at-any-price mania has taken a firm grip on American Christianity and is the motivating power back of a shockingly high percentage of all religious activity. Men and churches compete for the attention of the paying multitudes who are brought in by means of any currently popular gadget or gimmick ostensibly to have their souls saved, but, if the truth were told, often for reasons not so praiseworthy as this.

All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby. - Hebrews 12:11

I HAVE already said that, even in the most wise and unselfish training by an earthly parent, there will mingle subjective elements, peculiarities of view and thought, and sometimes of passion and whim and other ingredients, which detract from the value of all such training. The guiding principle for each earthly parent can only be his conception of what is for the good of his child, even at the best; and oftentimes that is not purely the guide by which the parent’s discipline is directed. So the words (Hebrews 12:10) turn us away from all these incompletenesses, and tell us, "He for our profit" - with no sidelong look to anything else, and with an entirely wise knowledge of what is for our good, so that the result will be always and only for our good. This is the point of view from which every Christian man ought to look upon all that befalls him.

What follows? This, plainly:- there is no such thing as evil except the evil of sin. All that comes is food, of various sorts and various complexions, but all generically the same. The inundation comes up over the fields, and men are in despair. It goes down; and then, like the slime left from the Nile in flood, there is better soil for the cultivation of our fields. Storms keep sea and air from stagnating. All that men call evil, in the material world, has in it a soul of good. If it be that all my life is paternal discipline, and that God makes no mistakes, then I can embrace whatever comes to me, and be sure that in it I shall find that which will be for my good.

Ah! it is easy to say so when things go well; but, surely, when the night falls is the time for the stars to shine. The gracious word should shine upon some of us in to-day’s perplexities and pains and disappointments and sorrows - " He for our profit." That great thought does not in the least deny the fact that pain and sorrow and so-called evil are very real. There is no false stoicism in Christianity. The mission of our troubles would not be effected unless they did trouble us. The good that we get from a sorrow would not be realized unless we did sorrow. "Weep for yourselves," said the Master, "and for your children." It is right that we should writhe in pain. It is right that we should yield to the impressions that are made upon us by calamities; but it is not right that we should be so affected as that we should fail to discern in them this gracious thought - "for our profit." God sends us many love-tokens, and amongst them are the great and the little annoyances and pains that beset our lives; and on each of them, if we would look, we should see, written in His own hand, this inscription: " For your good." Do not let us have our eyes so full of tears that we cannot see, or our hearts so full of regrets that we cannot accept, that sweet, strong message. The guiding principle of all that befalls us is God’s unerring knowledge of what will do us good. That will not prevent, and is not meant to prevent, the arrow from wounding, but it does wipe the poison off the arrow, and diminish the pain, and should diminish the tears.