Essential Elements: Forging Godly MenSample

Deathly Payout

Sin has a catastrophic impact on all mankind. This inclination has destroyed empires, broken relationships, and darkened our souls. Romans 5:12 tells us: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” This verse explains that the very first wrongful thought, desire, and action that man committed, way back in the Garden, created a wake of destruction that continues to devastate us today.

We also discover that sin has wages: “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). In daily life, wages are the deserved payment for our labor. In this verse, our sin is likened to a form of labor, and the wage it pays out is death. This is not only a physical death but also a spiritual death—a separation from God, the source of life and goodness. The transaction makes sin the most deceptive wage you have ever worked for. It promises pleasure but pays out death.

Because the wages for our sins were accruing God’s wrath, something had to be done: “[Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). God’s wrath had to be satisfied. The only payment God would accept was atonement by blood from a righteous and sinless man. There was only one of those in history. Jesus, the Son of Man, is the one who paid sin’s debt. His life’s wage was perfect. His gift was immense. He paid a debt that you and I could never afford.

Across the reaches of time, there echoes a final truth: We cannot save ourselves. The magnitude of sin’s wake and wages is too great. We need to be saved by a Savior of unparalleled resources, might, and grace.

Then enters Jesus. The Savior who saves, the one who paid our sin debt with his blood, shattering the chains of death and gifting us eternal life through his resurrected life.

The way to freedom, life, and eternity is both simple and profound: believe. It is too good to be true, but the Father is rich, and his Son paved and paid the way—because he loves you.

What areas in your life do you need to trust in the transformative power of Jesus’s sacrifice more fully?