"The wages of God are eternal life but the free gift of sin is death"
Of course you know this is not what Romans 6:23 actually says, but I have seen it subverted this way many times.
One local street preacher used to appear in our inner city public speaking forum with a booklet. "What do you have to do to be saved?" he asked.
He opened the booklet and it had blank pages.
To be damned you need do nothing.
To those who suggest this is a straw man, well this preacher was a legalist. He was serious about his religion and was a bully who regularly insulted his hearers ("I am here to speak to morons," he used to say). To be so loveless and serious about religion is the very essence of legalism, and the upshot of this is that what came out of such preaching to be saved one must keep all the commandments of God.
And I certainly believed this. And time and time again I have seen Christians imposing the Law on people, including other Christians, showing they do not believe in the free gift of God.
They call this obedience to Christ yet, as no one keeps the Law and as our efforts therefore do not constitute obedience of the Law it is no such thing. Indeed the letter to the Galatians spells out what error this is
But believing this, as so many of us actually do in our heart of hearts, for all our fervent declarations of faith based righteousness, we hold that the wages of God are eternal life.
Thus the scripture is subverted.
There is a second subversion here.
"The wages of sin are death."
Period.
I did this. I never ended the sentence, forgetting that the free gift of God is eternal life and that this eternal life is not just conversion, but the whole thing, including discipleship, as much a gift of grace as anything else lest we fall away into the Law trying to pay for it. This gift, the whole of eternal life is delivered in personal relationship with the Hoy Spirit, without Whom there is only impossible law and despair to any sensitive (so many are not) to this. But instead I thought, emotionally, of course that as the wages of sin were death and with no free gift as in sight, I had to stop sinning. And as Romans 8 says, this is outright impossible
Oh, I could quote the entire passage, but what I focused on was not a matter of my forced determination, and being carnal minded I missed the second part of this dictum and it took the Spirit Himself to show this to me just recently
As with just about everything what we truly believed is shown by our spontaneous living, our careless words, by our lives.
If we are carnal of fruit we are carnal of mind and all of us subvert the scriptures time and time again.
It will take gracious conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit to reveal to u what our deceitful hearts have wrought, as it will take his persuasion, as loving Counsellor, to lead us to repent of it
The relationship is the thing.
Always
Of course you know this is not what Romans 6:23 actually says, but I have seen it subverted this way many times.
One local street preacher used to appear in our inner city public speaking forum with a booklet. "What do you have to do to be saved?" he asked.
He opened the booklet and it had blank pages.
To be damned you need do nothing.
To those who suggest this is a straw man, well this preacher was a legalist. He was serious about his religion and was a bully who regularly insulted his hearers ("I am here to speak to morons," he used to say). To be so loveless and serious about religion is the very essence of legalism, and the upshot of this is that what came out of such preaching to be saved one must keep all the commandments of God.
And I certainly believed this. And time and time again I have seen Christians imposing the Law on people, including other Christians, showing they do not believe in the free gift of God.
They call this obedience to Christ yet, as no one keeps the Law and as our efforts therefore do not constitute obedience of the Law it is no such thing. Indeed the letter to the Galatians spells out what error this is
But believing this, as so many of us actually do in our heart of hearts, for all our fervent declarations of faith based righteousness, we hold that the wages of God are eternal life.
Thus the scripture is subverted.
There is a second subversion here.
"The wages of sin are death."
Period.
I did this. I never ended the sentence, forgetting that the free gift of God is eternal life and that this eternal life is not just conversion, but the whole thing, including discipleship, as much a gift of grace as anything else lest we fall away into the Law trying to pay for it. This gift, the whole of eternal life is delivered in personal relationship with the Hoy Spirit, without Whom there is only impossible law and despair to any sensitive (so many are not) to this. But instead I thought, emotionally, of course that as the wages of sin were death and with no free gift as in sight, I had to stop sinning. And as Romans 8 says, this is outright impossible
Oh, I could quote the entire passage, but what I focused on was not a matter of my forced determination, and being carnal minded I missed the second part of this dictum and it took the Spirit Himself to show this to me just recently
As with just about everything what we truly believed is shown by our spontaneous living, our careless words, by our lives.
If we are carnal of fruit we are carnal of mind and all of us subvert the scriptures time and time again.
It will take gracious conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit to reveal to u what our deceitful hearts have wrought, as it will take his persuasion, as loving Counsellor, to lead us to repent of it
The relationship is the thing.
Always
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