Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
I know that most of us are cynical about anything “free” these days. Seriously, what’s the catch? We’ve been told all our lives that there’s no free lunch and that we need to work our way to the top in this meritocracy called life. So anything free seems cheap. I was watching TV the other day and caught this eBay commercial. Their slogan is “shop victoriously; don’t just buy it… win it!” eBay kicks meritocracy up a notch. And I have to be honest, I love it. I love meritocracy. It seems right. And because I can be competitive, it’s just plain funner.
But there is something that I’ve come to realize in my 44 short years of life. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to shake this thing called sin. I know that it sounds like some archaic backwoods preacher-word, but the word sin simply means to miss the mark—it’s an old archery term. If an archer missed the target, he was called a “sinner.” The Bible says that “we all have sinned and all fall short [miss the mark] of the glory of God.” And we don’t like that, so we don’t like to admit it. We all want to be able to split the uprights; we want all of life’s baskets to go swish, and sometimes they do. But not always.
I was telling some friends this the other day: Everywhere I go, there my self is—and my self, like your self, doesn’t always choose the right things. And God is a perfect God with a perfect standard that we are just not capable of living up to. And that’s why we need what the Bible calls a free gift. And receiving it simply means admitting our need and taking this gracious handout from God. Until then, we’ll keep trying the same things over and over again expecting different results—Einstein called that insanity.
Around 20-some years ago, someone gave me a Bible and wrote on the inside cover Mark 8:36, where Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul?” I couldn’t shake those words. They were all over me like a cheap suit with static cling. What are you toiling for in life? And what if you actually achieve it? Then what? What if you hit the lottery? I know—the lottery is basically a tax on people who are really bad at math. The chances that you will win the Lottery: 1 in 4 million. The chances that you will eventually die in a car crash are actually a lot better: 1 in 125. But the most staggering statistic of all: 10 out of every 10 people will eventually die. What you and I need is God’s free gift.