For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23 HCSB

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 6:23 HCSB

Whenever someone tells me that they’ve got good news and bad news, I always ask them to give me the bad news first. My hope is that the good news will outweigh the bad. That is the case in our two scripture passages today. First we see that we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You may be a good person. You may be loving and kind and gracious, but you are still a sinner. That’s the bad news. Unfortunately, we are born into this world with a sinful nature. We don’t have to be taught to lie, it comes naturally. They are called the desires of the flesh because they are those natural desires. They have to be overridden by the Holy Spirit. Without Christ in our lives, we are powerless against sin. None of us are able to keep the Ten Commandments. There is no big sin or little sin, there is just sin. We are all guilty of sin. We are told in 1 John 1:8 that if we deny we have sin in our lives that we are liars.

Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. This is certainly not good news. But if we read the rest of this verse, it tells us that the gift of God is eternal life. It’s a gift. This means that we don’t pay for it. We can’t earn it and we can’t buy it, it’s a gift from God. But there is one thing about being given a gift, you have to accept it. I’m sure that we have all received gifts and thought, “what am I going to do with that?” We leave it sitting in a closet somewhere and forget that we have it. If we are really lucky, the day will come along when we find a use for it.

Some people treat their salvation that way. God has offered this gift to each and everyone of us, but some of us just leave it sitting there. We don’t accept it. Maybe we feel that we have no need for it. But, if you understand Romans 3:23 and the first part of Romans 6:23 then how could you think that? We are all sinners and the wages of sin is death. See, we have to pay for our sin. We don’t have to pay for eternal life, God just offers that as a gift. But we pay for our sin with our lives. Jesus paid for it with His life and will freely give us forgiveness of our sins, salvation, and eternal life in glory with God the Father, if we want that. Now you may think why would anyone not want that, right? But I can tell you that for many years, I lived as though I didn’t want that. I think I actually thought that I would just get it anyway. I finally realized it doesn’t work that way. I realized that my sin would cause me to spend eternity in the flames of hell. I gladly accepted the gift that God so freely offered.

Now many of you are skeptical, I’m sure, and you are wondering what’s the catch? Well, the catch is, as I mentioned, that we have to accept and receive the gift that is offered. We are literally dying in our sin, but we can be freed from it.

In 1 John 1:9 we are told that if we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Through Christ, we have a way to be cleansed and forgiven from our sins. We are told in Psalms 103:12 that once we are cleansed from our sin, He removes it as far as the east is from the west. God forgives and forgets.

So, let me give you the bad news first. The bad news is that we are all sinners. It’s part of our human nature. We sin sometimes without even realizing it. We sin by not doing the things we should do (James 1:17). We also sin by doing the things that we should not do (Exodus 20).

But the good news is that no matter what we have done, He is faithful to forgive us. There is no sin so horrible, that God will not forgive it. The devil may try to trick you into believing that your sin is too bad, but this is a lie from the devil.

Confess your sin to Him and He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). The gift of eternal life is right there, you just have to accept it. I pray that you will.

Have a great day!