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Faith that Costs Nothing - The Most Expensive Free Gift
by Jerry Ousley In 1982 my wife gave me a gift. It was my birthday. She had purchased a Texas Instruments TI99/4A computer just for me. I had no idea that I liked computers at that time. It had never entered my mind to try one. From the moment I turned that little jewel on I was hooked. If I remember correctly it had about 24 kilobytes of memory (you could buy a memory module to boost it all the way up to 48 which I did), you had to hook it up to a television set to view what was going on and if you saved anything it was a painstaking process of hooking up a cassette tape recorder and saving it on those tapes. Then to retrieve it you had to know where the file was located on that tape to "play" it back into the computer. Windows and Mac were only a whisper in the minds of those who created them at that time and I cut my teeth on DOS (I know some of you remember what that was). Over the years I've spent literally thousands of dollars on computers, software and accessories. I'd be rich if I got paid for every time my wife wished she hadn't bought that gift for me (I should have asked for money because it might just have paid for all those expenses). It turned out to be a very costly gift. But on the bright side, it has also turned out to be the way I make my living. Building websites and fixing computer problems for other people has become my bread and butter. Today, when I sit in my office where I do my work, I have a desktop system and two notebook computers and I often use them all three at one time. There is a purpose for each of those computers, really. But that first one was a very expensive, free gift. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." What a powerful statement! When David sinned in 2 Samuel 24, he experienced the grace of God. The terrible plague which the angel was spreading throughout Israel because of David's sin was killing thousands. We aren't told exactly what that plague was but it was deadly. David realized that many were paying the wages of his sin. He begged God to stop and because God is merciful, He did. The angel paused at the threshing floor of Araunah, and although we aren't told this, I believe he was waiting further instructions from God that depended on David's response. David did the right thing and the Bible tells us that the plagued ceased. But it had been expensive costing the lives of many innocent people. Romans 6:23 gives us a different scenario. It tells us that we work to receive the pay of death. The wages we are given because of sin are terrible! It doesn't just mean that we die, but that we die eternally. That's one of the more terrible consequences of hell; it isn't simply the flames, or that we get to spend eternity remembering what we might have done and thinking, "If I had just done things differently," but the agony is in the experience of death, not just once, but each and every moment of forever. What awful wages! The second part of the verse tells us that the gift of God is eternal LIFE, but only in Christ Jesus our Lord. Think of it; we work to DIE forever, or we accept the free gift and LIVE forever. That's not a hard choice for me! But it did not come cheap. Many have seen the movie of a few years ago "The Passion." It was one of the most horrendous visual descriptions of the crucifixion I have ever witnessed. But folks, when you think about it, the agony must have been just like that. It was a horribly torturous way to die. Sin-minded men treat other people in ways that no other creature God made would ever even consider. Yes, because of sin in this world many predators kill for food. But most of the time they kill quickly. They kill to eat. But the evil in man drives him to kill for pleasure thinking of new ways to make it torturous and slow. That is a direct result of sin. Jesus died that way to pay the price tag for people to be rid of the curse of sin. He suffered, died and was resurrected to make this free gift possible. It is indeed the most expensive free gift ever given anywhere, anytime, and any place. Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |