Cosmic Contrasts
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· 21 viewsThe bad news is the wages of sin is death, but the good news is the free gift of God is eternal life received through faith in Jesus Christ.
Notes
Transcript
Prayer
Prayer
O Lord
Make Your Book live to us.
Show us Yourself within Your Word.
Show us ourself
and Show us our Savior
and make the Book live to us, I pray.
AMEN
Introduction
Introduction
The Bible, as well as our very lives, are filled with contrasts. Light and dark. Love and hate. Peace and discord. Humility and pride. Holiness and sin. Abundance and lack. Liberty and slavery. Joy and sorrow. Obedience and rebellion.
So, it should come as no surprise to any of us that God declares all mankind to be in one of two camps; one of two kingdoms, actually. Either you are under the domain of darkness or you have been transferred to the domain of light. Either you are ruled by self and Satan or you are ruled by the Sovereign Savior. Either you are dead in your sins and trespasses or you are alive to God and to righteousness in Christ Jesus. There isn’t any kingdom in-between. There is no wiggle room. God’s Word is terribly clear. These are the cosmic contrasts of God’s objective reality and truth.
In a little while we are going to witness a baptism. As I was preparing my sermon this week I felt convicted that I needed to preach a different message than what I had originally intended. So, rather than hear a message from Mark’s Gospel today, what you are about to hear is probably the most gospel-focused and Scripture saturated message I’ve ever prepared. I believe I counted 35 direct or indirect Scripture references!
The text that I want us to spend time in this morning is a very familiar verse, a popular verse, but it is a verse that perfectly showcases cosmic contrasts. Many of you know this verse by heart.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Did you catch the cosmic contrasts in this single verse? Wages versus free gift. Sin versus the righteousness that comes through Christ. Eternal death versus eternal life. Ultimately, this is a verse with two very different walks of life and with two vastly different outcomes.
This verse contains some of the most potent, cosmic contrasts in all of Scripture. Essentially this verse contrasts the horrifyingly bad news with the gloriously good news.
Theme: The bad news is the wages of sin is death, but the good news is the free gift of God is eternal life received through faith in Jesus Christ.
Eternal Death and Eternal Life. The bad news and the good news. Those are the two central, cosmic contrasts I would like us to reflect upon today. The objective of doing this is for some of you to receive Christ by faith, if the Lord wills, and for those of us who have received Christ by faith, that we would be renewed by and rejoice in the glorious good news of the gospel.
But, before we can welcome the good news, we must first understand the bad news. The good news will not be good until we see the bad news as bad. Until the bad news be bitter, the good news will not be sweet. So, let’s look first at the bitterness of the bad news and then bask in the sweetness of the good news.
1. The Bad News: Death
1. The Bad News: Death
Death is the summation of the bad news. Death is typically never good news, except in one instance, which we will come to later. But overall, death is bad news. It’s even worse once we understand that death is the wages for our sin.
Sin, by definition, is a lack of conformity to the law of God. If God decrees a rule for us saying, “You shall do this” or “You shall not do that”, sin is the failure to conform to His standard of righteousness because we did not obey His law.
Imagine it this way. You are out walking in the woods and on a tree you see a sign posted, “No Trespassing”. That sign indicates a border over which you are not allowed to cross. If you do cross, you are liable to be prosecuted as a trespasser because you violated the law. Just like that sign, God has established boundaries according to His law. When we cross those boundaries we trespass; we sin. And this exposes us to the punishment He justly gives to those who fail to conform to His law. His judgment is death. That is the wages of sin.
Wages. We’re familiar with wages, right? We know what wages are. We can understand wages as having three characteristics.
A. Wages are earned
A. Wages are earned
First, wages are earned. The very word that Paul uses here entails that wages are something that is earned. The word originally described “a soldier’s pay or stipend”. That is to say, a soldier could earn money, rations, or supplies for his service. This obviously doesn’t just apply to soldiers. It is the way the world turns. You work in exchange for money or some other resource previously agreed upon. By the way, that is a biblical concept. You’ll find in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 this very thing. Paul reminded the Thessalonians:
10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
Wages are as simple as that. You don’t work you don’t eat. You don’t work you don’t get paid.
Fundamentally, wages are received because you worked for them. You earn wages. You give in order to get. All of us know that by experience. Our entire lives center upon working, upon exchanging some type of service and skill for resources to survive and thrive.
Paul takes this concept, which is true in the physical realm, and he transfers it to the spiritual realm. In essence, Paul generalizes what every sinner does for a living. Sinners sin. Sin is the sinner’s work, their livelihood, what they do.
Sinners, which is all people by nature and by trade, earn spiritual death by their works, which are stained by sin. Every work that the sinner does earns them the appropriate wage: death.
Wages are earned; sin earns death.
B. Wages are deserved
B. Wages are deserved
Second, wages are deserved. Not only are wages earned, but they are owed.
Wages are a worker’s due reward. An employee looks for a paycheck at the end of the work week because that is what they worked for. They earned it. They deserve it.
Those who work deserve what they have earned. The worker deserves to receive what they are owed, no more and no less. If he has worked a full day, he deserves a full day’s pay. Not a half day’s pay, nor a day and a half’s pay, unless it’s a holiday, but a full day’s wage. That is totally equitable and fair.
In the economy of sin, not only is death earned by the sinner, but it is the sinner’s due payment. Sinners deserve death and that is fair. Unless changed, the sinner will work by exchanging their sin for death. That’s ironic, isn’t it?! In the physical realm you work to live. But, in the spiritual realm, the sinner works and deserves death.
Paul emphatically states, “The wages of sin is death”. Now, it may be helpful to clarify what Paul means by death. Remember what Paul is contrasting in this verse. Death and Life. Except it’s not just life, is it! Paul says, “eternal life”. Thus, Paul means that this isn’t just death. It is eternal death.
There are two deaths that a person can experience.
In Genesis chapter 2, God gave a command to Adam.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,
Pause there for a moment. Consider the benevolence of God. He put Adam in a perfect world with everything at Adam’s finger tips to enjoy. Continue reading on into verse 17:
17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Out of everything Adam was allowed to enjoy, there was only one thing, one tree, God commanded him not to enjoy, not to eat from. Just as God was demonstrating His goodness in giving Adam all of creation to enjoy, so here God was demonstrating His goodness in prohibiting the man from eating of this single tree which would result in death.
Of course we know that Adam did not heed this warning and he disobeyed God’s command. He sinned by eating from this tree. God’s command was don’t eat and God’s penalty for disobedience was death.
After the Fall, in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve began to die progressively; physically, outwardly and inwardly. Physical death would take many years to be finalized, but the aging process began immediately, and death came to them eventually. Just read through Genesis chapter 5, infamously called “The Hall of Death”. Again and again you’ll read in the lineage of Adam these words: “And he died… And he died… and he died.”
No person is spared from physical death, the first death. Until Christ returns, everyone in this room will die some day. If you think that’s grim, then wait until you hear about the second death!
The second death also came into the world in Genesis 3. When Adam fell into sin, he didn’t just begin to die physically. At that moment, Adam and God, the relationship they had, the fellowship they shared, it was severed, broken, and murdered because of sin. This is spiritual death.
Spiritual death had immediate consequences. Mainly, spiritual death drives a wedge between God and man. Adam could no longer enjoy the favorable presence of the LORD in the Garden. Instead, there was a separating away from God’s favorable presence because of sin. That’s the immediate consequence of sin. Spiritually dead to God.
But, this spiritual death doesn’t just have immediate consequences in the here and now. Spiritual death has eternal consequences, which physical death does not have. Should a person physically die while spiritually dead, that person will be separated from God’s favorable presence to experience God’s wrath for sin forever. This is the second death.
The penalty from God for sin is death. Not just death in this world but also in hell. One sin against the holy God is enough to earn and deserve an eternity of His punitive wrath. That is how holy God is. That is how awful sin is. That is how horrible it is to be a sinner. God takes sin far more seriously than we do. To Him, all sin, small or large, is rebellion. It is an attack on His holiness. It is an affront to His goodness. It is treason to His law.
Sin deserves the death penalty. And that death penalty did not stop at Adam. It continues on throughout all of human history. It was still true in the prophet Ezekiel’s day. The LORD declares:
4 Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die.
But, lest you think the divine death penalty for sin is just an Old Testament idea coming from an angry God, then turn to the New Testament. It was true in Paul’s day as well. At the beginning of Romans, Paul wrote:
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
And at the end of the chapter, Paul sums up how sinners are ungodly and unrighteous.
29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
And, I know you’ll just be shocked to hear this, but this death penalty is still true in our day. Why? Because Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote in Romans 5:
Romans 5:12, 14, 21
12 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—
14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Sin and death. They are inseparable twins and they are inevitable for every person, save one. You sin, you die. Not only physically, but eternally under the wrath of God if you are not saved from the economy of sin. God says that the fair wages sinners deserve for their sin is death.
C. Wages are paid
C. Wages are paid
And the third characteristic of wages, which we are familiar with, is that wages are paid.
In a just and fair economy, what you work for and what you deserve will be dealt out to you. A worker will get what they deserve because they earned it. And, for the most part, I don’t know a single person who has ever not looked forward to payday! However, the sinner should never be looking forward to payday.
God’s law in the Old Testament states, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” And in the New Testament God says:
7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
The LORD God is a just and fair Judge. You may be cheated from your full wages by the government or your employer in this life, but a sinner will never be cheated by God. He is the just Judge. Paul says as much earlier in Romans.
Romans 2:6, 11
6 He will render to each one according to his works:
11 For God shows no partiality.
Then, later in Romans 12, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35 which says:
35 Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’
Jesus taught the same truth.
27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
At the end of it all, Jesus Himself will read over the accounts of every person and judge them according to their deeds and transgressions.
Revelation 20:12, 15
12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
On that day, all who are under the Law of God, will be fairly judged by the Upholder of the Law.
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
God’s verdict on the sinner will be so perfectly just and right and fair that the sinner will only be able to utter one word, “Amen”. So be it. No excuses. No, “this isn’t what I deserve!” The sinner will know for sure that the payment they are receiving from God for their sins is what they earned and what they truly deserve.
The wages of sin is death. Sinners earn it. Sinners deserve it. Sinners will be paid it in full. This is the bitter bad news.
2. The Good News: Eternal Life
2. The Good News: Eternal Life
“But…” But. This has to be the sweetest word in all of Scripture. The difference between eternal death and eternal life is understood by this word “but”. Whether you are a sinner dead in your sin or a Christian alive in Christ Jesus hinges on this one, little, contrastive word “but”.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul has presented the bad news. Now he is ready to unleash the good news. The bad news was about death, BUT the good news is about eternal life. This is the solution, the remedy to the problem of the wages of our sin.
I want you to know four facts about this good news concerning eternal life.
A. From God’s grace alone
A. From God’s grace alone
Fact number one, eternal life is from God’s grace alone.
In the grace and mercy of God, the death penalty does not have to be the final verdict for the sinner! Rather than receiving what the sinner has earned and what they deserve, the sinner can receive what they do not deserve and what they have not earned. If anything is unfair in this life it is this one thing: that a sinner can be paid what they are not owed and what they haven’t worked for.
This is another cosmic contrast in this verse you need to see. Wages versus free gift, or grace. We’ve thought about the characteristics of wages, now think about the characteristics of a gift.
First, by nature a gift is free. Nothing has to be given in return or done by the recipient to earn or deserve a true gift.
Second, a true gift is given voluntarily and without restraint. The giver willingly gives a gift with no desire to take the gift back later.
And third, a true gift is not owed to anyone. The giver is under no obligation to give a gift. It is the giver’s choice and desire to give a gift.
Eternal life is the free gift that comes from God. It is God’s gift to give. In Romans 3 we read the same fact.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
That word translated “as a gift” that Paul used is rich in meaning. It means “freely”. Jesus used in John 15:25.
25 But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’
Paul used it in another way in 2 Thessalonians.
8 nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.
And at the end of Revelation we read:
17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
Put differently, eternal life is from the grace of God which is given: without cause, without paying for it, and without cost to the sinner. This is God’s grace! It’s His favor of gifting eternal life to those who only deserve His wrath. This gift is totally unmerited!
Eternal life is the free gift from God’s grace alone.
B. In & through God’s Son alone
B. In & through God’s Son alone
Fact number two, eternal life, which is from God’s grace alone, is found in and is available through God’s Son alone.
The gift of eternal life is free, but it did not come cheap. The grace from God came at a high cost. It came at the expense of Christ’s life given on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners.
There are four realities that the cross of Christ communicates. Redemption, Justification, Propitiation, and Expiation.
Redemption is the act of buying something back at a price or the freeing of someone by payment of a ransom. Redemption is at the very heart of Jesus’ confession about Himself in Mark’s Gospel.
45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
And this ransom payment was costly. Redemption, as Paul says in Ephesians, came through the payment of Christ’s shed blood.
7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,
Through the cross of Christ alone we have redemption from sin and death.
Justification is the act by which God judicially declares a sinner righteous in His sight. How is justification possible? Paul tells us.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
The point Paul makes continually in Romans 3, 4, and 5, is that the only righteousness sufficient for sinners to stand before the judgment seat of God is the righteousness of God’s Son, Jesus Christ. Righteousness outside of Christ is nothing but filthy rags and will be paid with death. But in Christ, when a sinner is clothed in His righteousness, they will be gifted eternal life.
Propitiation is an act that satisfies the demands of God’s justice and wrath against sin. That is what Paul means when He writes that Christ Jesus:
25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
As the sinner’s substitute, Jesus Christ took upon Himself the wrath sinners earned and deserved to pay the penalty for their guilt in order to satisfy God’s righteous demands. Christ took the death penalty, paying the wages the sinner was owed because:
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
If you want a visual of how propitiation works, visualize the vertical beam of the cross. Propitiation is Christ’s Godward act to satisfy His Father’s wrath for sin.
And then there is expiation. Expiation is the removal and remission of the sinner’s guilt for sin. This is what John the Baptist meant when he saw Jesus and he breaks out singing the Agnus Dei.
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
And expiation is what the psalmist spoke of in Psalm 103.
12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
So picture again, if you will, the vertical beam of Christ’s cross as representing propitiation, what Christ did to satisfy God’s justice for sin, and the horizontal beam of the cross would be expiation, representing the infinite distance that Christ has removed and forgiven the sinner of the guilt for sin.
Redemption comes through Christ. Justification is found in Christ. Propitiation is accomplished in Christ. And expiation is achieved through Christ. To sum it up nicely, eternal life is the free gift from God alone that is found in and is accomplished through Jesus Christ alone.
C. Received by faith alone
C. Received by faith alone
Fact number three, eternal life, which is from God’s grace alone which is found in and comes through His Son alone, can be received by faith alone.
Faith, not works, is the instrumental cause of salvation. This is because you cannot work for eternal life and therefore do not deserve eternal life. Faith is merely the open hand that receives the grace from God and then clasps onto Jesus Christ. Faith is how sinners receive those four realities of the cross.
Redemption, Justification, Propitiation and Expiation are the works of Christ which Paul argues may only be received by faith.
24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
All it takes to receive the benefits of the cross, to receive eternal life from God is to:
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
The Lord Jesus Christ must be the object of your faith. It is not enough to believe that there is a God and believe that there is the Son of God named Jesus Christ. Even the demons believe that. No, you must trust in Jesus Christ and what He has done for you on the cross. You are saved by trusting in His works, not your own. You must look to Christ and you will be raised from the dead to eternal life in Him!
You must receive eternal life by faith alone.
D. For God’s glory alone
D. For God’s glory alone
And now, finally, fact number four concerning eternal life, which is from God’s grace alone that comes in and through His Son alone to be received by faith alone, is that it is for God’s glory alone. The logical consequence of salvation leading to eternal life is that God is praised. This is the end goal of salvation. It is to the praise of God’s glory.
The reason I say that is because if sinners cannot possibly earn eternal life, or deserve eternal life, then it is only reasonable that sinners, when they do receive eternal life, will not get the glory because they have no grounds for boasting! If sinners are redeemed, justified, saved from the wrath to come, infinitely forgiven of all their sins, and given eternal life as a free gift of God in and through Jesus, then only God has earned the glory; only God deserves the praise; only God will be given the honor.
Sinners cannot take any of the credit. We did nothing. All we did was sin, but God gave His Son anyways. The gospel strips sinners of pride and crowns God with highest praise.
30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Have you abandoned all attempts to earn right standing with God by your good works? Are you trusting in Jesus Christ alone, who shed His blood to pay the penalty that you deserved because of your sin? Is your boast completely in the Lord, in His righteousness and in His grace?
Conclusion
Conclusion
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is my earnest prayer for all of you today that you would do five things in response to these cosmic contrasts.
First, realize that this bitter bad news and sweet good news is the truth of God.
Second, receive eternal life as the free gift from God that is found in and comes to you through Jesus Christ.
Third, rely on Jesus Christ by faith alone, abandoning your own works to earn eternal life.
Fourth, rest upon Jesus Christ and His righteousness, what He has accomplished and achieved for you.
And fifth, rejoice in the Lord and give Him the glory!
Prayer
Prayer
Romans 11:33–36
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are Your judgments and how inscrutable Your ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been Your counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to You that it might be repaid?” For from You, Lord, and through You and to You are all things. To You be glory forever. Amen.