Sin’s Wages
My mother for a short period of time had a little pet snake. It was some kind of racer. She had caught it and put it in a cage outside. Whenever she fed the snake, she would always have to wear leather gloves because the snake would try to bite her. It didn’t matter how long my mother kept the snake or how much time she spent with the snake it would still try to bite her.
We are told in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death….” Sin is much like my mother’s pet snake. It doesn’t matter how much time we spend with our pet sin it is still going to give us death. Actually, the more time we expend upon our sin the more death that we will receive.
Payday for our sins does not begin upon our physical death. Payday for our sins begins immediately. With every sin we receive a wage. The deeper into sin that we go the more death that we receive. The more sin that we have the deader we are in every area of our life. Romans 8:5-6 is one of my favorites. I like the way the NIV puts it, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”
“The mind of sinful man is death.” We have a choice each day. Let us choose life and peace!
If you have never heard R. G. Lee’s great sermon “Payday Someday” it can be easily found on the Internet by doing a search. It is a long powerful sermon that Lee preached more than 1200 times. According to an article I read the sermon started off as a devotional that was expanded into a sermon. The first church I pastored had a vinyl record of the sermon that I listened to and that was the first I had heard of the sermon and R. G. Lee.