We are in the midst of studying the book of Romans in the Bible as a church family. The Bible often pits two ideas against each other when it comes to our right standing before God, our eternal life, and our being saved out of our sin and restored to life with God: these two ideas are wages and gift. A gift is something we didn’t do anything to deserve; it’s simply an act of kindness, while wages are what we are owed for our work. Why does Scripture want us to get this idea right, this difference between wages and a gift? Pastor and theologian John Calvin wrote of the doctrine of being saved by God’s grace alone and not our own work: “Whenever knowledge of grace is taken away the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.” Indeed, it is this idea of grace and justice mingled together that is so antithetical to our nature as human beings and so opposed to all other religions except that of Christ. So let’s take a look at our passage this morning.
