October 7, 2023

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

There is only one way for any of us to resolve the tension between the high ideals of the gospel and the grim reality of ourselves: to accept that we will never measure up, but that we do not have to.*

If someone gives you a nicely wrapped gift, what do you do with it? Do you leave it in the package because you know you don’t deserve it? What if you just remove the bow but leave the gift wrap? Is it a useful gift now? And what if you unwrap the gift and say “thank you” for it? Have you now earned that gift? And what good is the gift if you never use it, wear it, or display it?

According to Paul, we may have earned death but eternal life is a gift from God. But we can’t use it if we don’t open it. So how do we open the gift? There’s a handy little five-step plan that some people like to use: hear, believe, confess, repent, be baptized. Of course, there are people who object to parts of this plan, especially the “be baptized” step. They see baptism as “works” and we all know that we can’t work to earn our salvation. I contend that the other four steps are works that we perform, while baptism is something done to us. And not one – or all combined – of those steps makes us worthy of the gift. After completing all of the steps, we still haven’t earned eternal life. We have merely unwrapped the gift.

While each of these steps can be found in scripture as part of the “how to be saved” process, I haven’t found them all together in one place. In most cases, it’s because the persons addressed have already completed one or more of them. They have removed the bow from the package but need to be told to tear off the wrapping paper. You don’t have to tell someone to believe if they’re already a believer. In other instances, while we might not read of the person being told to perform all five steps, we find that later on they actually followed through.

Perhaps we should think of the salvation steps as less of a procedure and more of a natural progression. It’s not a matter of, “I believe, now what do I do?” It is more of an internal matter - a heart matter. If you have heard and truly absorbed the gospel message that you need Jesus, your heart will be compelled to come clean about your sinfulness. You will be sorry for your sins and will want to turn away from that old life. You will not object to the symbolic washing away of your sins, and it will become your life’s mission to walk in obedience to the one who saved you. You have unwrapped your gift and you are free to enjoy it. But you will never deserve it.

Focusing on the wonderful sacrificial death of Christ just naturally causes us to examine our own hearts, our sinfulness, our unworthiness, and our need for deeper commitment to the One who died for us.*