My maternal grandfather introduced me to an old saying: “You can’t spit so high it won’t come back down.” It was his colorful way of saying that what we do eventually catches up with us. We express the same idea in sayings like, “What goes around comes around,” or in the biblical warning, “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23). There is a sobering truth behind those statements. Sinful actions and wrong behavior have consequences. Sometimes those consequences appear in this life. Sometimes they surface through the burden of a guilty conscience. Ultimately, however, sin brings us face-to-face with the judgment of God.

Sin carries a terrible wage. If you jump from the safety of a twenty-story building, gravity does not negotiate with you on the way down. You may regret jumping. You may sincerely wish you had made another choice. But unless something intervenes, the fall will eventually end in a sudden and deadly stop. Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). That verse presents us with two very different realities: a wage and a gift. A wage is something earned. A gift is something given. Sin pays wages, and every one of us has earned them. Yet God offers us something we could never earn—eternal life.

That raises an important question: How can a righteous God give life to people who have earned death? The answer is Jesus Christ. The Messiah pays the debt we owe. He does not pretend that our sin never happened, nor does God simply overlook the consequences of sin. At the cross, Jesus willingly takes our place and bears what our sin deserves. To return to the illustration, we jumped from the building, but Jesus stepped between us and the judgment awaiting us at the bottom. The consequences were real. The fall was real. The judgment was real. But so was His intervention.

Jesus has done the heavy lifting. That is the wonder of the Gospel. We do not climb our way back up the building. We do not undo the fall through good works, religious activity, or personal determination. God has acted for us in Christ. What are we called to do? Hear and believe. Paul describes that beautifully in Ephesians: “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise” (Ephesians 1:13).

Of course, this “hearing” is more than an auditory experience. Plenty of people hear the words of the Gospel without responding to the Gospel. This is the hearing of faith—hearing that receives the message as true, rests its confidence in Jesus, and entrusts itself to Him. We earned the wage. Jesus paid the debt. God offers the gift. We hear and believe.

My grandfather was right: you can’t spit so high it won’t come back down. Sin eventually comes down. Its consequences cannot simply be wished away. But the Gospel announces something far greater than the inevitability of sin’s consequences: what was coming down on us fell upon Christ at the cross, so that what we could never earn could come to us as a gift.

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Thank God for the but. ©

–PGR