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Still

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

          Usually, we think of this verse in terms of those who aren’t saved facing death, while those who have accepted the gift of God have eternal life. I’m not saying that’s wrong. It is true, but I suspect there are other levels of truth here that we don’t consider. I’ve said before that death means separation from God. Once a person is saved, they are saved. There’s nothing that can separate you from the love of God. But, when we sin, we grieve the Holy Spirit. Grief is associated with mourning. When we sin, we separate ourselves from God – not permanently, but the separation is still there.

In other words, even after we’re saved, the wages of sin is still death. It’s not eternal death, but it is as serious as death. When the going gets tough, we tend to cut ourselves slack. We tell ourselves it’s just a little sin. We assure one another that God will forgive us – and He will. That’s not the point at the moment. The point is that when the going gets tough and we cut ourselves slack, we need to keep in mind that the sin that we want to brush off still does damage to our souls, to our relationship with God, and to our relationship with others. It’s not physical death, but that probably means it's more important than physical death.

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