February 26, 2023 - Romans 6:23

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 NLT

Jesus, we thank you so much for your free gift to us. It gives us hope. For without your gift, we would all be doomed to death. We are all sinners. Lord, we like to rate sin. We rate things like rape, child abuse, or murder at the top of horrible sins. Yet, things like white lies, jealousy, gossip, deeming ourselves insignificant, etc. are things that rate so low, we often don’t consider them sin. We can quickly dismiss and sweep them under the rug. We might completely tolerate them in our lives. We not only judge ourselves by this rating system, but others too. We see some people as better Christians or worse sinners because of how they rate on our sin scale. The pastor who commits adultery will be “drug over the coals”, where we might not see anything wrong with the one who has a problem with exaggeration. We don’t view it as lying and even if we did, we don’t see it nearly as bad as adultery. But, God, you don’t rate sin. To you sin is sin. It is all punishable by death. You don’t see some people as worse sinners. No one is too bad of a person to receive your free gift of eternal life. We are all sinners, and we all deserve death.

Lord, forgive us for taking on the role of judge. You are the only worthy judge, and we turn that role over to you. Forgive us for rating sin and allowing tolerances for lesser “sins”. Forgive us for any way that we have wrongly punished ourselves or others for “worse” sins. Help us view all sin the way you see it. Open our eyes to any sin in our lives that we haven’t been viewing as sin or have been excusing. Help us to uproot it from our lives and change our behavior to behavior that is pleasing to you. Help us live our life in a way that brings honor to you in all we do.

In Jesus name, amen.