I believe if you work hard at something, you have earned a return on it. For example, if you work hard at your job, you have earned your paycheck. Or, if you work hard at your garden, you have earned the fruits or vegetables that grow there. Conversely, as this verse from Thessalonians states, if you only work at nothing, you have earned precisely nothing. Naturally, I do not mean that if someone is physically unable to work that they should not be provided for, nor is this what the Apostle Paul is referring to – that’s why he states this is true for the one who is ‘unwilling’ - not ‘unable’ - to work.
I also believe this means that if you work hard at causing trouble, you’ve earned whatever trouble may come your way. Or, and this is most frightening of all - if you work hard all your life at denying God, you’ve earned God’s denial of you...
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ (Matthew 7:23)
So, in this life, we certainly reap what we sow. If we sow trouble, we reap trouble. If we sow blessings upon people, we will be blessed. But, what we also know is that - no matter what we sow; no matter how hard we work to earn the things in this world – there is nothing we can do to ‘earn’ eternal life. You see, all our lives, we’ve been ‘earning’ something else – death.
Every time we speak an untruth; every time we take something that is not rightfully ours; every lust-filled thought; every selfish act; every thought of hatred towards another… We are earning wages here, too. But the wages are something we hope to never collect on. “For the wages of sin is death…”
Don’t be misled – we have earned these wages! We have earned them through our ungodly deeds, and these wages must be collected. If we collect these wages, we collect death…the only way around this is if Someone else steps up and takes what we have earned, and replaces our ill-gotten gain with the wages that He earned on the Cross.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
Jesus took our sin – accepted the death-check that we had earned; and cashed it in once and forever. Through Him we are given a free gift – something we could never earn – in place of the death payment owed us.
#LoveMatters