“See that my dinner is ready by twelve o’clock,” said a man to his wife as he left for his work one morning. He added that, if it were not ready, he would beat her until she could not stand.
She had become a Christian; her sins were forgiven; the Lord Jesus was her Savior; heaven was her home; so, instead of returning rough words, she hastened to do as her husband had told her. On his return at twelve dinner was ready and she was sitting quietly reading the Bible. By no means soothed at finding no cause for anger, the man approached as if to strike, as was too often his custom; but his attention was caught by the book that lay before her.
His eye caught a verse, and he began to spell it out.
“‘T-h-e, the, w-a-g-e-s,’... what does that spell, Sally?”
“Wages,” answered his wife.
“The wages o-f of, s-i-n sin, i-s is, d-e-a-t-h,’ another long word, Sally; what does it spell?”
“Death,” was the answer.
The word seemed to frighten him. “‘The wages of sin is death,’” he repeated. “If anybody ever earned those wages, I have.”
Quietly he ate his dinner and for once bade his wife a kind “good-by.”
In the evening he returned sober, and exclaimed as he entered the house, “Those terrible wages! Sally, is the book full of the dark side?”
“Oh no, Tom!” said Sally; “there is a bright side as well as a dark one. Just let me read the end of the verse: ‘The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”
Earnestly she told him of the love of God; of the work of the Lord Jesus on the cross; how He died for sinners, and that the vilest who came, He would not cast out.
He listened eagerly, the tears running down his cheeks; and when she had finished he cried, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
He knew at last that he was a sinner; he trusted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior, and was saved.
Reader, if unsaved, you have been earning the wages of sin. Have you ever thought what those wages are?
“The wages of sin is death”—eternal death.
If you have found out that you are a sinner, lost in God’s sight, there is salvation for you, too, for “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8).