When I was employed in the building industry, we were made very aware of the dangers of asbestos in buildings. Whenever it was discovered, it had to be removed by licenced contractors using specialist equipment. The alarming thing was that in its day it was hailed as a ‘wonder material’ and can be found in fireproofing, fuse-boards, brake pads and even toilet cisterns.
As I said it was hailed as a wonder material from its introduction in the 1870’s and its dangers were noticed in the early 1900’s but it was only finally banned in the UK in 1999. I have heard stories from people who were working on building sites in the 50’s and 60’s of it being sprayed onto steel beams without any protection for anyone on the site and it wasn’t uncommon to see workers throwing it at each other in ‘snowball fights’. All the time they were unaware of the danger from the tiny particles they were breathing in, slowly shredding the inside of their lungs, often causing cancer and death by asbestosis many years later.
The fallen world we live in is much like that environment with its hidden killer, sin, slowly doing its work. People seem to be unaware of the penalty for living a life without Christ at the centre, blinded to the fact that the only cure for the terminal illness of sin is Jesus. Some trust in the good works they have done or what they have achieved or how much wealth and possessions they have amassed, whilst all the time breathing in the lie that we are good enough. I was in that position before I came to Christ, I was trusting in mere religious activity once a week whilst the remainder of the time being no different to anyone else. For me terms like being ‘saved’ or ‘born again’ were just plain weird and sounded as though you had joined some sort of cult. That was until I had the truth of the gospel explained to me and I began to read the Bible properly for the first time. God helped me realise that my preconceived ideas were not only ill informed but ran contrary to what God’s word was saying. It was a plain choice, was I going to continue to breathe in all that the world had to offer or to take God’s gift of salvation through Jesus?
Romans 6 v23 puts this choice quite starkly when it says: ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ If you consider that the word ‘wages’ in that verse – wages are something that are earned, living a life without Jesus ‘earns’ death which means eternal separation from God. Now contrast that with the word ‘gift.’ A gift is something that is given free of charge, the cost of which is borne by the giver. That is exactly what God did when He sent His Son Jesus to this earth to make us right with Him through the cross of Calvary and then overcoming death by coming back from the dead. His gift was, and still is, the forgiveness of sin through that death for anyone who comes to Jesus realising He is the only way to God.
Bearing this in mind we are all faced with this decision; do we take that offer of the gift of eternal life from Jesus or are we content to trust in our own efforts to save us from the eternal consequence of turning our back on Him?
Image credit: Yannick Pulver via Unsplash
