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

There is a reason that people don’t like to talk about death. Death is scary. Despite all of our medical advances, it is still inevitable. Death doesn’t discriminate in any way. It gets the rich and the poor, the fit and the unfit, the mean and the nice. Death always comes.

Why does death come for us all? It is because of one fatal condition that we share. We are sinful. Our sins make us death’s target. Our sins are not something that we can just ignore. Sin can’t fit in with who God is or with his plan for all things. Instead, sin brings death. Death is the consequence of sin.

Death is a great enemy against us. In our eyes that enemy looks bigger and tougher than we could ever defeat. But there is hope.

The Bible teaches, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God loves us. Even though we don’t deserve it because we are sinners, God loves us. All of our solutions for death come up short. But God did not abandon us to death’s destruction. In his great love for us, God provides a solution that really works. His solution is Jesus.

Jesus, the Son of God, came to save us from death. He defeated that powerful enemy. Jesus defeated death by taking all of our sins on himself. He suffered the punishment we deserved for our sins; he died on the cross of Calvary to pay the “wages of sin.” By sacrificing his holy life for us, Jesus defeated death. He proved it by his resurrection from the dead.

Now “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.” Trusting in Jesus as our Savior, the fear of death is taken away. For Jesus promises that we will live, even though we die (John 11:25). When we close our eyes in death, he will open them to eternal life. We will wake up from death to life with God in heaven where there will be none of the hurts, disappointments, and fears that we experience now.

Jesus is your Savior from death. Trust him for freedom from the fear of death’s destruction and the hope and joy of eternal life!